Home Office pledge over grooming

THE HOME Office has pledged to “leave no stone unturned” in its bid to tackle child sexual grooming after it was reported nearly 19,000 minors in England were exploited in the past year.

Latest figures show a sharp increase in the number of child grooming victims over the last five years.

Local authorities identified around 18,700 suspected victims in 2018-19, up from 3,300 five years ago.

A spokesman for the Home Office said the department “is committed to tackling child sexual abuse and will leave no stone unturned in tackling this abhorrent behaviour”.

Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, which has been targeted by grooming gangs, said the figures show this type of exploitation “remains one of the largest forms of child abuse in the country”.

She added: “Too many times, Government has said it will ‘learn lessons’, yet 19,000 children are still at risk of sexual exploitation.”

Figures obtained from the Department for Education have also revealed the areas with the highest number of children who were victims of grooming.

Lancashire recorded the highest number of all authority areas with 624 victims reported.

It was followed by Birmingham with 490 cases, Surrey with 447 victims, Bradford with 414 and Gloucestershire with 409 reports.

Earlier this month four men from Telford in the West Midlands were jailed for abusing a young girl who was sold for sex and raped.

The offences took place between 2001 and 2002 and started when the girl, who is now an adult, was 13.

The victim told the court she was assaulted by other unidentified males, with the abuse continuing until she was in her mid teens.

Nine men were jailed for a total of 132 years in February for an “appalling catalogue of degrading emotional and sexual abuse which deprived two young girls of their childhood” in Bradford.

The girls were first sexually exploited when they were placed into care and continued after they left.

Responding to the figures, the Home Office has said the department launched the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse “to get to the truth, expose what has gone wrong and learn lessons for the future”.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The inquiry operates independently of government and, within its terms of reference, decides for itself what it investigates.

“The inquiry is investigating institutional responses to child sexual exploitation by organised criminal networks with public hearings set for the spring of 2020.”