Public bodies covered up sickening evidence about Asian grooming gangs 'for fear of appearing racist', a major report found yesterday.
The long-awaited review by Whitehall troubleshooter Louise Casey found that councils, police forces and the Home Office repeatedly 'shied away' from dealing with 'uncomfortable' questions about the ethnicity of rapists preying on thousands of vulnerable girls.
Baroness Casey last night hit out at 'do-gooders' who tried to bury the facts of such cases, yet only ended up giving racists 'more ammunition'.
Despite years of warnings, she said, the quality of data collected at a national level remained 'woeful and a dereliction of public duty'.
With ethnicity still recorded in only a third of cases, the baroness said it was impossible to be certain about patterns of offending at a national level.
