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Or sign-in if you have an account.The Rape Gang Inquiry Report, chaired by British MP Rupert Lowe and led by survivor Sammy Woodhouse, exposes the systematic grooming and sexual exploitation of vulnerable, overwhelmingly white British girls by predominantly Muslim Pakistani gangs in towns and cities throughout the United Kingdom.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorBut will political parties have the courage to act on the report’s findings, despite possible political ramifications?The independent, 219-page report was released on June 16. A crowdfunding campaign raised 794,677 pounds from over 20,000 concerned Britons in order to produce it.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThe report recounts the stories of girls who were systematically groomed by gangs when they were as young as 11. The testimonies are not for the faint of heart.Young girls were befriended, plied with alcohol and drugs, often taken from schools and care homes and subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking and torture.Some were filmed so they could be blackmailed, and told they were “white trash.” Those who became pregnant due to the rapes endured miscarriages, forced abortions or gave birth to children who were taken by the state. Some, the report says, were taken to the Middle East and forced into arranged marriages.Before Woodhouse became a whistleblower who helped expose the abuse of over 1,400 girls in Rotherham, England, through an anonymous interview with the Times in 2013, she was groomed at age 14 by Arshid Hussain, then 24, the ringleader of a Pakistani-heritage child exploitation gang.The report details the failure of numerous institutions to protect these girls, including the police, social services, the National Health Service and schools.Perhaps worse, it suggests that whistleblowers who tried to report these rapists were sometimes accused of racism and Islamophobia.The report lays the ultimate blame on the state for allowing these gangs to operate with impunity.It suggests that British and Scottish political parties were afraid of being accused of racism or losing political support from certain demographics, and that these fears took “precedence over the protection of British children.”It points to a lack of political will as the cause of the decades-long failure of the state and its institutions to deal with these grooming gangs, noting that the Labour party first flat-out refused to launch a public inquiry and only later conceded under “considerable pressure.”The report also acknowledges that an official government inquiry into grooming gangs has recently been launched, but suggests it will take too long and expresses concern that there is “no guarantee that it will adequately address the politically sensitive ethnoreligious nature of the phenomenon.”The government’s official Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs report has a budget of 65-million pounds and must be submitted no later than March 31, 2029.A research briefing on the inquiry says it’s required to “consider how the ethnicity, religion and culture of both perpetrators and victims may have influenced offending patterns, as well as institutional responses to abuse.”It also acknowledges that “men of Asian ethnicity are over-represented as perpetrators in group-based child sexual exploitation.”However, it does not provide more specifics about their ethnicity, nor does it mention any particular religion, despite the fact that it has been largely recognized that the men in these gangs have been disproportionately Pakistani and Muslim.The Rape Gang Inquiry Report, on the other hand, assures its readers that “misguided political correctness and cultural sensitivities played no part” in its inquiry.Lowe’s report lacks statutory powers, but has garnered a lot of attention on X, due to its suggestion that grooming gangs are an immigration screening problem, along with the horrific nature of the stories it details.It estimates that over 250,000 girls were trafficked since the first recorded case in 1955, “when four Bradford-based Pakistanis were charged with raping a 15-year-old girl from Middlesbrough.”This is the weakest part of the report, because it assumes a uniformity that hasn’t been proven and the report acknowledges this. But the report chose to make some assumptions due to insufficient police data collection.A 2025 audit by Baroness Casey of Blackstock examined available national databases and police data and found that ethnicity data was not recorded for two-thirds of grooming-gang perpetrators.There’s no good reason for not collecting such data. If ethnicity, nationality and religion are not consistently reported going forward, it will continue to obscure information required to fully understand these grooming gangs.The government has since accepted all the Casey report’s recommendations. But the real question is whether MPs will finally muster the political will to fully implement the recommendations of the Rape Gang Inquiry and Casey reports and put child safety first, or whether, as Lowe warns, politicians will continue to bow to the demographics of their constituencies out of fear of being labelled racist or Islamophobic.National PostThis column was originally published in Right? 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