Elliott Keck is the Head of Campaigns for the Taxpayers’ Alliance.
All victims of the “grooming gangs” scandal have their own unique stories, each of which should be heard with the compassion they deserve. But when dealing with a crisis, a crime, on this sort of scale, covering dozens of towns and cities, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of victims, and thousands of culprits, it is the common themes that are more important in addressing the root problems.
Going through a mere handful of case studies in the impressive Telford inquiry, a number jump out. There are the obvious ones – mostly young white girls being groomed, trafficked and raped by Asian (Pakistani) men. Similar patterns can be found across all of them – aged around 12 or 13, reports start of deteriorating behaviour or truancy. They abscond for days at a time. Evidence of smoking and drinking appears. Sexual activity is suspected and often even confirmed. Yet despite coming into contact with the authorities on numerous occasions, the authorities fail to protect them. Often they barely even try.
There is a vast amount of blame to go around. Countless words have been devoted to the merciless justice that should be meted out to the vile criminals themselves. But the appalling failings of local councils cannot be ignored. Let’s take one case study from the Telford inquiry notes, that of Becky Watson. Unlike the stereotype of the victims, Becky had a “stable home environment without any engagement with agencies until she started secondary school.” Things quickly deteriorate from that point. She starts exhibiting “challenging behaviour” and is asked by a teacher if she is “sexually active.” She starts skipping school and goes missing for periods. She has a brush with the police when she is caught shoplifting, at which point she is temporarily home-schooled. A GP prescribes her the contraceptive pill. She is in a car accident aged 12 with no parents present. Two years after problems start, she discloses to a youth worker that she was raped and then goes missing in Birmingham with a group of Asian males. Then, aged just 13 she died after she fell from the bonnet of a moving vehicle in what was described as a “prank that went wrong” in a BBC article from 2002.
Where were the authorities? In particular, the safeguarding team at the council? Here the report is damning. At every stage in the awful months and years that preceded Becky’s death, they were aware of what was going on. At every stage, they did the bare minimum at best.
Take for example the plea for help from Becky’s mother to the safeguarding team in 2001, a referral that was “quickly, and incorrectly, dismissed by the council’s safeguarding team”, which presumed that because Becky’s mother did not follow up with a phone call meant she did not require assistance. Yet this did not come out of the blue. As the report notes, Becky’s mother had in fact “been in contact with the Council on more than one occasion… and had repeatedly asked for assistance with Becky”. This included “disclosing that she was aware that Becky was sexually active on at least two occasions.” Shockingly, the report finds no evidence “of anyone in the Safeguarding team following up on these disclosures or considering whether Becky’s difficulties at school, distressed behaviour, underage sexual activity and frequent missing episodes could all be linked to wider issues of concern.” Becky was 12. She was not “sexually active.” She was being raped by a “grooming gang.”
Even more egregiously, when safeguarding was contacted by the youth worker to whom Becky had disclosed her rape, the safeguarding team essentially ignored them. They told the youth worker that Becky needed to inform her mother and the police before telling them to drop it when Becky’s mother did not get in contact.
There are many such cases across local government, unfortunately. As well as the “grooming gangs” scandal being one of the greatest stains on the recent history of this country, it should also be seen as one of the worst in the history of local government in particular. Of course, hundreds of councils had little or nothing to do with “grooming gangs.” We are still talking about a minority of places where these gangs were present. And in many cases councils may have been completely unaware that there were problems. But, to go back to Telford, not only did many councils do nothing, sometimes they actively contributed to the problem. As Charlie Peters and Sam Ashworth-Hayes have written, “aware that taxi drivers were offering children rides for sex, in 2006 [Telford] suspended licensing enforcement for drivers, allowing high risk drivers to continue practicing.”
Given the scale of this problem, what would be truly unforgivable from local authorities is if they now let their guard slip in the hope that this is all in the past. It certainly is not. Council bosses should make this a top priority. Ideally an audit would be conducted on the safeguarding team, looking at all the current cases and historic cases with negative outcomes to identify whether the procedures are being followed and whether they are rigorous enough. They should be proactively sharing data with the local police force and with other councils. They should be scrapping all equality, diversity and inclusion training given its close association with ingraining a fear of talking about issues around race and ethnicity honestly. If certain industries are associated with “grooming gangs” then licensing conditions should be looked at and tightened if necessary. They may not have a say over the policies that lead to these gangs appearing in the first place. But as one of the key lines of defence in protecting the vulnerable, we should expect them to be robust in their response.