On Saturday (14 June 2025), the Government announced a statutory inquiry into abuse and exploitation of children by grooming gangs across the United Kingdom – ahead of a damning report released on 16 June 2025.
Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) applauds Baroness Casey’s recognition of the untold damage caused by criminalising abused girls instead of protecting them from harm. Expunging the criminal records currently held by CSE survivors, as Casey concludes, “would be an important step to redressing past wrongs done to victims”. CWJ fully supports this measure and, by extension, calls for all women with historic soliciting and loitering convictions arising out of on-street prostitution – many of whom were groomed into it when they were teenagers – to have their records wiped from the system.
CWJ also welcomes the Government’s assurances that it will implement Baroness Casey’s full recommendations without delay, including the recommendation to hold institutions to account, and that its inquiry into grooming will be placed on a statutory footing. Holding a ‘statutory’ inquiry will afford the Inquiry Chair legal powers to compel, and test, evidence from public authorities and other witnesses in order to get at the truth.
In response to Baroness Casey’s report and yesterday’s comments by the Home Secretary, Kate Ellis, Joint Head of Litigation at CWJ, said:
“Much has been said about the need for a statutory national inquiry into grooming gangs. If that Inquiry is genuinely robust – if it holds institutions properly accountable for past and current failings – it has the potential to be watershed moment.
“But what is also needed is action now – to bring known perpetrators to justice, and to put a stop to the inappropriate blaming, adultification and criminalisation of children. In many ways, it is already clear what needs to change.
“The Home Secretary’s announcement that the Government will not wait to implement Baroness Casey’s recommendations is, therefore, a welcome relief – and we hope that implementation, wherever possible, will be swift. To embed serious long-term improvements in the policing and prosecution of this area of crime will meanwhile take sustained investment, and a commitment from each institution, including police forces and the CPS, to cultural change.”
Harriet Wistrich, CEO of CWJ, said:
“We welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to implement the recommendations of the Casey review and ensure that such a scandal is never ignored or sidelined again. However, any additional resources must not be taken from the tiny pot currently allocated to tackling all other forms of violence against women and girls.
“The Government has made a commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, yet put no additional resources aside in their recent spending review and so far they have very little to demonstrate how they will achieve this ambitious aim.”
CWJ’s briefing and response in full:
As the Government announces a national inquiry, the report published yesterday asks why victims and survivors who report child sexual exploitation “have been ignored, treated like criminals and often arrested themselves”.
On Saturday, the Government announced a statutory inquiry into abuse and exploitation of children by grooming gangs across the United Kingdom – ahead of a damning report released on 16 June 2025.
The Government’s decision follows a ‘rapid audit’, conducted by former Victims’ Commissioner Louise Casey, into the nature and scale of sexual exploitation by organised groups. The audit was commissioned earlier this year following mounting pressure on the Government to announce a full national inquiry into grooming gangs, with a focus on predominantly Asian groups in particular areas that have preyed on children.
The report by Baroness Casey finds that despite 15 years of inquiries and reports calling for change, collective “denial” prevails at a national and institutional level, noting that the “flawed” data available on organised child abuse still does not reflect the true scale of the problem, nor – in many cases – the characteristics of perpetrators and victims.
Findings: the criminal justice system is failing victims
Even where the police do take action, Baroness Casey’s report finds that victims are waiting too long for justice. Some see charges dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges, because they are perceived to have been ‘in love with’ or ‘consented to’ sex with the perpetrator.
Importantly, Baroness Casey’s report recognises that ‘too many’ child victims have even been ‘criminalised’ themselves, for ‘offences committed under coercion’ – and that this can have a devastating impact on their adult lives:
Where people are sexually exploited as children and have criminal records into adulthood, they might be prevented from getting jobs and have to live with the constant reminder and often shame of having to explain their criminal record. Some victims are on the sex offenders register, preventing them from working with children or even attending their own children's school trips.
Ending the criminalisation of victims
CWJ has spoken to numerous survivors of abuse, including childhood sexual abuse, who are currently living with criminal records or youth criminal records as a direct result of the coercion and exploitation they suffered. Child grooming victims may be criminalised for petty offences, offences committed out of fear, and even for prostitution-related offences – while in many cases the adult men who have raped and terrorised them are not brought to justice.
In 2022 CWJ settled a claim brought against Greater Manchester Police three survivors of sexual exploitation by grooming gangs in Rochdale. One of these was ‘Amber’, whose detailed disclosures of abuse were never prosecuted, after a decision was taken to treat her as a ‘co-conspirator’ when the gangs were prosecuted in 2012. As a child who had been abused for several years, and groomed into introducing her friends to her abusers, she was blamed for having facilitated the exploitation of other girls – which has had profound consequences for her into adulthood.
A recent Newsnight piece raised similar concerns, after speaking to a young woman who served time in prison for ‘inciting’ sexual abuse, perpetrated by adult men, against another victim.
CWJ therefore welcomes Baroness Casey’s recognition of the untold damage that is caused by criminalising abused young girls instead of protecting them from harm. Expunging the criminal records currently held by CSE survivors, she concludes, “would be an important step to redressing past wrongs done to victims”. CWJ fully supports this measure and, by extension, calls for all women with historic soliciting and loitering convictions arising out of on-street prostitution – many of whom were groomed into it when they were teenagers – to have their records wiped from the system.
The Government response
The Home Secretary, speaking in Parliament yesterday afternoon, said that the Government would accept all 12 of Baroness Casey’s recommendations in full.
Other recommendations made by Baroness Casey for radical change include changing the law so that more offenders can be prosecuted with rape, the launch of new major police operations aimed at bringing historic perpetrators to justice, better data-gathering and collection – including in relation to ethnicity – and a statutory national inquiry that will hold institutions to account for past failures.
CWJ response
CWJ welcomes the Government’s assurances that it will implement Baroness Casey’s full recommendations without delay, including the recommendation to hold institutions to account, and that its inquiry into grooming will be placed on a statutory footing. Holding a ‘statutory’ inquiry will afford the Inquiry Chair legal powers to compel, and test, evidence from public authorities and other witnesses in order to get at the truth.
This is not, however, the first time that a statutory inquiry has been tasked with investigating how institutions respond to group-based grooming and sexual exploitation of children. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (‘IICSA’), which ran for seven years, included a strand of inquiry focused on child sexual exploitation by organised networks.
Despite widespread public concern that these crimes remain under-policed and under-prosecuted, the IICSA inquiry focused almost exclusively on multi-agency safeguarding and disruption tactics, with only a very limited focus on issues within the criminal justice process itself – including the extremely low number of effective investigations and prosecutions. Despite submissions from CWJ, highlighting specific issues within the criminal justice process, these issues were largely disregarded by the Inquiry when it made its final recommendations. In February 2022 when the inquiry’s findings and recommendations were published, CWJ expressed concern that this had been “a huge missed opportunity”.
Of the recommendations that were made by IICSA’s investigation, the majority were never implemented, including a recommendation – now echoed in Baroness Casey’s review, 3 years on – for agencies to gather basic intelligence and data.
Notably IICSA also recognised the need to ensure culturally sensitive support services are available, from specialist ‘by and for’ organisations, to navigate the specific barriers faced by black and minoritised ethnic girls who fall victim to sexual exploitation. Concerns have been raised about the survival of specialist VAWG services after recent Government funding cuts to the sector.
Meanwhile a Government Spending Review published earlier in June was criticised by women’s and victims’ organisations after it made no spending commitments in relation to tackling child sexual exploitation or violence against women and girls.
In response to Baroness Casey’s report and yesterday's comments by the Home Secretary, Kate Ellis, Joint Head of Litigation at CWJ, said:
“Much has been said about the need for a statutory national inquiry into grooming gangs. If that Inquiry is genuinely robust – if it holds institutions properly accountable for past and current failings – it has the potential to be watershed moment.
“But what is also needed is action now – to bring known perpetrators to justice, and to put a stop to the inappropriate blaming, adultification and criminalisation of children. In many ways, it is already clear what needs to change.
“The Home Secretary’s announcement that the Government will not wait to implement Baroness Casey’s recommendations is, therefore, a welcome relief – and we hope that implementation, wherever possible, will be swift. To embed serious long-term improvements in the policing and prosecution of this area of crime will meanwhile take sustained investment, and a commitment from each institution, including police forces and the CPS, to cultural change.”
Harriet Wistrich, CEO of CWJ, said:
“We welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to implement the recommendations of the Casey review and ensure that such a scandal is never ignored or sidelined again. However, any additional resources must not be taken from the tiny pot currently allocated to tackling all other forms of violence against women and girls.
“The Government has made a commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, yet put no additional resources aside in their recent spending review and so far they have very little to demonstrate how they will achieve this ambitious aim.”
ENDS