What’s Keir Starmer’s report on prosecuting grooming gangs?
PA MediaMulti-billionaire Elon Musk has accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of being “deeply complicit within the mass rapes in trade for votes”.
Mr Musk has printed a sequence of posts on X suggesting Starmer did not cope with the grooming gang scandal whereas head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013.
In response, Starmer has accused critics of “spreading lies and misinformation” and claims he tackled prosecutions “head on”.
What’s the grooming gang scandal?
The row between Mr Musk and Starmer centres round a sequence of high-profile instances the place teams of males – primarily of Pakistani descent – have been convicted of sexually abusing and raping predominantly younger white women across the UK.
In 2012 The Instances newspaper investigated Rotherham grooming gangs, which led to a serious inquiry.
No less than 1,400 youngsters have been subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, in response to a 2014 report written by Prof Alexis Jay.
The report made headlines within the UK and all over the world and led to main debates in Parliament.
Related scandals additionally occurred in different cities, together with Oldham, Oxford, Rochdale and Telford, resulting in a nationwide inquiry into baby sexual abuse, which was additionally led by Prof Jay.
The instances sparked investigations into alleged failures to correctly deal with the crimes and help victims.
Was the CPS or Starmer ‘complicit’?
The CPS, an impartial physique, prosecutes felony instances in England and Wales.
After the police examine crimes and current their findings, the CPS decides whether or not to prosecute primarily based on proof and public curiosity.
Starmer was appointed head of the CPS in 2008 and held the position for 5 years. He turned an MP in 2015.
The CPS was criticised for a choice to not proceed with a prosecution in Rochdale on the idea that it considered the principle sufferer as “unreliable” following an investigation between August 2008 and August 2009.
That call was overturned later by Nazir Afzal in 2011 after being appointed by Starmer because the CPS chief prosecutor for north-west England.
Chatting with BBC Confirm, Mr Afzal stated that the view of prosecutors to not proceed to trial on the time was “if the police aren’t completely satisfied that she is going to give credible proof then we’re not completely satisfied both”.
He went on to say that he had reviewed and reversed the choice as “I believed what she [the victim] was saying”.
However this isn’t the one occasion the place the CPS has confronted criticism.
Prof Jay’s report into the Rotherham instances stated the police would usually cite the CPS as being unwilling to prosecute alleged perpetrators, however they stated that it had been “rather more useful” afterward.
A 2013 report from the House Affairs Committee stated that “in contrast to many different official companies implicated on this situation”, the CPS had “readily admitted that victims had been let down by them and have tried each to find the reason for this systematic failure and to enhance the best way issues are achieved in order to keep away from a repetition of such occasions”.
It added: “Mr Starmer has striven to enhance the therapy of victims of sexual assault throughout the felony justice system all through his time period as Director of Public Prosecution (DPP).”
Maggie Oliver, a former Manchester detective who now campaigns for victims of kid intercourse abuse, advised BBC Confirm that the CPS “bear quite a lot of duty for the failures round this situation”, together with bringing insufficient prices and blaming victims.
She added that whereas there was now rather more consciousness across the situation, “in my basis we nonetheless see particular person instances subjected to huge failures within the programs”.
We have now been unable to search out any direct criticism of Starmer personally in any of the experiences on the scandal, nor can we determine any recommendations that he himself made any choices to not prosecute.
How has Starmer responded?
The prime minister has robustly defended his report as the previous head of the CPS, telling journalists he:
- Modified the prosecution strategy to “problem myths and stereotypes” that had stopped victims from being heard
- Left workplace when the CPS had the best variety of baby intercourse abuse prosecutions on report
- Reopened instances that had been closed
- Introduced the primary prosecution of an Asian grooming gang
It’s appropriate that Starmer revised the steering on baby sexual exploitation in 2013 to make future prosecutions simpler.
Beforehand, victims could not have been considered as credible if that they had not complained instantly, if that they had used medicine or alcohol or if that they had dressed or acted specifically methods.
On baby sexual abuse prosecutions, we discovered CPS figures courting again to 2007 however the early years are actually solely on archived net pages – as they’re not on the CPS web site.
They present that the “variety of prosecutions for baby sexual abuse flagged instances” did rise from that yr to achieve 4,794 in April 2010 to March 2011 – a peak for Starmer’s time in control of the CPS.
That whole was subsequently surpassed – there have been almost 7,200 prosecutions in 2016-2017.
BBC Confirm has requested Downing Road for extra element on the info behind the prime minister’s declare.
ReutersOn reopening instances, Mr Afzal stated that the creation of a nationwide panel to revisit instances below Starmer had been a hit.
“That panel additionally included – for the primary time ever – exterior representatives. It revisited dozens of instances that have been then restarted,” he stated.
What number of baby grooming instances have been prosecuted below Starmer?
In defending his report, Starmer referred solely to the broad class of kid intercourse abuse prosecution information.
In the case of baby grooming gangs, there isn’t any single clear information set as a result of no particular offence exists.
As a substitute, offenders might be prosecuted for inflicting or facilitating sexual exploitation, or for committing particular offences reminiscent of rape and indecent assault.
Info on baby grooming-related prosecutions seem in Prof Jay’s 2022 report into baby sexual exploitation by organised networks – a government-commissioned report into institutional baby abuse failings printed in 2022.
The report mentions a number of “important prosecutions” between 2010 and 2014, together with 35 convictions which happened whereas Starmer was DPP:
- November 2010 – 5 males convicted in Rotherham
- November 2010 – 11 males convicted in Derbyshire
- 2008-2010 – three males convicted in Cornwall
- Could 2012 – 9 males from Rochdale and Oldham convicted
- June 2013 – seven males from Oxford convicted
A Instances report from 2011 recognized 17 grooming gang prosecutions since 1997.
It stated 14 of them happened in the course of the earlier three years and concerned the on-street grooming of women aged 11 to 16 by teams of males throughout 13 cities and cities.
A report by the Nationwide Police Chiefs’ Council final yr concluded that 5% of kid sexual abuse and exploitation crimes have been group-based – however extra particular figures weren’t disclosed.
BBC Confirm has despatched a freedom of knowledge request to the CPS asking for a yearly breakdown of prosecutions for baby grooming associated offences.
We have now additionally contacted the Ministry of Justice and the House Workplace.
Further reporting by Lucy Gilder and Gerry Georgieva
