Child sex abuse and grooming gangs: What we know, and what we don't, from the data
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The first thing we know for sure is that we don't know everything. The data on these sorts of crimes has been getting better but is still far from perfect. Any data ultimately relies on victims or survivors reporting what's happened to them to relevant authorities, and then for those authorities to not only take these reports seriously but also record them correctly.
For many reasons - stigma, mistrust in authorities, the influence of a perpetrator - we know victims often don't report crimes, or wait several years to do so. So any recent snapshot is always going to be incomplete. On top of this, not all authorities record the same data about perpetrators and victims, such as the relationship between them or their ethnicity.
Caveats aside, the best and most thorough recent reports come from the Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme (VKPP) - covering all related crimes recorded in 2022 - and its sister organisation, the Hydrant Programme - which reported specifically on "group-based" child sexual abuse that happened in 2023.
Both organisations are associated with the National Police Chiefs' Council, and their reports collate and analyse data recorded by every police force in England and Wales. What do the reports tell us who the offenders are?. The ethnicity of offenders has got lots of attention recently, thanks to historical examples of predominantly Pakistani grooming gangs brought back into the spotlight by the likes of Elon Musk and Robert Jenrick.
