CRUSH CRIME has authored a ready-to-go Bill for a National Inquiry into the grooming gangs that have operated for decades and still operate today.
Only a tiny number of those responsible have been convicted. Most have escaped justice. Shamefully, even those convicted faced unjustifiably short sentences and early release. Those facing deportation have remained – some for over a decade. The failure is systemic, constant and shows no signs of improving for victims.
There is vast evidence from families of how local and national government ignored the issue, covered it up, and tried to downplay it – sometimes for fear of accusations of ‘racism’, sometimes because of corruption, sometimes to protect failing bureaucracies and so on. Sometimes, police refused to follow reports and left children with their abusers. Sometimes parents trying to rescue their children were themselves arrested.
A national inquiry is needed. This inquiry must be fast, thorough and leave no stone unturned. It must be public, with transparency at its heart. Those responsible for the systemic failures and institutional cover-ups will be named. Victims cannot wait any longer – nor should they have to. This must end – and it must end now.
The basic facts are startling:
- Thousands of victims
- Just over 500 convictions
- We can find no evidence of a single deportation of any one of these offenders since 2011
- Widespread suppression and cover-ups of the presence, extent and horror of these crimes
- Multiple authorities implicated in failure and cover-ups
- Not a single person in authority has lost their job or has faced consequences for the failures nor systemic cover-up
- Judges are refusing to release transcripts of these trials, with only a few permitting the release of some sentencing remarks, despite a crowd funded campaign to pay the extremely high costs of transcription
- The crisis is not over – the crimes continue, the gangs continue to operate trafficking children, drugs and devastating lives
The Bill: A National Inquiry
There must be a national inquiry leaving no stone unturned. It must look at the practice and make-up of these gangs, their motivations and their operations. It must look to the failings of institutions across this country to protect our children and to hold perpetrators to account. It must examine the adequacy or not of criminal sentences given to offenders. It must have the powers to discover the cover-up and it must be able to name and shame those institutions and individuals responsible.
The inquiry must be:
- High-powered – with the ability to demand evidence under threat of contempt of court, and with a duty on every public authority to cooperate with the inquiry and its aims
- Transparent – the most open and transparent inquiry in British history, with exceptions and redactions only for the vital reasons (such as the protection of victims); additionally, each grooming gangs criminal case referred to, discussed or examined by the chair will be transcribed and made public – as a matter of course of the investigation
- Time limited – completed in 21 months (18 month investigation, 3 months for the written report) – victims should expect swift justice, and the British public must expect inquiries to deliver, not lost in endless extensions and without an end in sight
- Unfettered by judicial review – moving at speed means limiting judicial review, stopping our broken system from holding the inquiry in limbo – the truth must be found
- Chaired by an experienced investigator – laser focused not on endless processes but on uncovering the truth
- Empowered to name, shame and blame those responsible – accountability, finally, for those who have advanced, aided, failed to respond to, or covered-up this crisis.
The following Bill – authored by Crush Crime, achieves this. Politicians have no excuse – a ready-to-go Bill exists, they must work together and pass it.
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