Prioritising Cultural Sensitivities Over Safeguarding- the Baroness Casey Audit
Last weekend, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer reversed HM Government’s previous decision, announcing that a full national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in England and Wales now be conducted.
Prior to this announcement, government office’s position was that the seven-year investigation conducted by Professor Alexis Jay had already gathered the information necessary to tackle this safeguarding failure, and that measures to improve practice would be established through plans to conduct a further five local inquiries. The idea being that the participation of these five Local Authorities in separate inquiries would develop several models of practice, which other authorities could then apply. In essence, other Local Authorities would be able to select the model which would be the ‘best fit’ for tackling the contextual difficulties unique to their area.
On the face of it, this proposal seemed sensible. After all, it was thought that the information had already been gathered by the Jay review, and another national inquiry would not only be expensive but would take time to conduct. As said, the Jay Review took seven years to reach its conclusions.
In addition, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) findings had been published in 2022. The Operation Linden Report, produced at a cost of £6M, investigated complaints and conduct matters in relation to South Yorkshire Police’s handling of reports into non-recent child sexual abuse and exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
So why the U turn?
In January, HM Government announced that an audit, led by Baroness Casey, would be carried out to examine existing data and evidence on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse. It is the findings of this audit, together with Baroness Casey’s evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, which has prompted the decision reversal.
Whilst the audit confirms many of the Jay review findings, including a systemic failure to gather accurate data across all agencies, it also highlights perhaps the most worrying aspect of this safeguarding failure. The hesitancy, some would say reluctance, of government office (the previous government had twenty months to act on the IOPC findings and those of the Jay review), Local Authorities (only one of the five authorities agreed to participate in the previously proposed separate inquiries), the Police and other agencies to gather and use data on ethnicity to help address the sexual abuse, rape, of young girls.
The Baroness Casey audit identifies many key areas to be addressed, but at last there is a key focus on why the ethnicity of perpetrators, as the report states, is ‘shied away from’ and not recorded in two-thirds of cases. As the report highlights, even using the currently available data, there is evidence that there are ‘disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation’.
So I would argue that this new national inquiry panel must fully utilise their statutory powers and not shy away from compelling those currently and previously in positions of authority to give evidence, and explain why girls across England and Wales were not safeguarded. They must be compelled to publicly state the rationale for prioritising cultural sensitivities over safeguarding.
At the time of authoring, there are 800 open cases relating to the grooming of young girls.
SSS Learning Safeguarding Director
17 June 2025
