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Britain’s grooming gang scandal exposes a devastating failure to protect vulnerable children, raising urgent questions about political correctness, accountability, immigration and the loss of moral courage.

For decades now, the United Kingdom has been plagued by so-called “grooming gangs“: men of disproportionately Pakistani background plying young children, many of them “in care”, with alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, and subjecting them to repeated rape (sometimes gang-rape), abuse, assaults, threats, blackmail, abortions — and sometimes death.

Political Correctness Silenced the Truth

Attempts have been made to sweep the scandal under the rug, despite in-depth reports, notably by Mark Durie;  and when, in response to growing public discontent, a government report was at last issued in 2020, it stressed ‘that most child sex offences are committed by white men’, concluding against all the facts ‘that there was no evidence that any other demographics were particularly linked with child sexual grooming and child rape.’

However, a 2026 inquiry undertaken by Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe — tellingly, crowd-funded — found that “95 percent of abusers were Pakistani Muslims”, and “described a ‘catastrophic, decades-long institutional failure’ within the UK establishment”; it highlighted “how local authorities, the police, schools, social services, and hospitals ignored the abuse out of fear of being labeled racist or politically incorrect.” During his lengthy investigation, Lowe “heard testimony from victim girls whom he described as subjected to ‘pure unfettered evil’.”

The news media has also been regarded as failing to prioritise the issue, and after a brief mention, Lowe’s report was soon left behind in the news cycle.  

This mirrors the official reaction to the scandal, which seems to be “Move along there, nothing to see”. But the public has not forgotten, and as courageous former police detective Maggie Oliver, who did so much to expose the scandal, relates, the victims are most unlikely to forget their dreadful experiences.  

Links between the “grooming gangs” and organised crime have emerged, and although this scandal stretches back decades, encompassing governments of Left and Right, the current Labour Government actually took legal steps to prevent the release of data on offenders’ ethnic backgrounds — against the ruling of the Information Commissioner.  Now, the police and courts are failing to mention the ethnicity of offenders in their reports.

More generally, left-liberal progressives tend to ignore any issue deemed to be of interest to “conservatives”, while anything of interest to their good selves receives an outpouring of emotion, interspersed with sometimes savage demands for everybody to “be kind”.

Protecting Children Must Come First

The UK is not alone in the problem of “grooming gangs”, but a very high proportion of the public now backs a proper “drains up” – a comprehensive public inquiry, with those responsible held to account.

However, as in Australia, it is likely that, as with any Muslim-related issues, rather than discussing organised child sexual abuse, we will be lectured about the dangers of ‘Islamophobia’.

We will be warned that all Muslims should not be blamed — and rightly so — but this should not mean downplaying known cases, which is exactly what has happened.

Paradoxically, the widespread fear of being accused of racism suggests that this country is not racist. However, many of the “groomers” have exhibited racist attitudes, with white girls specifically targeted and racially abused, as well as some Sikh victims. Still, as Mark Durie notes, fears of racism seemed to silence many who knew of the scandal, but perhaps even more so, the fear of being called “anti-Muslim”.

Fear of being accused of “Islamophobia” was a crucial component of these scandals, and as Durie further notes, the religious dimension of the “grooming gangs” is intrinsic to the problem and needs to be addressed.

But whereas the news media are very quick to report the (dreadful) reality of sexual abuse involving Christianity, they have been less keen to discuss the religious background of the “grooming gangsters”. No one, to my knowledge, has warned that “paedophile priests” only represented a small minority; that to mention the religion of the perpetrators might encourage anti-Christian feeling — that some allegations might even be false.

Significantly, the priorities of left-liberal progressives do not include children — indeed, given their latest craze for abortion up to birth, children will likely sink even lower in their Marxist-style “victimhood” hierarchy, with even the child molester seen as more deserving of help.

Politics certainly played a part in the progressives’ wilful blindness to the “grooming gangs” scandal, thanks to that other progressive priority, unrestricted immigration. Insistent that immigration is “a good thing”, progressives fail to acknowledge that some “asylum seekers” commit sex crimes.

In fact, one commentator noted that in Afghanistan, child rape is “culturally normalised and condoned”, commenting that in the UK over the last 20 years, “[r]emarkably, the rate of increase of rape matches the rate of increase of migration almost exactly. Both show roughly a ten-fold increase.”

However, the growth in the Muslim vote is a boon for leftish politicians, although to comment on such problems as “family voting” was threatened by Sir Keir Starmer’s mooted “Islamophobia” law. But as Melanie Phillips noted, this “provoked horror from critics who claimed it would create a blasphemy law by the back door for Islam”; hence, the Government group set up to deal with the matter ‘scrapped the term “Islamophobia” in favour of “anti-Muslim hostility”.’

This was even worse, although failing to even mention the background of the ‘grooming gangsters’ merely leads to the very thing that progressives warn about: the implication that all Muslims are associated with paedophilia.

If it seems incredible that this problem could have arisen, doubtless its very nature made many reluctant to discuss it – hence the anodyne ‘grooming gangs’ rather than the more accurate ‘rape gangs’ – while others dismissed it as beyond belief; however, when there was no longer any doubt, people demanded answers and action.

The Christian Answer to Moral Confusion

Could Christianity play a part? With church attendance rising,  and Christian charity even more evident, clearly, Christianity is still alive — but not necessarily among the governing classes, where — unlike Islam — it has been viewed with suspicion, and efforts made to exclude active Christians from their ranks.

Concerns about immigration have been labelled “Christian nationalism”, and cultural Marxists intone their “Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity” pieties, ignoring the rights of that ever-shrinking minority on which our future depends — children. Not even revelations about child marriage (including under-fives) seem to have prompted moves to protect children.

Most assumed that those paid to protect the most vulnerable would do so, but experience has shown that those responsible for allowing this problem to become rampant will not address it, since they will not even acknowledge its root cause. As my Grandma would say, “You don’t keep a dog and bark yourself” — but apparently, we must now do both the guarding and the barking.

In a move widely interpreted as an (unintentional) admission of the problem, the Government issued a guide to “asylum seekers”, telling them that rape is against the law in this country — that sexual activity without specific permission is illegal.

If this was meant to suggest that some immigrants come from less “sophisticated” cultures, interestingly, in Pakistan, rape is still punishable by death – perhaps a leftover from British rule.

Progressives would be more horrified by British rule and the death penalty than the rape, but the public was even more horrified by the Government’s “guidance”, which confirmed their fears even while dismissing them.

It suggested that the governing classes are still largely detached from the masses in the matter of morality, but the public should insist that their political representatives protect children, rather than prioritising political correctness and protecting the abusers, all while treating concerned adults like troublesome children.

The progressive solution to children is, of course, to dispatch them before birth, and in the very antithesis of a “child-friendly” approach, there are now demands for abortion up to birth.

Unsurprisingly, the same “solution” has been applied to some of the unborn children of the child victims of sexual abuse.  

Jesus said that whoever causes “one of these little ones who believe in Me to fall, it were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

If this stark warning fails to chill, it merely confirms that a lack of Christianity — at least among the governing classes — has played a crucial role in all these scandals. Worse, “woke religion” has been substituted, leading to the prioritisation of political correctness over correct behaviour, with the powerful protected and the weakest thrown to the wolves.

It still takes courage to insist upon traditional understandings of good and evil. Christianity can help, but while the progressive classes emphasise ‘kindness’ — especially in response to criticism of their own agenda — they are not so keen on the Christian emphasis on right and wrong.

This is nothing new. The world eagerly followed Jesus while He was telling colourful stories, but not so keen when He began speaking about right and wrong. And even Jesus, in His agony in the garden, begged His Father to “take away the cup”; but out of love, He submitted to His Father’s will.

If we fail to follow His example — if we fail to listen to the victims of this terrible injustice — we will share some of the guilt for their sufferings.

But there is still hope. There is still faith among ordinary people, and it is growing, especially among the young.

Sin will always be with us, but we can at least hope that evil will no longer be swept under the carpet. Other countries may believe that this sort of thing “could never happen here”. So did we. And if our terrible example can help another country to avoid following in our footsteps, then some good may come out of the evil.

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