British government announces new local investigations into child sexual abuse | Government news
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper says the government will also undertake a ‘rapid’ review of child sexual abuse in the UK.
The UK government has announced it will support new local investigations into child sexual abuse and undertake a “swift” review of the scale of child sexual exploitation in the country, following criticism from US tech billionaire Elon Musk over historic adoption scandals.
The scandals involved organized groups sexually exploiting vulnerable girls from the 1980s until at least the 2010s. A 2014 investigation found that at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
The issue was at the center of a political firestorm last week when a a war of words it broke out between Musk and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was the director of public prosecutions in England when the scandals came to light.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Thursday the government would set a timetable for implementing the 20 recommendations of a national inquiry published in 2022, but would also go further and support new local inquiries.
“Despite all these national inquiries, reports and hundreds of recommendations, too little action has been taken and shamefully little progress has been made,” Cooper told parliament.
She has not announced a new national public inquiry into the scandal, which Musk and the opposition Conservative Party have called for.
“This is a step in the right direction, but the results will speak for themselves,” Musk wrote on X, retweeting the government’s announcement of the new measures.
Historical scandals have long been dealt with by far-right people, especially prisoners Tommy Robinsonone of the most famous far-right activists in Great Britain, whom Musk praised.
ua publish split on X, Musk claimed Robinson was in prison “for telling the truth” and “should be freed.” Musk also described Starmer’s defense minister, Jess Phillips, as a “rape genocide apologist”.
In response, Starmer said that “those who spread lies and misinformation as far and wide as possible don’t care about the victims, they care about themselves,” without mentioning Musk by name.
Musk’s tirade, which included calls for a new public inquiry into the scandal, prompted some within the opposition Conservative Party to join calls for a new national inquiry.
‘Locally relevant answers’
Yvette Cooper told parliament on Thursday that she had ordered a three-month “rapid review into the current scale and nature of gang exploitation across the country”.
The review will look at the “cultural and social drivers” of child sexual abuse and “properly examine data on the ethnicity and demographics of the groups involved and their victims”, she added.
Cooper pointed out that several local checks, similar to those already held, would be launched, rejecting calls from the opposition Conservative Party for a new national inquiry.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who has repeatedly clashed with the prime minister over calls for a national inquiry into groom gangs, insisted: “I don’t think local investigations are enough.”
In response, Cooper said, “As we’ve seen, effective local surveys can go into much more local detail and provide more locally relevant answers and changes than a long-term nationwide survey can.”
