Thread by @CDP1882

This conversation sparked by the abuse gangs scandal is spiralling into political gossip.

Let's bring it back to what matters: the survivors and getting the action they need.

So far, the government’s response to the demand for a national public inquiry has been to point to the IICSA report.

Bashing Elon Musk's amplification of calls for a public inquiry, Wes Streeting said that we’ve already had a report into grooming gangs so we don’t need another.

But what did the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse actually find out about grooming gangs?

In this thread I'll go through why many victims and campaigners think the report didn't do enough on the gangs.

Published in 2022 after seven years, IICSA had a broad brief, which included all forms of exploitation.

Grooming gangs were lumped in with other abuse networks, while other subjects like online abuse, the Catholic Church, and care homes got their own investigation.

The final report mentions Rotherham just once in 400 pages.

It only refers to Rochdale in relation to Cyril Smith, the Lib Dem MP who sexually abused young boys in the town.

Telford isn’t mentioned at all.

IICSA did release a report into organised networks in 2022, but it did not take a look at the national prevalence of abuse gangs.

Instead, it looked at six case study areas where there were no significant reports of grooming gangs.

None of the Northern towns which have featured prominently in the scandal were chosen.

The only place they looked at which had a grooming gangs scandal was Bristol, where girls were targeted by a Somali abuse and rape network over many years.

GB News has identified over 50 different towns and cities that have endured abuse gangs, almost all of which haven’t had proper inquiries.

Clearly more investigation is needed.

There are other problems with the IICSA report into organised networks.

Despite multiple reviews and academic evidence pointing to the over-representation of Pakistanis in this form of child abuse, the report uses the term ‘Pakistani’ just once.

And that is only to define what constitutes someone who is Asian.

There is no proper discussion of the stifling effect of political correctness that led to many authorities avoiding the issue entirely.

The most controversial question is that of ethnicity. The report found that the police failed to record the ethnicity of perpetrators in between 28% and 86% of cases.

It said the lack of data meant that they couldn’t conclude whether there was a link between ethnicity and organised child abuse networks.

Despite that, of the six significant prosecutions they mention, four involved Asians and only one involved white abusers.

Whistleblower @MaggieOliverUK has accused IICSA of being a “cover up”.

She pointed out that it relied on officials rather than the testimony of survivors, despite the failure of officials being a key reason why the grooming gang scandal happened.

Two-thirds of the statement she gave to IICSA was cut out.

And many survivors weren’t even given a chance to testify.

The current political approach is to let local councils organise their own inquiries when they request them.

But these are major political battles, with reports in Telford, Rotherham, Rochdale and Oldham all taking years to be achieved. Survivors have to battle with politicians blocking them. Some Labour-controlled councils have voted down attempts to hold an inquiry on several occasions or put pressure on government to ignore requests.

And as the IICSA report noted, some towns do not wish to be labelled as ‘another Rochdale or Rotherham.’ They don’t want the bad press of the truth.

In some towns like Oldham, where a council employee was an abuser, survivors worry about local authorities organising the investigations.

There are so many views on this issue, but many of the survivors I have spoken to from some of the areas where grooming gangs have been reported or prosecuted have told me that they have little confidence in the current approach.

IICSA wasn't enough. They don't want to wait years for local reports to possibly be launched.

They want a national inquiry to go after ALL of the relevant towns, to uncover everything across the nation in one aggressive review.