Politics

Diane Abbott Sparks Outrage with Controversial Grooming Gangs Claim Debunked by Experts

Published on June 18, 2025

Diane Abbott, the senior Labour MP, has come under fire after using discredited data to back up her accusations of “deliberate misinformation” surrounding grooming gangs and child sex abuse. The former Shadow Home Secretary claimed that the “facts” about child sex abuse were being misrepresented by “some media and some politicians,” and she referred to the fact that 88% of convicted offenders were white.

However, the statistics she cited were quickly shot down by the Labour government, which had denounced the figures only hours before her comments. These figures were blasted as “completely inadequate” by the Home Office, with officials pointing out that they failed to show any clear link to group-based offences, like those typically carried out by grooming gangs.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that the government had inherited “completely inadequate” data collection methods from the previous administration, adding that only 37% of suspects had ethnicity data recorded reported the Express.

Baroness Louise Casey’s long-awaited report on grooming gangs, published the same day, revealed that ethnicity data for perpetrators is often not recorded. In fact, it found that two-thirds of offenders involved in grooming gangs had their ethnic backgrounds completely unrecorded, making it impossible to make any sweeping conclusions about their backgrounds. Cooper, reacting to the report, said, “The data is not good enough to support any statements about the ethnicity of group-based child sexual exploitation at a national level.”

The report, which has sparked further outrage, also uncovered shocking details about the victims. Many victims of grooming gangs, now adults, are still unable to live normal lives. Some can’t even open a bank account because of criminal convictions linked to their abuse as children. The heartbreaking testimony revealed that victims were often promised justice by authorities, only to see the perpetrators go unpunished.

“The system failed these victims on an unimaginable scale,” Baroness Casey said. “I can’t verify everything these women told me, but I believe them. And one thing is crystal clear: we, as a society, owe them a debt. They should never have been allowed to endure the abuse they did, particularly those under the ‘care’ of local authorities who were supposed to protect them.”

Casey’s report also strongly criticises those in positions of power who allowed the abuse to continue without any accountability, and it’s clear from the findings that these vulnerable children were failed at every turn. One of the most damning parts of the report is the fact that many of the victims were left in the hands of professionals who should have been protecting them, yet they were allowed to slip through the cracks.

This comes after months of tension, with the government initially resisting calls for a full investigation into the scale of grooming gangs in the UK. But after Casey’s bombshell report, the Prime Minister has now promised to launch a comprehensive probe into the matter. This follows years of delays and broken promises, with critics accusing the government of sweeping the issue under the rug.

With the growing outrage and pressure on authorities, it seems the UK is finally starting to grapple with the scale of grooming gang abuse. But for the victims, the fight for justice may still be a long one.

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