Former child abuse inquiry chairwoman urges Government to act over 2022 report

The former head of a national inquiry into child sexual abuse has warned against “politicising” the issue, as she urged the Government to act on the “full implementation” of reforms set out in her 2022 report.

Professor Alexis Jay (pictured) distanced herself from calls in Westminster for a new independent review and said instead the introduction of measures which she recommended two years ago was “critical”.

Labour is now under pressure to launch a fresh probe into child sexual abuse from Reform UK and the Conservatives. The latter refused a request for a public inquiry into events in Oldham while in government.

Prof Jay said: “Our mission is not to call for new inquiries but to advocate for the full implementation of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse’s recommendations. A child protection authority is critical to this process.”

Campaign group Act on IICSA, which is chaired by Prof Jay, said in an accompanying statement: “We urge the Government to provide a clear timeline to deliver on these commitments.

“Politicising the issue of sexual violence fails to acknowledge its lifelong impact and hinders the implementation of vital and urgent overhaul to our systems required.”

The Government said it was working “at pace” to deliver the reforms set out in the 2022 review, which found abuse was “endemic” across society in England and Wales.

It comes as the Prime Minister is expected to respond on Monday to Elon Musk’s flurry of attacks on his record in tackling historical grooming gang cases as director of public prosecutions (DPP).

Sir Keir Starmer has so far resisted speaking about the slew of online posts by the tech billionaire, who is a close ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, which included calling him “complicit in the rape of Britain”.

As DPP, Sir Keir brought in a national network of specialist prosecutors for child abuse and sexual exploitation to oversee convictions against grooming gangs, and changed guidance to focus on the credibility of allegations rather than whether victims would make good witnesses.

Mr Musk also posted on X, which he owns, suggesting safeguarding minister Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison” for denying requests for the Home Office to lead a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, Greater Manchester, and called her a “rape genocide apologist”.

Earlier on Monday he suggested the Prime Minister was “complicit in the crimes” of child sex offenders, and in a separate post added: “Prison for Starmer.”

He also accused former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown of having “committed an unforgivable crime against the British people” and “sold those little girls for votes”, over his handling of grooming gangs while in office.

Health minister Karin Smyth said Mr Musk’s attacks on the Prime Minister were “wrong” and “most people in this country know that” as she spoke to broadcasters on Monday.

“It would be more helpful if Mr Musk wanted to use his platform to support victims,” she told Times Radio.

Asked whether she was worried about Ms Phillips’ safety, the minister said: “She’s a strong person. She will continue this work and we want to make sure that this work happens. That’s the critical thing here.”

Sir Keir is “not after praise” and “it’s not about him, it’s about the victims”, she told Sky News.

Asked when the recommendations would be implemented, Ms Smyth told LBC: “I’m afraid I can’t give you a date on that. We’re working at pace across Government… to implement those (reforms).”

The minister said the UK “will work with America” as “our international interests are best served by working together”, despite the interventions from a key member of Mr Trump’s inner circle.

Members of Sir Keir’s Cabinet also defended their colleagues over the weekend, and Health Secretary Wes Streeting condemned Mr Musk’s attacks on Ms Phillips as a “disgraceful smear”.

She and the Prime Minister have an “actual record of banging up rapists, paedophiles and sex offenders, so they don’t need lectures from anyone else”, he said.

Social media platforms can help to clamp down on those grooming children online if Mr Musk wants to “roll his sleeves up and actually do something about tackling violence against women and girls”, he said.

The Tesla and Space X boss took aim at Ms Phillips after she wrote to Oldham council saying it must follow other towns, such as Rotherham in South Yorkshire and Telford in Shropshire, and commission its own inquiry into historical abuse of children.

Sir Keir’s Government is against launching another nationwide probe and has said it is working to implement recommendations from Prof Jay’s inquiry, which concluded in 2022.

That review looked into abuse by organised groups following multiple convictions of sexual offences against children across the UK between 2010-2014, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Rochdale in Greater Manchester, and Bristol.

What did the child sexual abuse inquiry say about grooming gangs?

A multi-million pound seven-year inquiry described child sexual abuse as an “epidemic” in England and Wales.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) looked at institutional failings and found there were tens of thousands of victims across the two nations when its final report was published in October 2022.

Laws compelling people in positions of trust to report child sexual abuse and a national compensation scheme for victims failed by the state and other institutions were among a raft of recommendations.

It also called on the former Conservative government to hire a cabinet-level children’s minister and establish a child protection authority in its 458-page report, which brought together its overall findings, as it urged politicians to act “promptly”.

When asked at the time how likely it was the changes recommended would be adopted, inquiry chairwoman Professor Alexis Jay told a press conference: “We don’t have the power to force the government to do it, but they should do it and need to do it.”

In January last year, some 15 months on, she vented her frustration that action had not yet been taken and repeated calls for the recommendations to be implemented – demands she reiterated again on Monday.

Resisting calls for another review specifically into grooming gangs, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said IICSA’s work had been extensive and blamed the previous government for failing to bring in the recommendations, adding that now was the time for “action”.

The £186.6 million inquiry, set up in 2015, looked at 15 areas scrutinising institutional responses to child sexual abuse – including grooming gangs, investigations into abuse in Westminster and the church – and more than 7,000 victims took part.

But the inquiry had to survive a number of early blows with resignations and blunders initially throwing the future of the inquiry into doubt.

Some 325 days of public hearings saw testimony from 725 witnesses – including three former prime ministers, an ex-director general of MI5, victims, senior police officers and church leaders – while 2.5 million pages of evidence were processed and scores of reports published with 87 recommendations already made as a result.

In an earlier damning report, the inquiry found there were “extensive failures” in the way child sexual exploitation by criminal gangs was tackled, with police and authorities potentially downplaying the scale of abuse over concerns about negative publicity.

According to the February 2022 findings, which looked specifically at grooming gangs, child victims – some of whom reported being raped, abused, and in one case forced to perform sex acts on a group of 23 men while held at gunpoint – were often blamed by authorities for the ordeals they suffered while some were even slapped with criminal records for offences closely linked to their sexual exploitation.

The IICSA report said there was “a flawed assumption” that child sexual exploitation was “on the wane”, with councils and police forces denying the scale of the problem, despite evidence to the contrary.

IICSA concluded this might be down to a determination to assure they are not seen as “another Rochdale or Rotherham” – towns blighted by recent child sexual exploitation revelations – rather than a desire to “root out… and expose its scale”.

At the time Prof Jay said: “The sexual exploitation of children by networks is not a rare phenomenon confined to a small number of areas with high-profile criminal cases.”

The inquiry said it chose to base its probe on areas which had not already been the subject of other investigations (such as Rotherham, Rochdale and Oxford) in a bid to try and paint an “accurate” wider picture of the scale of the problem.

The findings instead detailed harrowing testimony from more than 30 young witnesses across six case study areas – Bristol, Durham, St Helens, Swansea, Tower Hamlets and Warwickshire.

The inquiry team said it “did not receive a reliable picture of child sexual exploitation” from these areas, with the data often “confused and confusing”.

There was evidence of child sexual exploitation by networks in all six areas, but that the relevant police forces were “generally not able to provide any evidence about these networks”, the inquiry said.

Two areas – Swansea and Tower Hamlets – said there was no data to suggest there had been any child exploitation by gangs, despite evidence to the contrary.

The report concluded: “It was clear from the evidence that none of the police forces or local authorities in the case study areas in this investigation had an accurate understanding of networks sexually exploiting children in their area.”

It added: “The focus should be on investigating the criminal conduct of sexual exploitation, not sanctioning children for what is frequently low-level antisocial behaviour.”

Council leaders and police chiefs must take charge on “eradicating attitudes and behaviours which suggest that children who are victims of exploitation are in some way responsible for it”, the 185-page report said.

It made six recommendations in response to its findings on grooming gangs, including calling on the Department for Education to ban “without delay” placing 16-year-old and 17-year-old children in semi-independent or independent care if they are a sexual exploitation victim or are at a “heightened risk” of becoming one.

Police forces and local authorities should also be required to collect specific data on all cases of known or suspected child sexual exploitation, including by criminal gangs and organised networks.

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