Starmer clarifies and announces a nationwide investigation into a historic child abuse scandal from two decades ago.

Keir Starmer has presented his latest change of opinion as a matter of justice, but many of his critics find it hard to shake the feeling that the British Prime Minister has once again succumbed to the game of right-wing populism. After months of refusing to investigate a scandal involving sexual abuse of minors that occurred nearly two decades ago and lasted for years in northern England, Starmer announced on Saturday that that investigation will finally take place.

The decision was made just 24 hours after a new group of seven Pakistani men from Rochdale were convicted on Friday for those events: over fifty multiple sexual assaults against vulnerable white female minors from 2001 to 2006. All “under the noses of social workers and other officials who should have done much more to protect these young girls,” the prosecutor in the case had stated in court.

The Labour government insisted since last January, when billionaire Elon Musk revived the issue on social media with inflammatory posts, that a report had already been prepared, created over seven years by Professor Alexis Jay. Jay herself said then that there was nothing more to investigate, but to apply the recommendations added to her document.

However, Starmer, increasingly besieged by the racist message from the populist right of Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s party, wanted to buy time. He commissioned a quick consultation from Baroness Louise Casey, an independent member of the House of Lords who has long been known for her work in helping vulnerable individuals. The mandate included the obligation to consider the ethnicity and demographic group of both the alleged perpetrators and the victims, as well as “the cultural and social factors that may have been determinants in this type of crime across all ethnic groups.”

The main criticisms against the authorities regarding the management of these crimes suggested that police and social services chose to look the other way because the culprits were from an ethnic minority—Pakistanis— to avoid further racial tensions.

“She [Casey] has concluded that a national investigation should be undertaken, after seeing what she has seen,” the Prime Minister explained on Saturday. He referred to police and judicial material that was never included in the previous report. “I have read her text in detail and will accept her recommendation. I believe it is the right thing to do,” announced Starmer.

The Origin of the Scandal

In the late 1990s, local authorities in Rotherham, a city in northern England with nearly 250,000 inhabitants, launched the support organization Risky Business. Its purpose was to assist girls, teenagers, and young women who were victims of sexual exploitation on the streets. In the preceding years, alarm signals had emerged. Some responsible for shelters for vulnerable minors had detected a nighttime taxi trade, mostly driven by people of Pakistani origin, transporting girls to different parts of the city.

The information accumulated, which was constantly relayed to the authorities, became abundant. The local police suggested to one of those social workers, known as Senior, to send information directly to an email inbox dubbed Box Five. Three years later, the worker discovered that this inbox didn’t even exist. No one had paid attention to reports that had ended up in the trash.

“We were always told that we didn’t provide enough evidence,” Senior told the BBC. “But our job wasn’t to investigate, but to report,” she complained. “We were told that the girls’ statements were not strong enough and that they had consented to their abuse.”

In 2011, journalist Andrew Norfolk of The Times revealed the existence of organized gangs trafficking and sexually exploiting minors that had operated for over a decade in various cities in northern England and the Midlands, including Rotherham. An actual tsunami of sexual exploitation, anonymous police sources claimed to Norfolk, which extended across the counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Greater Manchester, among others. Thirteen cities. According to data presented by the journalist, up to 56 individuals had been convicted of rape, kidnapping minors, abuse, and sexual assaults against minors.

The vast majority of the convicted were from the British-Pakistani community, which consists of just over 1.6 million inhabitants. They arrived in the UK during the major migration of the 1950s and 60s. Norfolk pointed out in his article that 50 of the convicted were Muslims, although he later nuanced that “in reality, the overwhelming majority of Muslims consider this type of crime abominable.”

Almost all the victims were white British minors, many of whom—though not all—came from vulnerable backgrounds and broken families.

In 2014, Professor Alexis Jay, leading a public inquiry, presented a devastating report. It was the result of an in-depth investigation into the activities of the gangs responsible for sexual assaults in Rotherham, a city in Greater Manchester.

Jay stated that at least 1,400 girls had been victims of these gangs between 1997 and 2013. “Many of the cases we studied described children from troubled family backgrounds, with episodes of domestic violence, parents with addictions, and in some cases severe mental illnesses. A significant number of victims had a history of neglect in their care and prior sexual abuse,” Jay noted.

The researcher indicated that most of the sexual offenders were described as “Asian” by the victims. The numerous convictions that arose in subsequent years were almost 80% against British males of Pakistani origin. Jay indicated in her report that some social service workers “expressed their nervousness about mentioning the ethnic origin of the alleged abusers for fear of being labeled racist.” Some, she noted, suggested that they had received clear instructions from their superiors not to say anything in this regard.