Most grooming offences committed by white men, not Pakistanis: police chiefs

The UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has set the record straight, stating that white men have carried out the vast majority of sexual grooming gang offences, after the owner of X (formerly Twitter) published a post making false accusations against British-Pakistani men.

Police databases presented new figures that included quantitative data on ethnicity, showing that white offenders constituted 85 percent of "group-based" child abusers in the first three quarters of 2024. The same data for the whole of 2023 showed that 83 percent of offenders were white.

Speaking to the press briefing on Friday, the director of the NPCC’s Hydrant programme targeting child sexual abuse, Richard Fewkes, claimed that there is no “significant issue” with “any particular ethnicity or setting”.

Musk also waged an online campaign against the UK government over the grooming gangs issue, making false allegations against UK Prime Minister (PM) Keir Starmer.

In a post on Wednesday, he wrote “True” in reply to India's Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) Priyanka Chaturvedi, who had accused people of Pakistani origin of being behind the UK’s gang grooming.

Meanwhile, Musk's biographer, Seth Abramson, posted a series of notes on X on Tuesday, alleging that Musk may be "going mad."

Abramson wrote: “I'm a Musk biographer who has been tracking his online behavior for the last two years, and given that he's admitted to all of mental illness, heavy drug use, and crippling stress, it is now reasonable to fear he is deeply unwell.”

The billionaire has falsely accused Starmer of being “complicit in the rape of Britain” during his tenure as a Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) between 2008 and 2013 and called safeguarding minister Jess Phillips a “witch” and a “rape genocide apologist”.

On Friday, Fewkes said, “(The data) reflects what you would expect to see across the country in terms of ethnicity. Offences where grooming gangs are involved are predominantly white. There is not a significant issue here with any particular ethnicity or setting.”

The NSPCC data indicates that white individuals constituted the largest proportion of child sexual abuse suspects. In 2023, they accounted for 1,884 cases (83%), while Pakistani suspects numbered 62 (2.7%).

From January to September 2024, there were 1,623 white suspects (85%) and 75 Pakistani suspects (3.9%).

The NPCC, however, said, “Quarter four 2024 is not included in 2024 data as it is still being worked on.”

The police have released data in the wake of a heated debate in the House of Commons regarding whether there should be a national statutory inquiry into Pakistani grooming gangs.

Earlier, The Telegraph reported that grooming gangs are responsible for two child sexual abuse offences reported to police every day.

The newspaper reported an analysis indicating that there were 4,228 offences of "group-based" child sexual abuse, which constituted 3.7 percent of the 115,489 child sexual abuse and exploitation crimes (including online offences) in 2023.