Damning New Data Disproves Labour’s Grooming Gang Narrative

This comes after Leader of the House of Commons, Labour MP Lucy Powell dismissed a question about the rape gang scandal from journalist Tim Montgomerie as “blow[ing] a little trumpet” and a “dog whistle”.

Between 1 January 2009 – 31 December 2024, West Yorkshire Police recorded 7,100 child sexual exploitation and grooming offences across its five districts: Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, and Wakefield. This involved 7,121 victims and 5,508 named suspects of 88A Sexual Grooming and child sexual exploitation offences, under Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

Bradford district recorded the highest number of offences, at 2,419 — 34.1% of the total. Leeds followed with 1,601 (22.5%); Kirklees with 1,547 (21.8%); Wakefield with 803 (11.3%); and Calderdale with 730 (10.3%). 1,272 charges were filed, providing a 17.9% charge rate.

Asian Pakistani suspects were 21.48% (1,183) of all suspects, with a rate of 507.7 suspects per 100,000 people in West Yorkshire. Asian Bangladeshis had a lower rate, at 0.89% (49) of suspects, and a rate of 408.3 per 100,000. “Other” (Arab, Middle Eastern, Latin American, etc.) suspects were 0.96% (53) of suspects, but had the highest per capita rate of the data set, at 530 suspects per 100,000. This is despite those identifying as Asian or Asian British making up only 16% of the population across West Yorkshire’s districts, and 10% of the overall population of England, according to 2021 Census data. Excluding women and children from the overall percentages produces a much higher offending rate for Pakistani males than the national average.

White British suspects were underrepresented at 44.54% (2,454) of suspects, despite being 74.4% of the population of England and Wales. (West Yorkshire authorities do not provide a breakdown of the total White population by ethnicity, save Bradford district, which was 56.7% White British as of the 2021 Census.) White British suspects also had the lowest per capita offending rate at 155.3 suspects per 100,000 people. Black African and Caribbean suspects were 1.83% (101) of all suspects, but had the third highest per capita offending rate of 459.1 per 100,000.

In total, non-White British suspects account for 55.46% of suspects, despite making up only 26% of the national population. This yields an offending-rate twice that per-capita than their White British counterparts. However, 6.4% suspects (355) had their ethnicity marked as “Not Stated”, and 13% suspects (715) as “Not Recorded”. This comprises almost a fifth of perpetrators. This takes the maximum total potential share of Asian offenders to 42.73% — a rate 2-to-4 times their share of the national population.

As Shadow Education Minister, Neil O’Brien MP has documented the proportion of child sexual abuse offences where the ethnicity of the perpetrator is not recorded as having increased from 11.6% in 2010 to 28.7% in 2024. This is despite the age and sex of the perpetrator being recorded in the majority of cases.

Independent MP for Great Yarmouth, Rupert Lowe, who is leading a privately-funded inquiry into the rape gang scandal, told Courage Media:

“We need to start asking the really difficult questions. Why do men of these backgrounds have disproportionately higher offender rates? What is driving it? All reasons must be explored – social, cultural, and yes, religious.

Why are these communities not doing more to tackle the evil from within? I find it very difficult to believe that this mass rape has gone by virtually unnoticed.
Why do Pakistani men believe it is acceptable to sexually torture white girls?

Without understanding the motivation, we won’t tackle the root cause.
Difficult questions – the answers, I suspect, will be even harder to digest. It’s a conversation that is becoming more and more necessary.”

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This new data correlates with existing data for sex offence convictions by nationality, which found that 15-23% of sex offences were committed by foreign nationals between 2021-2023. This is despite foreign nationals making up 9.3% of the population according to Census data; making foreign nationals 71% more likely to be responsible for sex crime convictions than British nationals. In January, The Telegraph reported that figures from all 43 forces in England and Wales show Pakistanis are up to four times more likely to commit group-based child sexual abuse offences.

Robert Bates, Research Director at the Centre for Migration Control, told Courage Media:

“These figures help explain Labour’s current complicity in the rape gang coverup. A national inquiry would highlight that these heinous crimes were – and continue to be – disproportionately carried out by Asian Pakistani males on white working class girls. A growing number of Labour MPs are reliant on the votes of this ethnic group and would shudder at the thought of any course of action which entails scrutiny of these communities.”

Reform UK MP Lee Anderson told Courage Media:

“It’s no secret that Pakistani men are massively overrepresented in child sex crimes — yet officials keep sweeping it under the rug in the name of ‘diversity’. Enough is enough. We need to talk about it — openly, honestly, and immediately — if we want to keep our kids safe.”

Courage Media approached multiple Conservative MPs for comment. As yet, none responded.

Among victims, White British account for 55.6% (3,960), making up the largest ethnic group in absolute terms. However, they are outnumbered on a per-capita basis (at 250.6 victims per 100,000) by Black African and Other Black victims, who comprised 0.88% (63) of victims, but had a per-capita rate of 1,260 per 100,000. Those of Mixed ethnic backgrounds comprised 1.75% (124) of victims, at a per-capita rate of 425.4 per 100,000.

Despite being the largest ethnic group among perpetrators, Asian Pakistanis comprised only 2.96% (211) of victims, at a per capita rate of 90.6 per 100,000 people. The data indicates that the majority of these crimes occur across, rather than within, ethnic groups.

19.2% (1,366) of victims also had their ethnicity recorded as “Not Stated”, and 15.4% (1,095) as “Not Recorded”. This comprises a third of victims.

It is also important to note that West Yorkshire Police did not disaggregate group-based and lone-perpetrator child sexual offences, with the former being a specific racial and religiously-aggravated crime committed by rape gang perpetrators. West Yorkshire Police declined to provide the full scope of data stipulated by the FOI request, excluding the “Number of Grooming Gangs”, citing that such an effort “would exceed the 18 hours stipulated within the Act, thus engaging a Section 12 exemption”.

In 2013, the National Crime Agency’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP) found that 75% of Type 1 group-based child sexual exploitation offenders were Asian. In 2017, the Quilliam Foundation found that, of the 264 people convicted for the crime of group-based (gang) child sexual exploitation since 2005, 84% (222) were Asian.

Despite having the highest rate of offences, recording over 200 a year for consecutive years, Labour councillors in Bradford have blocked a motion by their counterparts in the Conservative Group for an independent national inquiry into historic and ongoing rape gangs operating in the district. Professor Alexis Jay, author of the eponymous 2014 report of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, suggested to the Home Affairs Select Committee that “there would be a collusion not to commission such reports” because councillors fear being “another Rotherham”.

The ethnic and religious identity of rape gang perpetrators has long been a source of contention. Responding to a question posed by journalist Tim Montgomerie, concerning the Channel 4 documentary “Groomed: A National Scandal”, on the BBC show Any Questions last Friday, Lucy Powell MP said, “Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we? Let’s get that dog whistle out, shall we?”

Powell took to X after facing criticism from members of the opposition, to insist that her comments were made “Because of the context of the discussion – not because of the issue.” After deleting that response to Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson, Powell posted:

“In the heat of a discussion on AQ, I would like to clarify that I regard issues of child exploitation & grooming with the utmost seriousness. I’m sorry if this was unclear. I was challenging the political point scoring around it, not the issue itself. As a constituency MP I’ve dealt with horrendous cases. This Gvt is acting to get to the truth, and deliver justice.”

Powell voted against the opposition motion for a national statutory inquiry into the rape gangs on 8 January this year.

Powell faced criticism from the opposition benches and rape gang survivors. Scarlett, a 20-year-old grooming survivor from Greater Manchester who appeared in the Channel 4 documentary, told The Telegraph, “You [Powell] have used us as a political tool for an excuse to be critical towards Conservatives rather than supporting a public inquiry. You should be ashamed.”

Shadow Home Office minister, Katie Lam MP responded to Powell, writing on X: “Say that grooming gangs are a fact and a stain on our country, not a “dog whistle” — or resign”.

Other MPs have sought to diminish the fact that Pakistani males make up a disproportionate share of rape gang offenders as being racist. In April, independent MP Ayoub Khan addressed the Mirpur Airport Demand Grand Conference in Birmingham, advocating for the construction of an airport in Mirpur, Pakistan, and said:

“When the right-wing media and those that seek to undermine… They are using their false narrative – and there’s nothing new in that.

We know what they have run in the past… Whether that’s in relation to the people that stand up for human rights in Palestine or Kashmir, whether it’s to do with grooming gangs, it’s a narrative that is done in order to sow division.”

Providing comment to GB News, Khan said:

“My argument, made in good faith, is that we must resist selectively focusing on certain ethnic or religious groups, particularly Muslims or British Pakistanis, when the data simply does not support that they are uniquely culpable.

In 2020, the Home Office itself published a review into group-based child sexual exploitation which concluded that ‘there is no credible evidence that this type of offending is more prevalent among Asian or Muslim communities’.

In fact, most group-based offenders in the UK are white men. But the national conversation continues to be dominated by high-profile cases involving British Pakistani men, often used as a vehicle by the far right to stoke division, distrust, and Islamophobia.”

This new data from West Yorkshire Police establishes a clear, disproportionate, and undeniable pattern of offenders with Pakistani and Asian ethnic backgrounds.
Commenting on this story, Lewis Brackpool told Courage Media:

“While many in Westminster, and even across the pond — claim this is a historical issue, nothing could be further from the truth. The data proves this is ongoing. And with fewer than one in five cases resulting in a charge, the evidence points clearly to institutional failure. Only one police force released their data. Politicians still dismiss it as a “dog whistle.” But the facts don’t lie — and the victims, many of them still waiting for accountability, deserve better than silence dressed up as sensitivity.”

To refrain from discussing the heinous acts of the rape gangs because of discomfort with the disproportionate representation of Pakistani Muslim men among the perpetrators does a disservice to the victims, and impairs the authorities’ ability to identify offenders and prevent further crimes. We call for full transparency about the nature of the crimes and the identity of the perpetrators.

This article (Damning New Data Disproves Labour’s Grooming Gang Narrative) was created and published by Courage Media and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Connor Tomlinson