Since police in England first investigated child sex grooming gangs in the late 2000s, crime has evolved.
Much of the crime has moved online, with gangs now often co-opting victims into drug trafficking and fraud.
Groups of children are increasingly abusing other children, while one in four victims of child sexual exploitation are boys.
“What we really need to recognize is that anyone can be a victim or a perpetrator,” says James Simmonds-Read, national program manager at the Children’s Society.
The issue has resurfaced in the public consciousness in the past two weeks after Elon Musk spotlighted the scandal, upending the British government’s political agenda and prompting calls for a new national inquiry.
The official understanding has become more refined since the first gang trials fifteen years ago, but remains incomplete.
In 2023, there were 4,428 reported offline sexual offenses committed by groups, according to official data for England and Wales published in November, the first time a detailed breakdown has been made available.
These were responsible for 3.7 percent of all child abuse crimes.
Of these crimes, grooming gangs (organized networks of criminals who target children) were responsible for 17 percent, or 717 crimes.
Such gangs therefore still pose a threat, says Richard Fewkes, director of the national Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce, even though they make up a “very small” proportion of overall sex crimes against children.
“We know it’s happening and our data tells us it’s happening,” he added.
Since the first trial of the ‘grooming gangs’, the subject of ethnicity has received a lot of attention due to the British-Pakistani profile of many perpetrators at the time. Research has repeatedly recommended better collection of ethnicity data.
The November figures, the first of their kind, show that 83 percent of offenders operating in groups were white, with 70 percent among criminal gangs in particular.
The exact ethnicity of non-white gangs is not published, while the data itself remains very limited: the ethnicity was recorded for only a third of suspects.
It is estimated that about 7 percent of stalking suspects in 2023 were of Pakistani descent, Fewkes said.
British Pakistanis make up 2.7 percent of the population in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics, although that picture varies considerably from place to place.
The lack of historical ethnicity data makes it difficult to say whether the proportion of gangs involving British-Pakistani men has changed in recent years.
Fewkes admits that British-Pakistani men may be over-represented in gang grooming cases, but is concerned that too much focus on them could deter victims of crimes by other perpetrators from coming forward for fear they will not be believed.
“Because the focus is on a small cohort, the impact this has on victims and survivors is enormous,” he said.
“If you’re someone who’s thinking about… . . . and all you hear is that this issue is about Asian grooming gangs, and that impacts you.”
Simmonds-Read of the Children’s Society called the focus on the threat of gangs of Pakistani men abusing white girls a “useless distraction”.
The data also points to bigger threats than organized gangs. The majority of group abuse of children takes place at home, committed by relatives and family friends, accounting for 1,125 group crimes.
Nearly half of the suspects in child abuse class cases were other children, while more than one in three was between 10 and 15 years old. This is an area currently under further investigation.
Nowadays it is also “very, very rare” for children to experience just one form of exploitation, Simmonds-Read added.
“Children are being sexually abused while being criminally exploited to transport drugs,” he said.
“We see cases where children are taken to hotels and sexually abused and then taken and exploited for fraud and money laundering.”
That can complicate investigations, he said, with agencies sometimes overlooking any sexual aspect of the abuse.
Despite having a clearer picture than a decade ago, officials admit authorities have been slow to piece together a picture of child sexual exploitation in Britain.
Cases in towns such as Rochdale and Rotherham ultimately helped launch the national independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, which three years ago devoted a report specifically to abuse by networks of perpetrators.
The conclusions were devastating for British police: forces still had no idea what was happening in their area.
Although data is now being collected, some remain dissatisfied.
Maggie Oliver, the former Greater Manchester Police detective who spoke out about the force’s failure to investigate the Rochdale grooming scandal, now heads a foundation dedicated to helping victims secure justice.
It will take “years” for the data to become meaningful, she said, while still not necessarily capturing everything that is needed.
Authorities remain squeamish about formally identifying criminals’ ethnicity, she said, because official data is too fragmentary to allow for a fact-based discussion.
“What we urgently need is routine and mandatory recording of data on the ethnicity and occupation of perpetrators,” Oliver said.
“Without the data, we push the conversation into the realm of propaganda and speculation, which helps no one.”
Victims are not always girls, authorities point out. More than one in five targets of abuser groups in 2023 were boys.
As their understanding of the sexual exploitation of children – including “grooming” gangs – has grown, police are increasingly adopting the kind of approach once associated with serious organized crime and major murder investigations, Fewkes said, including undercover tactics.
There has also been a tightening of regulations around the taxi industry in some areas, although experts admit the work is patchy.
During the gang trials of the 2010s, criminals had in many cases abused vulnerable children through taxi and takeaway networks.
Agencies are also trying to keep up with emerging technological threats.
In its annual profile of child sexual exploitation for 2022-2023, South Yorkshire Police, of which Rotherham is a part, noted that national reports of online grooming had risen by 80 per cent nationally over the past four years.
It also highlighted concerns from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that the use of online virtual reality spaces could become a tool for organized abuse in coming years.
It warned that online mental health forums “may be a particular target for potential suspects seeking to exploit a particular vulnerability of a child”.
Former Detective Inspector Oliver said her charity had seen an increase in the use of Snapchat, “making it difficult to trace perpetrators”.
Simmonds-Read pointed to the national Makesafe operation, a joint initiative between police and the hotel industry, as an example of current work to disrupt abusers. But, he said, modern technology posed a risk there too.
“There is a growing movement towards contactless check-in,” he said. “People can go into rooms with children and the only way you can detect that is through CCTV.”
Despite the progress, child protection experts agree that the field remains underfunded, responses are geographically patchy, data is still in its early stages, and criminals can adapt.
Abuse of vulnerable children by gangs on the streets is “still common”, says Oliver.
“But criminals are now so much more sophisticated in terms of their methodology,” she said, while “agencies are overloaded and under-resourced.”
Data visualization by Amy Borrett