Victims of grooming gangs continue to be rejected

Grooming gangs have been in the news again this past week, with the conviction of seven men for a string of child sex abuse crimes in Rotherham spanning a total of 106 years. Their victims were aged between 11 and 16 at the time of the abuse, and were pumped full of drugs and alcohol before being abused. They often came from children’s homes — an all-too-familiar pattern.

Yet victims continue to be let down. This week it was also reported that a judge ordered a Rotherham survivor, who was abused from the age of 11, to remove from her victim impact statement a demand that her perpetrators be deported to Pakistan. Meanwhile, much of the national press has failed to give the story the attention it deserved.

In 2022, a grooming gang leader from Rochdale is said to have avoided deportation to Pakistan by renouncing his Pakistani citizenship. The cost to the taxpayer of defending the accused against deportation in the Rochdale case is said to be in excess of £2 million. The question is why these men have access to legal aid at all, when such vast sums of money could help victims rebuild their lives.