On Saturday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a long-overdue national statutory inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal, a chapter that has plagued the UK for decades. With public frustration growing over years of delayed justice, the inquiry aims to examine the issue thoroughly and fairly, respecting its seriousness without sensationalism.

The grooming gangs scandal first drew widespread attention in the early 2000s, exposing organised groups, often of British Pakistani heritage, targeting vulnerable girls, predominantly white and from disadvantaged backgrounds. High-profile cases in Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford brought the issue to light. In Rotherham alone, a 2014 report estimated at least 1,400 girls were abused between 1997 and 2013, revealing a shocking scale of exploitation that stunned the nation. These cases highlighted a pattern of systemic neglect, with local authorities, including police and councils, failing to act, often citing fears of being accused of racism due to the ethnicity of many perpetrators. This hesitation allowed abuse to continue unchecked, leaving victims without justice.

Despite the issue's gravity, earlier efforts to address it fell short. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), running from 2014 to 2022, examined child sexual abuse broadly but failed to specifically target the distinct patterns of grooming gangs. Survivors and MPs criticised IICSA’s scope as too general, arguing it did not address the dynamics of group-based exploitation or the institutional failures specific to these cases. The absence of a dedicated national inquiry left many feeling that the true extent of the scandal remained unaddressed, fuelling calls for a more focused investigation.

For decades, the grooming gangs scandal festered in the shadows, its horrors compounded by a toxic mix of political sensitivities and institutional denial. Fear of confronting the ethnicity of offenders—often British Pakistani men—paralysed authorities, wary of inflaming community tensions or fuelling far-right rhetoric. Baroness Casey’s searing 2025 report laid bare this avoidance, noting missing ethnicity data for two-thirds of perpetrators, alongside a “culture of ignorance” that dismissed victims, some as young as 10. Labour’s initial resistance to a national inquiry, coupled with fragmented local responses, deepened the betrayal. Five planned local probes, such as Oldham’s, collapsed when only one area stepped forward, exposing a system too broken to self-correct. The result: survivors silenced, justice delayed, and a nation grappling with its complicity.

The dam finally broke under a torrent of public fury and political pressure. Survivors’ relentless advocacy, amplified by figures like Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s pointed jabs at Starmer’s inaction, forced a reckoning. Baroness Casey’s June 2025 audit, with its “deeply disturbing” findings of ongoing failures, proved the tipping point. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, accepting all 12 recommendations from the report, announced a statutory inquiry to compel evidence, backed by a National Crime Agency operation to revisit over 800 historic cases. Set to span three years, the inquiry aims to dissect institutional failures and deliver justice. Yet, as Nazir Afzal warns, probes alone may not suffice when criminal accountability is what survivors crave. For victims, this is no abstract exercise but a long-overdue chance to be heard.

The path forward remains challenging, with political sensitivities and the risk of exploitation by the far right still present. The inquiry’s mission—to uncover failures, bolster local safeguards, and deliver justice—bears the weight of decades of neglect. Victims’ Commissioner Helen Newlove calls for a “fearless” approach, a view shared by survivors who reflect on whether earlier action could have prevented their suffering. Though long overdue, this inquiry represents a step towards accountability, but lasting change requires more than reports—it demands a deep cultural and systemic shift. For survivors, the outcome is profoundly personal, beyond mere policy.