Why Scotland needs urgent national investigation into child sex abuse by grooming gangs

Members of a paedophile ring were convicted of sexually abusing children in the Glasgow area between 2012 and 2019 | Police Scotland

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has spent the last few days trolling the Labour government on X/Twitter. His latest intervention in British politics centres around the scandal of the rape or grooming gangs in English towns and cities. Groups of men, largely but not exclusively British-Muslim Pakistani, have for decades targeted mostly white, vulnerable girls, plying them with drugs and alcohol, then subjecting them to years of horrific gang rape and sexual violence.

So far, there have been five local inquiries into the prevalence of these evil networks. The first was in Rotherham in 2014, followed by Rochdale, Oxford, Telford and Newcastle. And a few months ago, the chief executive of Oldham Council wrote to UK safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, asking for a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in his area. Her response was cursory. “It is for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the government to intervene,” she wrote.

When the letter was leaked to a media outlet, Musk intervened. “Disgraceful,” he tweeted, setting the scene for the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, to back calls for a full national inquiry.

Turning blind eye to evil

“Trials have taken place all over the country in recent years but no one in authority has joined the dots. 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice,” she said, ignoring the fact that the Conservatives had been in power for 14 years until July. Even Liz Truss got in the act, attacking Jess Phillips for excusing “masked Islamist thugs”, which prompted Musk to say that the Labour minister deserved to be “in prison”.

This hysterical political rhetoric also seems to ignore the fact that, only two years ago, there had been a national investigation into child sexual exploitation by organised networks – professional-class speak for rape gangs – as part of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

The investigation makes grim reading. While it acknowledges that child sexual exploitation has been a designated policing priority in England and Wales since 2015, it found that “less is now known and understood about the prevalence of this appalling crime than was the case prior to 2015”.

That bald statement is hard to stomach. How can any society continue to turn a blind eye to the evil in its midst? Those on the right argue that it is because ‘lefties’ like Jess Phillips don’t want to appear racist. Those on the left insist the right is using past examples of rape gangs led by British-Muslim Pakistani men to stir up a race war. Meanwhile, men of all ethnicities and every demographic continue to exploit and abuse girls.

True scale unknown

But what of Scotland? Surely we have a full understanding of the extent of child sexual exploitation (CSE), and how and where grooming gangs operate? After all, the Scottish Government published an action plan in 2014 on how to prevent it. This was updated in 2016.

Four years later, the government produced a delivery report to show progress. It reveals the damning truth. As is the case in England and Wales, no one knows the scale of CSE in Scotland.

The report states openly: “It is widely acknowledged that the lack of data on the context, frequency and scale of abuse, and about perpetrators, both in Scotland and the rest of the UK, makes it difficult to establish the number of current victims and the contexts and circumstances in which CSA [child sexual abuse] and CSE take place. It is the strong view of agencies and service providers that CSA and CSE are significantly under-reported and that determining the scale, nature and prevalence of CSA and CSE is complex and challenging."

This was a point echoed only a few weeks ago by the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection (Celcis). In a review of child sexual exploitation commissioned by the Scottish Government, it found that “Precise prevalence data for CSA and CSE is difficult to establish and vary across countries and within research studies.”

New Town paedophile ring

It is extremely unlikely that the seven-strong gang of men and women convicted in November 2023 of sexually abusing children in Glasgow was the only organised network operating in Scotland in recent years. Nor is the crime only committed by chaotic drug addicts, as was the case in Glasgow, nor by gangs of British-Muslim Pakistani men as in Rotherham and elsewhere.

As a child, Susie Henderson, who waived her right to anonymity to speak publicly about what happened to her, was abused by her own father, an eminent lawyer living in Edinburgh’s New Town. He was an evil man who passed his daughter round a network of paedophiles to be raped. It was only when one of the gang, John Watt QC, was convicted in 2022 that she was believed.

Scotland’s long-running independent inquiry into child abuse has revealed the terrible truth of the sexual violence against children that took place in some of Scotland’s most expensive private schools, as well in council care homes, the Catholic Church and charities, among many other institutions.

Need for urgent action

But we do not know the true extent of the child sexual exploitation that festers in our neighbourhoods, on our streets, in the back seats of cars or behind closed doors. A 2022 report by Sky News suggested that organised child sexual abuse was a “hidden pandemic” across the Central Belt of Scotland.

Finding out the extent of the problem may well be complex and challenging, but we owe it to every survivor – and potential victim – of this evil to understand its prevalence, so that we can properly tackle it.

Only a national investigation, properly resourced and with an urgent deadline will do. Whether it is part of the current child abuse inquiry or a separate piece of work is irrelevant. What matters is that it happens. In all conscience, we cannot continue to remain in ignorance.