LONDON: A fast nationwide audit of grooming gangs ordered by UK PM Keir Starmer in February 2025, following strain from Elon Musk and revealed late Monday, has discovered that UK police and councils intentionally hid the Asian ethnicity of the perpetrators to keep away from “showing racist” and to keep away from “elevating neighborhood tensions”.In two-thirds of circumstances of “group-based little one sexual exploitation”, no ethnicity was even collected. The audit by Baroness Casey discovered {that a} 2020 dwelling workplace report claiming the vast majority of predators have been white had used flawed information.Casey discovered that after analyzing information held by three police forces that did have ethnicity collected, the lads of “Asian ethnicity” have been “over-represented” as perpetrators of grooming gangs, which warranted additional examination.“As a rule, the official reviews don’t focus on the perpetrators, not to mention their ethnicity or any cultural drivers. There’s a palpable discomfort in any dialogue of ethnicity in most of them. The place ethnicity is talked about, it’s referred to in euphemisms akin to ‘the area people’, or it’s buried deep within the report,” she wrote.“It isn’t racist to wish to study the ethnicity of offenders,” she mentioned and, in her report, referred to as for it to be made necessary for the police to document the ethnicity and nationality of all suspects in grooming gang circumstances.It was not simply white susceptible ladies who’re victims, she discovered. “This audit acquired representations about the necessity to study additional cultural and spiritual drivers behind little one sexual exploitation, together with issues that Sikh and Hindu youngsters had been focused for abuse as a result of they have been ‘straightforward targets’ and who would by no means inform anybody about being exploited due to the disgrace,” Casey wrote.She additionally really helpful for the Nationwide Crime Company to take over investigations, for a nationwide inquiry to be ordered, for adults who’ve penetrative intercourse with a toddler below 16 to at all times be charged with rape, and for govt to fee analysis into the drivers and cultural elements.In Jan Labour MPs had voted in opposition to a nationwide inquiry into grooming gangs and Starmer had described these calling for inquiries as “leaping on a bandwagon of the far-right”.The audit sparked UK Keir Stammer to make a spectacular U-turn and announce a nationwide inquiry on the weekend forward of the report’s publication. He has agreed to implement all 12 suggestions.The report additionally discovered that in present reside circumstances a “vital quantity” of males operating grooming gangs are non-UK nationals and asylum seekers.House secretary Yvette Cooper introduced that henceforth “anybody convicted of sexual offences be excluded from the asylum system and denied refugee standing”.