What is Keir Starmer’s record on prosecuting grooming gangs?

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk has accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of being “deeply complicit within the mass rapes in change for votes”.

Mr Musk has printed a sequence of posts on X suggesting Starmer didn’t take care of the grooming gang scandal whereas head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013.

In response, Starmer has accused critics of “spreading lies and misinformation” and claims he tackled prosecutions “head on”.

The row between Mr Musk and Starmer centres round a sequence of high-profile circumstances the place teams of males – primarily of Pakistani descent – have been convicted of sexually abusing and raping predominantly younger white women across the UK.

In 2012 The Occasions newspaper investigated Rotherham grooming gangs, which led to a significant inquiry.

No less than 1,400 kids have been subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, in keeping with a 2014 reportwritten by Prof Alexis Jay.

The report made headlines within the UK and all over the world and led to main debates in Parliament.

Related scandals additionally occurred in different cities, together with Oldham, Oxford, Rochdale and Telford, leading to a national inquiry into child sexual abuse, which was additionally by Prof Jay.

The circumstances sparked investigations into alleged failures to correctly tackle the crimes and assist victims.

The CPS, an impartial physique, prosecutes felony circumstances in England and Wales.

After the police examine crimes and current their findings, the CPS decides whether or not to prosecute based mostly on proof and public curiosity.

Starmer was appointed head of the CPS in 2008 and held the position for 5 years. He turned an MP in 2015.

The CPS was criticised for a choice to not proceed with a prosecution in Rochdale on the premise that it considered the principle sufferer as “unreliable” following an investigation between August 2008 and August 2009.

That call was overturned later by Nazir Afzal in 2011 after being appointed by Starmer because the CPS chief prosecutor for north-west England.

Chatting with PJ Confirm, Mr Afzal stated that the view of prosecutors to not proceed to trial on the time was “if the police aren’t pleased that she’s going to give credible proof then we’re not pleased both”.

He went on to say that he had reviewed and reversed the choice as “I believed what she [the victim] was saying”.

However this isn’t the one occasion the place the CPS has confronted criticism.

Prof Jay’s report into the Rotherham circumstances stated the police would typically cite the CPS as being unwilling to prosecute alleged perpetrators, however they stated that it had been “rather more useful” afterward.

A 2013 report from the Home Affairs Committee said that “not like many different official businesses implicated on this situation”, the CPS had “readily admitted that victims had been let down by them and have tried each to find the reason for this systematic failure and to enhance the best way issues are finished in order to keep away from a repetition of such occasions”.

It added: “Mr Starmer has striven to enhance the therapy of victims of sexual assault inside the felony justice system all through his time period as Director of Public Prosecution.”

Maggie Oliver, a former Manchester detective who now campaigns for victims of kid intercourse abuse, instructed PJ Confirm that the CPS “bear a substantial amount of accountability for the failures round this situation”, together with bringing insufficient prices and blaming victims.

She added that whereas there was now rather more consciousness across the situation, “in my basis we nonetheless see particular person circumstances subjected to huge failures within the techniques”.

Now we have been unable to seek out any direct criticism of Starmer personally in any of the reviews on the scandal, nor can we determine any strategies that he himself made any selections to not prosecute.

The prime minister has robustly defended his document as the previous head of the CPS, telling journalists he:

• Modified the prosecution strategy to “problem myths and stereotypes” that had stopped victims from being heard
• Left workplace when the CPS had the very best variety of youngster intercourse abuse prosecutions on document
• Reopened circumstances that had been closed
• Introduced the primary prosecution of an Asian grooming gang

It’s appropriate that Starmer revised the steering on youngster sexual exploitation in 2013 to make future prosecutions simpler.

Beforehand, victims might not have been considered as credible if that they had not complained instantly, if that they had used medicine or alcohol or if that they had dressed or acted specifically methods.

On youngster sexual abuse prosecutions, we discovered CPS figures relationship again to 2007 however the early years are actually solely on archived net pages – as they’re now not on the CPS web site.

They present that the “variety of prosecutions for youngster sexual abuse flagged circumstances” did rise from that yr to achieve 4,794 in April 2010 to March 2011 – a peak for Starmer’s time in command of the CPS.

That complete was subsequently surpassed – there have been practically 7,200 prosecutions in 2016-2017.

PJ Confirm has requested Downing Road for extra element on the info behind the prime minister’s declare.

On reopening circumstances, Mr Afzal stated that the creation of a nationwide panel to revisit circumstances beneath Starmer had been a hit.

“That panel additionally included – for the time ever – exterior representatives. It revisited dozens of circumstances that have been then restarted,” he stated.

In defending his document, Starmer referred solely to the broad class of kid intercourse abuse prosecution information.

In relation to youngster grooming gangs, there isn’t any single clear information set as a result of no particular offence exists.

As a substitute, offenders will be prosecuted for inflicting or facilitating sexual exploitation, or for committing particular offences equivalent to rape and indecent assault.

Info on youngster grooming-related prosecutions seem in Prof Jay’s 2022 report into child sexual exploitation by organised networks – a government-commissioned report into institutional youngster abuse failings printed in 2022.

The report mentions a number of “vital prosecutions” between 2010 and 2014, together with 35 convictions which came about whereas Starmer was DPP:

• November 2010 – 5 males convicted in Rotherham
• November 2010 – 11 males convicted in Derbyshire
• 2008-2010 – three males convicted in Cornwall
• Could 2012 – 9 males from Rochdale and Oldham convicted
• June 2013 – seven males from Oxford convicted

A Occasions report from 2011 identified 17 grooming gang prosecutions since 1997.

It stated 14 of them came about throughout the earlier three years and concerned the on-street grooming of ladies aged 11 to 16 by teams of males throughout 13 cities and cities.

A report by the Nationwide Police Chiefs’ Council final yr concluded that 5% of kid sexual abuse and exploitation crimes have been group-based – however extra particular figures weren’t disclosed.

PJ Confirm has despatched a freedom of knowledge request to the CPS asking for a yearly breakdown of prosecutions for youngster grooming associated offences.

Now we have additionally contacted the Ministry of Justice and the Dwelling Workplace.

Extra reporting by Lucy Gilder and Gerry Georgieva