The chair of a major inquiry into grooming gangs lashed out at the political ‘weaponisation of child sexual abuse today.
Professor Alexis Jay said she was ‘concerned’ by the rhetoric around historic attacks on teenage girls, many of them by groups of British Asian men, in recent weeks.
She spoke as she faced MPs today about her work examining the crimes carried out by gangs in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, between 1997 and 2013.
Prof Jay led the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation (IICSA) which made a ‘conservative estimate’ that around 1,400 children were sexually exploited in those 16 years.
It came after weeks in which Elon Musk, the X owner and adviser to president Trump, has accused Sir Keir Starmer and other ministers of turning a blind eye to abuse.
His attacks were taken up by UK politicians including Reform leader Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch, the new Tory leader.
Asked about calls for a new national inquiry into grooming gangs at the Home Affairs Committee today, Prof Jay said attacked the previous Tory government for failing to implement the recommendations of her 2022 report.
‘The over-riding concern is ”just get it done” at this point. I have had a huge number of requests for media interviews and I really felt very concerned at the weaponisation, if you like, of child sexual abuse that has gone on,’ she said.
Professor Alexis Jay said she was ‘concerned’ by the rhetoric around historic attacks on teenage girls, many of them by groups of British Asian men, in recent weeks.
It came after weeks in which Elon Musk, the X owner and adviser to president Trump, has accused Sir Keir Starmer and other ministers of turning a blind eye to abuse.
His attacks were taken up by UK politicians including Reform leader Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch, the new Tory leader.
‘I won’t make any comment on the various actors involved in that – I won’t give them the oxygen of publicity.
‘But just, it was such a relief (the news of a plan to implement recommendations), by whatever means – we wouldn’t have chosen it necessarily to have come about in this way – but we just need to get on with it.’
The response from the then-Conservative government to the recommendations of her (IICSA) was ‘awful’, the inquiry chairwoman told MPs.
Prof Jay said the written response to the 20 recommendations – which followed a seven-year inquiry – had been ‘inconsequential, insubstantial, committed to nothing’.
Prof Jay told MPs that while the initial response from home secretary Grant Shapps to the report when first published in October 2022 left her feeling ‘much encouraged’, that had been ‘the high point’ of the experience with the Conservative government on the issue.
Musk alleged that Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips was refusing to investigate the gangs because it would lead back to the PM’s time as director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013.
The Government’s written response in May 2023 to the report under the next home secretary Suella Braverman was ‘awful’, Prof Jay said.
She told MPs: ‘It was awful. I cannot tell you how it felt to constantly read the response, when we got the final printed version of the government’s response.
‘It was inconsequential, insubstantial, committed to nothing. And the wording that was used very often amongst the 20 recommendations was ‘we accept the need for’ whatever it was, but made no specific commitment to delivering it or any timescale whatsoever at that stage.
‘The reaction of all of us, but mostly victims and survivors, was such huge disappointment and anger at what they had pinned a great deal of hope and anticipation on, that the recommendations we made would be delivered.’
Prof Jay said there was ‘quite a long silence’ from the Home Office after she wrote to The Times in 2023 criticising the Government’s response to her inquiry.
Prof Jay said she had been contacted by a Home Office special adviser after The Times published a letter from her in May 2023 that described the Government’s response to her inquiry as ‘weak’ and ‘apparently disingenuous’.
Describing the tone of the conversation as ‘adversarial’, she said it ‘led to quite a long silence’ from the Home Office until James Cleverly took over as Home Secretary in November 2023.
