The SNP Government is facing questions on what action it has taken to tackle child grooming gangs.
It comes as Sir Keir Starmer is under pressure to launch a public inquiry into the failures that allowed ethnic minority rape gangs to flourish in English towns and cities.
An investigation by the Daily Express shows such harrowing abuse does not stop at the border. Shockingly, it appears Scottish ministers have failed to act on multiple warnings and recommendations.
In October 2020, Barnardo’s and the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) published the first ever national report into the scope of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Scotland.
READ MORE: SNP Government looking at Artificial Intelligence to hunt for children at risk of sexual exploitation
The two-year study focused exclusively on children in care and Barnardo’s said “we have no way of knowing the true scale and nature of CSE” in the wider population.
The first recommendation of the report was that the Scottish Government must invest in a nationwide, multi-agency prevalence study “as a matter of urgency”.
The streets of Rotherham, one of the English towns at the centre of the scandal
(Image: AFP/Getty)
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Barnardo’s and the SCRA found CSE cases in 27 of Scotland’s 32 council areas involving children from “island, rural and urban areas”. In towns and cities, the ‘party flat’ model was the most common method employed by rapists and in the countryside abusers exploited the lack of public transportation by offering lifts to young people.
Researchers examined the cases of 213 children in the care system and found that 74 were victims or “likely victims” of CSE, including 53 girls and 21 boys. The youngest was 11 years old.
Alarmingly, the study found that victim-blaming was widespread in the Children’s Hearing system with multiple references to “risky sexual behaviour” and other euphemisms for children who were being raped by adults.
In total, there were 15 recommendations for the Scottish Government, the police, councils and the SCRA, with SNP ministers told they must take “overall responsibility”.
Being raped by an adult is a ‘red flag’
Despite the call for an urgent end to victim blaming, the Scottish Government continues to tell police and social workers to look out for “harmful sexual behaviour” by children. While in many cases, this involves actions by one child towards another, the definition also includes abuse “in the context of gangs” and “child sexual exploitation”.
Guidance published in April 2024 states that a young person “having sex with strangers (adults)” should be regarded as a “red flag” for “unsafe” behaviour that “might” involve abuse or exploitation.
Alarmingly, the Scottish Government’s National Child Sexual Exploitation Group was disbanded after its final report was published in July 2020. It was set up in 2016 with the aim of making Scotland “a place where sexual exploitation of children and young people is eliminated”.
However, the final report acknowledges “that it is reasonable to expect that the extent and circumstances of child abuse will be similar in Scotland to the rest of the UK”. It included 44 actions for the Scottish Government and others to take.
The Express has been on this story for years, such as this report in 2017
The group was set up after two major police investigations into grooming gangs operating in and around Glasgow, codenamed Operation Dash and Operation Cotswold.
Cotswold, launched in 2011, identified at least 26 victims in the city, before it was expanded into Dash which involved 12 councils and four health boards across the west of Scotland.
At least 27 men were reported to the Crown Office, with senior officers admitting that a “significant proportion” were from ethnic minority communities. However, there has never been a large-scale grooming gang trial where multiple offenders were brought before the courts at the same time.
The gangs operated in some of the most deprived parts of Glasgow
(Image: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
The only named culprit was Afghan asylum seeker Javaid Akhond, jailed for six years in October 2014 when he was 20 years old for preying on young girls at a flat in the city.
Also in 2014, the Express revealed that child protection officials repeatedly vetoed a Significant Case Review into the widespread abuse uncovered by detectives. The following year, a document called ‘The Rotherham Report – Implications for Glasgow’ warned that abuse by grooming gangs was “day to day practice” in the city.
It was prepared by Moira McKinnon, who was later appointed head of the National Child Exploitation Group that was disbanded in 2020.
Also in 2020, the Express revealed the existence of a THIRD police investigation into ethnic minority grooming gangs in Glasgow, called Operation Cerrar. All of the 55 suspects were from the Kurdish, Afghani, Egyptian, Moroccan, Turkish, Pakistani or Iraqi communities.
How the SDE revealed the existence of Operation Cerrar
The gang had at least 44 victims, including a core group of six youngsters. Police believed one girl was targeted by as many as 28 different men. Cerrar took place in 2016 and was kept under wraps for years.
Some 19 men were reported to the Crown Office, although again no large-scale trial of multiple suspects has ever taken place, with 14 being deported. It is not clear what action was ever taken about the rest of the gang.
At the time, our report – published at the end of January 2020 – was overshadowed by global events including the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the UK’s departure from the EU and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision to quit the Royal Family.
In the same way, the damning Barnardo’s/SCRA report – published in October 2020 – also received minimal coverage due to the pandemic which was then approaching the start of the deadly second wave.
The Scottish Government is now being urged to explain how many of the recommendations and actions had been completed over the past four years. In particular, the “urgent” call for research into the scale of the problem outwith the care system (where CSE appears to be endemic).
According to figures seen by the Express, child sexual exploitation has been identified as a “concern” at 635 separate hearings for children placed on the Child Protection Register since 2016. This peaked in 2019 when 149 cases were raised and again in 2021 with 139 cases.
‘Ministers must be proactive’
In response to our findings, Scottish Conservative shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr is planning to lodge a series of parliamentary questions at Holyrood.
He said: “It is vital that the SNP Government has acted upon these recommendations from Barnardos to ensure children are protected. The responsibility for protecting vulnerable young victims lies with SNP ministers and this Government must be proactive.”
The Scottish Government said: “We recognise the devastating impact that child sexual abuse and exploitation has on children and families, which is why we are taking forward work to ensure that children are protected from harm.”
A spokesman added that a new ‘Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation National Strategic Group’ had been set up in recent weeks. It met for the first time on November 18 and again on December 11.
He said: “The Group brings together key stakeholders including social work, police, health and education, local authority representatives, expert practitioners, charities, and research and academics.”
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