BRITAIN’S biggest sex scandal been transformed into a story of our times, and a contentious political fiction. But it’s standing in the way of truth and justice for the victims, families and communities where child sexual exploitation is industrialised.

“If protecting children makes you a fascist, so be it.” It’s a compelling narrative, put to good use by those who wish to fan the flames of division, or capitalise on public outrage for political gain; but it is just that.

A political fiction, with smoke and mirrors, intrigue and controversy, a loose collection of unrelated, unproven statistics, removed from any context and woven together with the thread of conspiracy, a story spun over a quarter of a century serving many masters, instilling fear.

In the spaces where hatred grows, and evil resides, there is no why. There is only difference, division, exclusion and separation.

No-one asked why thousands of children were abused and exploited, yet the British state was seemingly paralysed from policing and protecting us from this kind of crime.  

The story of Muslim men raping poor white girls is providing a lifeline for institutions who were derelict in their statutory duties — not through incompetence or criminal negligence, but seemingly paralysed by fear of being called racist.

There was no reason for anyone to disbelieve this narrative, such was the skill with which the story of Britain’s “grooming gangs” was embedded into the national consciousness and naturalised as fact.

But we must question that.

The story of “grooming gangs” differs from the social fact of children being targeted by networks and gangs for abuse and the failure of governments, police and councils.

The first is a discourse crafted to manage the response to a disturbing social fact, the abuse of thousands of children. It’s a story designed to promote the messaging of political parties, and governments.

The second is not a fiction. It is the lived, real experience of victims, families, survivors and communities impacted by child sexual exploitation.

They are not the same.

In Britain today the term “grooming gang” is broadly accepted as referring to Pakistani-heritage Muslim men targeting, recruiting, and trafficking poor white girls to “party houses.”

The second chapter of the tale tells how councils turned a blind eye and two-tier policing protects the perpetrators but not victims. The third links grooming gangs to Islamic extremism and the fourth to uncontrolled immigration.

We cannot lose sight of the fact that beyond the embittered rhetoric on “grooming gangs,” there are children still being abused by networks and gangs who have operated across the UK uninterrupted for decades.

But that is of little interest to those who sell us the political fiction.

It is now almost impossible to distinguish between the messages appropriated in the early 2000s by right-wing extremists, and the statements adopted by mainstream political parties on “grooming gangs.”

As with all the best political fictions, there are uncomfortable truths in the story of the “grooming gangs.”

It is true that the majority of those convicted for a very specific form of organised child abuse involving grooming children and trafficking them for sex work and abuse are from Pakistani heritage communities living in Britain.

But trials in Bristol, Bradford, Telford, Sheffield, Derby, Newcastle, Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and Carlisle featured gangs of a wider range of backgrounds, including Bangladeshi, Somalian, Pakistani, Indian, Sikh, Iraqi, Iranian, Turkish men and British white women.

Every decade or so, the story of sex, gangs and poor white girls explodes like a seed pod on a late summer’s day onto the world stage.

Since Musk reignited the argument just weeks ahead of the Reform national conference last month, Professor Alexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, exited herself telling the Home Office select committee that she is refusing to give interviews “because of the weaponisation of child abuse that is going on.”  

In 2001, a flurry of news reports centred upon Keighley, in the Bradford district, where social workers had identified that more than 60 girls, some as young as 13, were being “groomed” by older Asian boys involved in Keighley’s notoriously violent street gangs.

A list of 57 names was compiled of the men involved and given to the local Labour MP, Ann Cryer, by victims and their families who wanted West Yorkshire Police to prosecute.

But they wouldn’t.

In 2004, a documentary called Edge of the City for C4 followed the story of two mothers from Keighley whose children were groomed.

The programme was hailed by a grateful British National Party (BNP) as “a party-political broadcast.”

None of the 57 men on the list have ever been charged or brought to trial despite an investigation, Operation Parsonage, by West Yorkshire Police which closed abruptly in 2005.

Retrospectively, we can now see how the embattled story of “grooming gangs” was germinated by mainstream media who focused on ethnicity and not the more accurate but complex demographic of organised crime in vulnerable communities.

Lovingly tended by the BNP, who realised that the emphasis on ethnicity of the perpetrators helped their cause. Nick Griffin, former leader of the BNP, claimed that Islamic faith and Asian culture predisposes Asian men to misogyny and deviancy.

We used to call that Islamophobic as these beliefs have no basis in fact. But now these views have been mainlined into British politics.

Whenever there is a high-profile grooming trial, or government report, radical right populists protest, the anti-fascists counter and the narrative of sex, gangs and poor white girls is emboldened across mainstream and social media.

In the past, the far right sought to control the streets, but things have changed. Today, political battles are not won or lost on the streets but by whoever controls the narrative.

The poisonous seeds of today’s “grooming gang” story were sown amid the fertile ground of poverty and discontent found in the migration gateways of the north of England.

It flowered in forgotten, disengaged working-class sink estates and abandoned run-down towns and cities where child sexual exploitation is endemic.

In 2010/11, an undercover investigation by Derbyshire police resulted in 13 members of a grooming gang being charged with 75 offences relating to 26 girls. Nine of the men were convicted.

The case sparked fierce debate but this time it was cabinet ministers and MPs entering the fray repeating the same messages on “immigration” and “grooming gangs” as the ones that emerged from the BNP in the early 2000s.

All the English Defence League (EDL) had to do was sit back on their sofas and watch.

Former home secretary Jack Straw accused Pakistani men in Britain of regarding white girls as “easy meat” on BBC Newsnight. He said: “We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way.”

The Home Office select committee commissioned a report, Child Sexual Exploitation and the Response to Localised Grooming, noting that “a particular model has emerged of organised, serious exploitation and abuse that involves predominantly Pakistani-heritage men grooming and abusing predominantly white British girls. Together, as communities we need to ensure these sickening crimes no longer remain hidden.”

But it took another 10 years for the Home Office to create a National Task Force dedicated to investigating child sexual exploitation across the UK.

In 2014, over 1,400 children, almost exclusively white girls from predominantly the poorest areas in Rotherham, had been found to have been sexually exploited.

Tommy Robinson, rapidly on his way to becoming an international brand in his latest reinvention as a journalist and influencer, introduced a new aspect to the narrative of grooming gangs. After Rotherham, he pushed the message “Two tier policing, and two-tier justice.”

Fast forward 10 years, and we find these claims repeated by Nigel Farage during Prime Minister’s Question time.

In 2017, 17 men and one white woman were found guilty over a sex grooming network in Newcastle sparking a vicious debate. Cryer wrote in the Daily Mail that “Some on the left still refuse to accept that these are culturally rooted crimes, while religious and sexual leaders in British Asian communities are slow to come forward to condemn the men involved.”

When disillusioned white communities in the north of England voted for Brexit in their millions, a new form of political capital was created. The mobilisation of an army of disaffected white voters impacted every political party in the UK who realised that this demographic could change the direction of Britain.

In 2018, The UK Independence Party (UKIP) appointed Tommy Robinson their Special Adviser on “Grooming Gangs.” Since then, key messages authored on the banners displayed at EDL street protests have been ushered into Westminster.

On May 14 2019, in a debate on “grooming gangs” held in the House of Lords Baron Pearson of Rannoch, a Ukip peer, said that “Turning to what can be done to stop this colossal social scandal, I fear we must start by accepting that the perpetrators are indeed radical Muslims.”

His evidence was Peter McLoughlin’s 2016 book Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal which Rannoch refers to as a “masterpiece.” McLoughlin has published a series of books co-written with Tommy Robinson including Manifesto, published in 2024.

Every mainstream political party is now chasing a demographic opposed to Europe, immigration and Islam with agitators like Robinson and Musk forcing the story of the grooming gangs onto the main stage of British politics.  

In 2025, Peter Whittle, former deputy leader of Ukip, described “grooming gangs” as “possibly the biggest racially aggravated sexual crime in Britain.”

After a quarter of a century, the strange fruit of this narrative of the “grooming gangs” has fallen upon the hostile ground that Britain has become.

It’s not Robinson or Farage marching through the streets of Middlesborough smashing the windows of homes believed to be occupied by immigrant families or torching hotels housing asylum-seekers in Rotherham.

It’s ordinary men and women from all sections of society who have been mobilised by the story of sex, gangs and poor white girls. But they weren’t listening to extremists. They were listening to elected politicians from Britain’s three main parties. And we need to ask why.

Ann Czernik’s series on child sexual exploitation and its political weaponisation continues next weekend.