The British government will reopen more than 800 cases of historic child rape grooming gang cases in addition to launching a full national inquiry after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer bowed to pressure and made a major reversal on the issue over the weekend.
The National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK equivalent of America’s FBI, will lead investigations alongside local police forces across Britain into grooming gang cases that did not result in the suspected perpetrators facing justice.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Sunday that over 800 cases of suspected child rape grooming have already been selected to be reopened.
“The vulnerable young girls who suffered unimaginable abuse at the hands of groups of adult men have now grown into brave women who are rightly demanding justice for what they went through when they were just children,” Cooper said per the i paper.
“Not enough people listened to them then. That was wrong and unforgivable. We are changing that now.”
The move will come on top of a full national inquiry, which will be established under the Inquiries Act, meaning that it will have legal authority to compel witness testimony and have full access to police and other local documents.
The exact remit of the investigation remains to be seen. However, it was launched in response to the findings of a review from Baroness Louise Casey, which is set to be published this week.
Baroness Casey reportedly argues that a full national inquiry was necessary and that it should not only focus on the politically correct cover-ups committed by local officials and police, but also on the ethnicities of the perpetrators.
Hellbound and Down 