Elon Musk’s ill-informed comments about grooming gangs are a “reprehensible weaponisation” of the trauma suffered by victims, a survivors’ group has said.
Tech billionaire Musk has launched attacks on Keir Starmer and his government after Labour rejected a call for a new national inquiry into the scandal. The Prime Minister, who has said victims need action not more inquiries, hit out at “those who are spreading lies”.
Musk has claimed Sir Keir had failed to bring “rape gangs” to justice when he led the Crown Prosecution Service. But the Prime Minister defended his record, which included bringing the first charges against an “Asian grooming gang” in Rochdale and prosecuting the highest number of child sexual abuse cases on record.
‘If Elon Musk’s Scouse Nan were still alive she’d send him this long post on X’
Sir Keir Starmer has rejected calls for another child abuse inquiry
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Responding to the X owner’s comments, Gabrielle Shaw, the Chief Executive of the National Association of People Abused in Childhood, said on Friday: “If you’ve gone online, if you’ve seen people’s responses to it, it is retraumatising the abuse that [they have] suffered. It’s very, very sad.”
“The weaponisation of trauma is reprehensible,” she added. Ms Shaw told journalists that an “incorrect narrative” has “real world effects”, adding that the NAPAC helpline had received calls from victims who were “angry and distressed”.
CEO of Napac Gabrielle Shaw
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She was speaking at a briefing by the National Police Chiefs’ Council who revealed gangs are behind almost two child sexual abuse offences reported to police every day. The first analysis of its kind data from all 43 police forces in England and Wales reveals there were 717 child sexual exploitation “grooming” crimes recorded in 2023. There were 572 in the first nine months of 2024, the Hydrant Programme found.
The new analysis reveals that “group based” offending accounted for 4,228 offences, or 3.7 per cent of all 115,489 child sexual abuse and exploitation crimes in 2023. Of these 4,228, 17 per cent (or 717) were “grooming gang” cases. The majority of perpetrators (83%) were white, while just over seven per cent were defined as Asian, five per cent as black, and three per cent as mixed race.
ACC Rebecca Riggs, NPCC Child Protection and Abuse Investigation Lead
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Assistant Chief Constable Rebecca Riggs, NPCC Child Protection and Abuse Investigation Lead, said every statistic represented a person who had suffered an “abhorrent” crime. ACC Riggs added that the recent focus on grooming gangs from one ethnic background could lead to victims of other types of sexual abuse feeling “their type of crime is less valid”. She said: “We need to make sure people of all types of crime feel heard.”
Alexis Jay’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found a “widespread failure” to collect “good quality” data on abusers, victims and the offences. She said this had contributed to an “often uninformed debate” about the ethnic backgrounds of perpetrators. The greatest risk to children remains abuse within the family. The Mirror revealed on Friday that UK officials are monitoring social media posts by Musk as a possible security risk.