London – On 23 October 2025, The Telegraph published an article by Hardeep Singh titled “The Grooming Gangs Rapists Are Mainly Pakistani Muslims, Not ‘Asian’.” The claim, asserting that grooming gangs in the United Kingdom (UK) are predominantly made up of Pakistani Muslim men, is not supported by national evidence, according to official reports and academic experts.

Child sexual exploitation, experts stress, is a complex safeguarding issue, not one defined by ethnicity, religion, or nationality. The Pakistani diaspora, which makes up roughly 2% of the UK population, has faced disproportionate scrutiny in the debate, resulting in an unfair and damaging narrative that benefits far-right and xenophobic interests.

Analysts note that the Telegraph’s framing amplifies narratives linked to Islamophobia, racial stereotyping, and anti-immigrant sentiment, without factual support from official data.

Data Gaps Undermine Ethnicity-Based Claims

The renewed controversy follows remarks by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who referenced overseeing the first prosecution of an “Asian grooming gang” while leading the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013. However, the Baroness Casey Audit in June 2025 highlighted that ethnicity was unrecorded for 66% of suspects, making reliable national profiling impossible.

Similarly, the Home Office of the UK government has repeatedly confirmed that existing data is insufficient to draw ethnicity-based conclusions. Its 2020 review found that earlier claims of Asian overrepresentation were based on small and incomplete datasets, many of which originated from the 2017 Quilliam Foundation report, a study later discredited for its methodological flaws.

The Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme (VKPP) in 2022 reported that group-based exploitation accounts for only around 5% of roughly 107,000 child sexual abuse cases. Of a Home Office sample of 4,000 offenders, 42% were White, 17% Black, 14% Asian, and 22% unrecorded, demonstrating no ethnic majority among perpetrators.

Experts have also clarified that localised clusters in certain towns do not represent national patterns. The Casey Audit explicitly warned against extrapolating national conclusions from regional data, noting that such interpretations reflect local demographics and policing priorities, not ethnicity-linked criminal trends. 

Ethnic Framing and Policy Distortion

Academic experts have long cautioned against racialising sexual exploitation. Dr. Ella Cockbain, who has researched child sexual exploitation (CSE) for over a decade, argues that focusing on ethnicity distorts safeguarding priorities and alienates communities crucial to reporting and prevention.

Professor Tahir Abbas adds that racialised “moral panics” substitute data with dogma, preventing serious policy reform. This distortion, he says, allows systemic safeguarding failures to persist by shifting attention from the state’s institutional weaknesses to minority communities.

The UK government bodies involved in justice and crime statistics, Ministry of Justice and Office for National Statistics (ONS), both indicate that most child abuse prosecutions involve White defendants, with persistent ethnicity data gaps making generalisations statistically unreliable.

Experts warn that sensational coverage like The Telegraph’s risks discouraging victims from seeking help and misdirecting resources away from meaningful child protection efforts.

Pakistan Responds to Rising Islamophobic Rhetoric

Amid increasing anti-Pakistan rhetoric in sections of the British media and online platforms, the Pakistan Foreign Office (FO), earlier in January 2025, expressed deep concern over what it described as the demonisation of an entire community.

A Foreign Office spokesperson stated, “Pakistan–UK friendship is characterised by warmth, cordiality, robust cooperation, and trust. Nurtured over decades, this relationship remains a top priority of Pakistan’s foreign policy.”

Senior official Shafqat Ali Khan highlighted the contributions of the 1.7 million British Pakistanis, calling them “the strongest link between our two friendly countries.” He also recalled their service in the British Indian Army, noting that many Muslim soldiers sacrificed their lives for democracy during both World Wars.

Reiterating Islamabad’s stance, the FO said, “Pakistan condemns all forms of child exploitation, but jurisdiction lies with British legal authorities. Offenders implicated in these cases are UK citizens under British law.”

Beyond Sensationalism: Focusing on Safeguarding

The Baroness Casey Report and other government reviews have repeatedly underscored that data gaps, weak coordination, and delayed institutional responses, not ethnicity, remain the core issues in tackling child sexual exploitation.

“Framing this as a ‘Pakistani problem’ is not just inaccurate,” said one policy analyst. “It’s a category error that conflates ethnicity with criminality and distracts from Britain’s own safeguarding failures.”

As the UK government moves toward a national inquiry into organised child sexual abuse, experts insist the debate must return to evidence and ethics, not ethnicity. Effective safeguarding, they argue, depends on partnership with communities, not their stigmatization.