What does the Casey report say about grooming gangs in the North East?
The government has confirmed there will be a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
An independent audit of the issue was ordered by the Prime Minister in January, carried out by Baroness Louise Carey, and published on Monday (16 June).
She found disproportionate numbers of Asian men have been responsible for group-based child sexual abuse, but the authorities have "shied away" this, for fear of appearing racist or raising community tensions.
The 197-page report contains a relatively small number of references to the North East.
In a timeline of grooming gang cases around the country, it notes how, in 2013, Northumbria Police set up Operation Sanctuary to investigate allegations of the sexual exploitation of girls and young women in Newcastle.
In 2015, a serious case review was commissioned, after it emerged there were potentially hundreds of victims of sexual exploitation in Newcastle, including children and vulnerable adults.
In 2017, 18 people were convicted of nearly 100 total offences including rape, child prostitution, supplying drugs to victims and trafficking for sexual exploitation. The offences took place in Newcastle between 2010 and 2014.
The perpetrators were men of Albanian, Kurdish, Bangladeshi, Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi, Eastern European and Pakistani ethnicity, aged between 27 and 44. One woman was convicted. The victims were girls and young women, aged between 13 and 25.
In 2018, a serious case review into child sexual exploitation in Newcastle was published. It found: "With this particular model of abuse, whilst the individual beliefs of the perpetrators are not known, all appear to come from a non-white, predominantly Asian/British Minority Ethnic culture or background.'
The review recommended that the government commissioned research on the offenders' profiles, motivations and cultural and background influences.
In 2024, the members of a Newcastle grooming gang were jailed for raping a 13-year-old girl. Three of the men were from Syria, and one from Kuwait. They were aged between 15 and 21 when they abused the victim in 2018 and 2019.
The Casey report says that "more often than not" local reviews into grooming gangs "do not discuss the perpetrators, let alone their ethnicity or any cultural drivers".
It says the 2018 review carried out in Newcastle was an exception to this, recognising the lack of research which had been done into the cultural drivers of offending, and recommending the government conducted research.
Casey says the Newcastle review took "an unusual step" of trying to understand the crimes by interviewing one of the offenders, who had claimed asylum in the UK. He spoke in a derogatory way about British girls, saying they had a lack of morals, and spoke about how he had easily been able to access sex, drugs and alcohol.
The Newcastle review said it was 'unfortunate that there were not more opportunities to meet with perpetrators and further attempts, if successful, might lead to greater understanding".
Casey's report also says child sexual exploitation in Newcastle was an example of how taxis have often been used as a way for perpetrators to meet victims, and for them to be trafficked to different locations.
The Casey report makes one reference to Sunderland, where it says a local review into a case of child sexual exploitation involving multiple offenders did not state the perpetrator's ethnicity or nationality.
There is also one reference to Middlesbrough, listed alongside other towns and cities where Casey is aware of high-profile prosecutions, indicating "a wide geographical spread of cases involving Asian/Pakistani perpetrators across the country".
Casey's report says: "There is a significant mismatch between the high volume of reports of child abuse being made to the police and the number of assessments which identify child sexual abuse coming into children's services in England".
As an example, between March 2023 and March 2024, it says Durham Police recorded 8.19 contact child sexual abuse cases per 1,000 children, while Durham County Council only had 1.59 child in need assessments for child sexual exploitation and 2.78 for child sexual abuse per 1,000 children.
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