The British Interior Ministry announced, on Sunday, June 15, the launch of a national police operation aimed at finding members of pedocriminal gangs responsible for the sexual exploitation of young girls in several cities in England between the late 1990s and the early 2010s.
The British Crime Agency (NCA) was responsible for the operation, which will be in collaboration with the police, said the ministry’s press release. This new operation will also allow the reopening of surveys which had previously been the subject of a classification without follow -up. This announcement comes after the Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was in favor of a national investigation into the subject. So far he had preferred local investigations.
According to the interior department, “More survivors of the atrocities committed by pedocriminal gangs will obtain justice” Thanks to this new operation, the main objective of which is to bring members of these networks into court.
“Vulnerable young girls who have been exploited unimaginably (…) are today courageous women who rightly claim justice ”said the Minister of the Interior, Yvette Cooper, quoted in the press release. “Too few people listened to them at the time. It was a serious and unforgivable fault. We put an end now ”she continued, adding that “More than 800 cases (…) have already been identified by the police after I asked them to reopen closed files too early ”.
Gangs that acted for years
For several decades, in several English cities, gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani origin, attacked girls and young girls, mostly white and from disadvantaged backgrounds.
This scandal of “Grooming Gangs” returned to the news in early January, when billionaire Elon Musk accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer, of having left “Groups of rapists to exploit young girls without having to deal with justice”.
The most resounding case is that of Rotherham, a city where nearly 1,500 minors were drugged, raped and sexually exploited by one of these gangs for sixteen years, between 1997 and 2013.
More than a hundred men have been sentenced, and the victims are estimated at several thousand. The breaches of the police and local authorities were severely criticized, and this case which traumatized England is regularly used by the British far right to denounce the laxity of the public authorities and a two -speed justice.
Source: Lemonde