Birmingham Mail
January 15, 2015
British-born Pakistani men and Pakistani migrants are behind a ‘disproportionately high’ number of on-street child sex exploitation cases in Birmingham and the West Midlands, an official investigation has found.
And white middle-aged men have been identified as being involved in the majority of online grooming, with an increasing number of teenage boys targeting girls.
West Midlands Police and the region’s seven local authorities jointly commissioned the two in-depth ‘problem profiles’ for on-street and online child sexual exploitation (CSE) last year, but the findings have yet to be made public.
But the Mail can reveal the on-street profile discovered a ‘disproportionately high’ number of suspected offenders were of Pakistani Muslim origin, both British born and migrants. The ethnicity link mirrors that of other cities hit by CSE scandals,including Rotherham and Rochdale.
Yet it is unclear if the full findings will be made public as it is understood the figures for on-street and online grooming will be combined to paint a total picture for the region’s CSE problem. Senior police officers and council chief executives are currently deciding how much of their findings should be put into the public domain.
When their provisional on-street and online grooming data are combined, 39 per cent of offenders are white and 26 per cent Asian. But those statistics do not distinguish between all grooming and on-street grooming, where vulnerable youngsters are befriended and abused – often after being plied with alcohol or drugs.
In terms of online grooming, the majority of suspected offenders are said to be white, middle-aged and often middle-class men. Yet investigations are increasingly showing a rising number of teenage boys also becoming involved, abusing girls via the web from their bedrooms.
In total, West Midlands Police has conducted five CSE profiles since 2009, including two last year. None have been made public.
The full scale of the CSE problem in the region has only officially been emerging in recent months, with the police and councils identifying 210 children who had fallen victim or who were at risk of abuse over six months last year.
In October the Mail told how an internal West Midlands Police problem profile from 2012 had shown 75 per cent of known on-street groomers in the West Midlands were Asian, with 82 per cent of victims aged 14 to 16 being white. A report to Sandwell Safeguarding Children Board in 2013 had revealed: “Intelligence suggests that of potential suspects identified, 75 per cent of those known are of Asian ethnicity. This has mirrored other forces’ experiences of known offenders and, as we have seen from the Derbyshire, Lancashire and Rochdale cases, has the potential to impact on trust and confidence within local communities across the West Midlands.”
The report added that 82 per cent of victims were white girls aged between 14 and 16, with 80 per cent having been reported as missing more than once, and 38 per cent having been in care.