Books

The grooming gangs scandal is the worst scandal in Britain this century. Predatory men lure vulnerable and often underage girls with promises of love or excitement, frequently hooking them on drugs, before moving on to rape, pimping and trafficking. We will never know exactly how many victims there are, but they number in the tens of thousands.

Almost all of those victims are white; a clear majority of the perpetrators are British Asian, especially Pakistanis from the Mirpur region and their descendants. Even now, though, many people are in denial both about the extent of the scandal, and the ethnic composition of the perpetrators.

Grooming Gangs is the first book about the scandal as a whole. It traces its origins in the second half of the twentieth century before its acceleration in the 1990s and beyond; its extent both in the number of victims and its geographical spread; and how the ‘biraderi’ or clan structure of the Pakistani community allowed it to flourish. It also shows the repeated attempts by parts of the state – from politicians to the police to social workers to teachers – to deny the scandal and to suppress attempts to expose it; and the smearing of those few brave social workers, journalists and politicians who did try to raise it as racists.

Reporter Charlie Peters has been following the story for the last ten years, and has broken countless scoops about it. Based on court transcripts as well as interviews with victims and those who worked with them, Grooming Gangs is the first book tell the whole story of the scandal – a scandal that is yet to end.