Why did Elon Musk restart the debate about the UK gang rape scandal?

Elon Musk has reopened the national scandal surrounding gangs of men grooming, assaulting and raping women across England.

In dozens of messages posted on his X platform over the past week, he has ranged from including extracts from court transcripts to calling Sir Keir Starmer “complicit in the violation of Great Britain”.

They represent the last intervention from the tech billionaire, who will work in the incoming administration of Donald Trump, in UK business.

What was the scandal?

Musk stated on X that “hundreds of thousands” of “little British girls” were targeted for gang rape and murder.

It is unclear what Musk is basing his claim on. In 2014 Jay report into abuse in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham, led by Professor Alexis Jay, conservatively estimated that 1,400 children had been targeted between 1997 and 2013. Some of them were as young as 11. country

While the first prosecutions for street grooming began in 2010, the number of known victims has reached thousands.

Was there an official cover-up?

Evidence of gangs operating in different towns and cities has emerged slowly – often from court cases and later investigations – and the pattern is often similar.

Local police forces and social services have been repeatedly criticized for failing the victims, for not prioritizing such crimes, either by refusing to believe the children or by blaming them.

Vulnerable children were considered to have brought their situation on themselves, after receiving gifts and attention from the perpetrators.

As a result, many cases were not investigated or not progressed to the Crown Prosecution Service.

In Rochdaletwo whistleblowers – former detective Maggie Oliver and former social worker Sara Rowbotham – repeatedly warned that agencies had turned a blind eye to what was happening despite raising the alarm.

In cases involving gangs of British-Pakistani men, agencies have also been criticized for not acting because of a concern about racist appearances, including in Rotherham.

An independent inquiry into care in the city of Oldham in Greater Manchester, published in 2022, looked specifically at allegations of an orchestrated “cover-up.”

Although he found the claim to be unfounded, he identified several safety failures by local agencies.

What was Starmer’s role?

Starmer led the Crown Prosecution Service between 2008 and 2013, when the scandal first broke.

Musk wrote on X this week that “Starmer must go and must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in British history.”

The allegations that Starmer bears some responsibility for the failures in bringing the grooming gangs to justice stem, in particular, from a case in 2009 when a decision was made not to prosecute the alleged perpetrators in Rochdale. The lawyers believed that the victim was not reliable or credible.

Starmer had been director of public prosecutions for nine months when the decision was made. No evidence suggests he was informed of the details of the case at the time.

In 2011, Nazir Afzal, the new chief prosecutor for North West England at the time, overturned the 2009 decision and nine men were finally convicted.

Afzal later said: “The only way we could bring this case was to admit that we failed these victims when they first filed a complaint in 2008.”

He added: “Keir was 100 per cent behind the decision to admit publicly that we had been wrong in the past.”

He then added: “Since Keir left in 2013, the CPS has gone from being terrible at handling sexual abuse cases to having the highest conviction rate in our history. That would not have been possible without the support, resources and protection that Keir gave me, at a time when it would have been easier to give up”.

Starmer in 2013 revised CPS procedures and guidelines on how prosecutors should deal with grooming cases in an effort to ensure that young victims are not dismissed in the future because of stereotypes they believe undermine its credibility.

Should there be a national inquiry led by the government?

Since the first cases of street grooming gangs began to come to light 15 years ago, several independent local inquiries have been carried out into how they may be operating under the noses of the authorities, including in Rochdale, Manchester, Rotherham and Telford.

It emerged last week that Jess Phillips, the UK minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, had rejected a request made by Oldham council to carry out a national inquiry into gangs. grooming in the city. She said the council should commission a local inquiry instead, as happened in Rotherham and Telford.

National, the Independent inquiry into child sexual abuselaunched in 2015, included an in-depth examination of how local agencies had responded to such criminal networks.

So far, none of their recommendations have been implemented.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said on Sunday the government had not carried out a national inquiry “because there has already been a national inquiry”, adding that “the victims today, tomorrow, next week deserve the full implementation of the . . recommendations”.

The reports of the police inspectorate were also critical in relation to how individual forces dealt with the problem.

“The idea that national inquiries are ever better is challenged,” said Ella Cockbain, associate professor of criminal science at University College London, pointing to the fact that a national inquiry commissioned by the government that cost more than £180 million he had already done.

Why is Tommy Robinson in prison?

Alongside the posts on the grooming scandal, Musk has repeatedly raised the situation of Tommy Robinson, the imprisoned right-wing activist whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

“Why is Tommy Robinson in solitary confinement for telling the truth?” Musk wrote about X on Thursday, adding that he “should be released and those who covered this travesty should take their place in that cell.”

The commenter suggested that he thought Robinson was incarcerated for his public demonstrations about grooming gangs.

Robinson, who has other criminal convictions, was jailed late last year after he admitted contempt of court for repeatedly making defamatory and false allegations against a Syrian refugee in a documentary.

In an interview over the weekend, UK Reform leader Nigel Farage said he would explain to Musk that Robinson was in prison for lying in court rather than exposing criminal gangs.

In response, Musk wrote on X Sunday morning: “I know he’s in jail for contempt of court. . . but there’s no justification for such a long prison sentence or solitary confinement!”