Muslim grooming gang panic

The Muslim grooming gang panic is a moral panic regarding groups of South Asian and Pakistani men that sexually abuse young girls in the United Kingdom. Such groups have become a focus point of right-wing activists and other mainstream actors in the country since the early 2010s, after activists, influential figures and popular news outlets popularized the discredited stereotype of South Asian men who sexually assault underage White girls in Britain.

Statistical evidence has not shown any link between sexual assault and South Asian ethnicity, and White perpetrators have been shown to be more represented in sexual assault and group-based sexual abuse crimes than any other ethnicity in the United Kingdom. Despite the lack of evidence, the trope of White girls being sexually targeted by South Asian men has been routinely reinforced by British media outlets such as The Times, The Daily Mail's Mail Online, The Guardian and The Telegraph by disproportionately reporting on South Asian group-based sexual assault crimes at the expense of other similar cases involving White perpetrators.

Public concerns about South Asian grooming gangs began in the United Kingdom after the Rotherham child sexual abuse in late 2010. It was later exacerbated by the Rochdale child sex abuse case and the Telford child sexual exploitation scandal.

History
Public concerns for South Asian "grooming gangs" began in the United Kingdom following the arrest of five men (one White, twelve Asian) for child sex crimes in November 2010 in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. While other similar crimes have been reported by the British media in previous years, past reports of Asian crimes were comparatively low-profile and less focused on the race of the suspects.

The Rotherham incident was labeled the "Asian grooming case" by The Yorkshire Post in 2010, with the Conservative broadsheet The Times further using the term "on-street grooming" in a 2011 article about the scandal. The case was brought back into public attention in 2012 after The Times reported, based on confidential sources, that public authorities were reluctant to investigate the mostly South Asian suspects in the case due to concerns that doing so would exacerbate community tensions. The report led a growing number of people to believe that there was a widespread trend of sexual abuse of girls in the UK and contributed to a growth of British right-wing groups such as the British National Party and UKIP in later years. Public outrage was further exacerbated when professor Alexis Jay published a report in 2014 which stated that at least 1,400 children were sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. The report, which partially focused on issues related of race, especially in its section titled "Issues of Ethnicity", led the general public to debate the role of race, ethnicity, gender and institutional failures in the facilitation of child sexual abuse.

Following Jay's report, The Daily Express railed against alleged "Muslim gangs" that operated in Rotherham. In an article published by The Telegraph, Allison Pearson criticized the Muslim and Pakistani community for their alleged roles in sexual abuse crimes. In her article, Pearson stated that the "leaders of the Pakistani Muslim community – essentially a Victorian society that has landed like Doctor Who’s Tardis on a liberal, permissive planet it despises – are at pains to deny that the grooming gang's behavior has anything to do with ethnic origin or contemptible attitudes towards women". Another article by The Daily Mail criticized BBC News for not bringing enough attention to the fact that the Rotherham suspects were Asian. Ultimately, both tabloid and broadsheet outlets have focused on the ethnic aspect of Jay's 2014 report, the Rotherham scandal grew to receive international attention and the controversy contributed to the racialization of child sexual abuse in Britain, with South Asian and Pakistani men being perceived as a threat to White and South Asian girls.

Aside from the Rotherham case, other crimes involving group-based sexual assault have also contributed to public concerns about South Asian grooming gangs, such as the Rochdale child sex abuse case and the Telford child sexual exploitation scandal.

Statistics
A study published by the Home Office in 2020 stated that "research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white". The research further added that, although some studies pointed to an over-representation of Black and Asian offenders, it was not possible to conclude that those studies were representative of all group-based crimes. The study also said that it was "difficult to draw conclusions about the ethnicity of offenders as existing research is limited and data collection is poor", and that, "based on the existing evidence, and our understanding of the flaws in the existing data, it seems most likely that the ethnicity of group-based child sexual exploitation offenders is in line with child sexual abuse more generally and with the general population, with the majority of offenders being white."

Disputed statistics
Suella Braverman wrote in a 2023 opinion piece that "grooming gang" members in the United Kingdom were "groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values". In response, the Independent Press Standards Organisation issued a correction stating that Braverman's article was "misleading", since it did not make it explicit that she was talking about the Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford child sexual abuse scandals in specific.

A study published by the Quilliam Foundation, which described itself as conducting a "comprehensive data analysis of all group child-sex offenses committed in the United Kingdom over a period of 12 years", stated that "84% of grooming gang offenders" in the country were Asian. The research was criticized by multiple entities and its authors ultimately removed the word "comprehensive" from its description amid a series of corrections that were made to the study. The study did not disclose its sources, sampling strategy or its inclusion parameters, among other important information. Academic researcher Ella Cockbain called the research "a case study in bad science: riddled with errors, inconsistencies, a glaring lack of transparency, sweeping claims and gross generalisations unfounded its own 'data'".

Etymology
The word "grooming" is loosely used to describe "the tactics used by child sex offenders in their efforts to sexually abuse children", although it has no universal definition. The term "grooming gang" is a media construct and does not correspond to any legal or scientific concept, it is most often vaguely used to describe ethnic groups of child sexual abusers.