Revealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangs

A culture of silence that has facilitated the sexual exploitation of hundreds of young British girls by criminal pimping gangs is exposed by The Times today.

For more than a decade, child protection experts have identified a repeated pattern of sex offending in towns and cities across northern England and the Midlands involving groups of older men who groom and abuse vulnerable girls aged 11 to 16 after befriending them on the street.

Most of the victims are white and most of the convicted offenders are of Pakistani heritage, unlike other known models of child-sex offending in Britain, including child abuse initiated by online grooming, in which the vast majority of perpetrators are white.

Northern police forces have investigated gangs of on-street predators for at least 14 years. In the most serious cases, children have been moved around the country in cars and used for sex by older men. This has led to abortions for girls as young as 12. In November, a court heard that when a South Yorkshire victim, aged 13, was examined by a nurse she appeared to have been raped more than 50 times.