PA MediaMulti-billionaire Elon Musk has accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of being “deeply complicit within the mass rapes in trade for votes”.
Mr Musk has revealed a collection of posts on X suggesting Starmer didn’t take care of the grooming gang scandal whereas head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013.
In response, Starmer has accused critics of “spreading lies and misinformation” and claims he tackled prosecutions “head on”.
What’s the grooming gang scandal?
The row between Mr Musk and Starmer centres round a collection of high-profile circumstances the place teams of males – primarily of Pakistani descent – had been convicted of sexually abusing and raping predominantly younger white ladies across the UK.
In 2012 The Occasions newspaper investigated Rotherham grooming gangs, which led to a significant inquiry.
At the very least 1,400 youngsters had been subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, in accordance with a 2014 report written by Prof Alexis Jay.
The report made headlines within the UK and all over the world and led to main debates in Parliament.
Comparable scandals additionally occurred in different cities, together with Oldham, Oxford, Rochdale and Telford, resulting in a nationwide inquiry into little one sexual abuse, which was additionally led by Prof Jay.
The circumstances sparked investigations into alleged failures to correctly deal with the crimes and assist victims.
Was the CPS or Starmer ‘complicit’?
The CPS, an impartial physique, prosecutes felony circumstances in England and Wales.
After the police examine crimes and current their findings, the CPS decides whether or not to prosecute primarily based on proof and public curiosity.
Starmer was appointed head of the CPS in 2008 and held the function for 5 years. He turned an MP in 2015.
The CPS was criticised for a call to not proceed with a prosecution in Rochdale on the premise that it considered the principle sufferer as “unreliable” following an investigation between August 2008 and August 2009.
That call was overturned later by Nazir Afzal in 2011 after being appointed by Starmer because the CPS chief prosecutor for north-west England.
Chatting with ORIONEWS Confirm, Mr Afzal stated that the view of prosecutors to not proceed to trial on the time was “if the police aren’t completely happy that she is going to give credible proof then we’re not completely happy both”.
He went on to say that he had reviewed and reversed the choice as “I believed what she [the victim] was saying”.
However this isn’t the one occasion the place the CPS has confronted criticism.
Prof Jay’s report into the Rotherham circumstances stated the police would typically cite the CPS as being unwilling to prosecute alleged perpetrators, however they stated that it had been “rather more useful” in a while.
A 2013 report from the House Affairs Committee stated that “in contrast to many different official businesses implicated on this problem”, the CPS had “readily admitted that victims had been let down by them and have tried each to find the reason for this systematic failure and to enhance the way in which issues are carried out in order to keep away from a repetition of such occasions”.
It added: “Mr Starmer has striven to enhance the remedy of victims of sexual assault inside the felony justice system all through his time period as Director of Public Prosecution (DPP).”
Maggie Oliver, a former Manchester detective who now campaigns for victims of kid intercourse abuse, instructed ORIONEWS Confirm that the CPS “bear quite a lot of duty for the failures round this problem”, together with bringing insufficient fees and blaming victims.
She added that whereas there was now rather more consciousness across the problem, “in my basis we nonetheless see particular person circumstances subjected to large failures within the methods”.
We’ve got been unable to search out any direct criticism of Starmer personally in any of the experiences on the scandal, nor can we establish any options that he himself made any choices to not prosecute.
How has Starmer responded?
The prime minister has robustly defended his document as the previous head of the CPS, telling journalists he:
- Modified the prosecution method to “problem myths and stereotypes” that had stopped victims from being heard
- Left workplace when the CPS had the best variety of little one intercourse abuse prosecutions on document
- Reopened circumstances that had been closed
- Introduced the primary prosecution of an Asian grooming gang
It’s appropriate that Starmer revised the steerage on little one sexual exploitation in 2013 to make future prosecutions simpler.
Beforehand, victims might not have been considered as credible if they’d not complained instantly, if they’d used medicine or alcohol or if they’d dressed or acted particularly methods.
On little one sexual abuse prosecutions, we discovered CPS figures relationship again to 2007 however the early years are actually solely on archived net pages – as they’re now not on the CPS web site.
They present that the “variety of prosecutions for little one sexual abuse flagged circumstances” did rise from that yr to achieve 4,794 in April 2010 to March 2011 – a peak for Starmer’s time accountable for the CPS.
That complete was subsequently surpassed – there have been practically 7,200 prosecutions in 2016-2017.
ORIONEWS Confirm has requested Downing Road for extra element on the info behind the prime minister’s declare.
ReutersOn reopening circumstances, Mr Afzal stated that the creation of a nationwide panel to revisit circumstances below Starmer had been a hit.
“That panel additionally included – for the primary time ever – exterior representatives. It revisited dozens of circumstances that had been then restarted,” he stated.
What number of little one grooming circumstances had been prosecuted below Starmer?
In defending his document, Starmer referred solely to the broad class of kid intercourse abuse prosecution knowledge.
In the case of little one grooming gangs, there isn’t any single clear knowledge set as a result of no particular offence exists.
As a substitute, offenders will be prosecuted for inflicting or facilitating sexual exploitation, or for committing particular offences corresponding to rape and indecent assault.
Info on little one grooming-related prosecutions seem in Prof Jay’s 2022 report into little one sexual exploitation by organised networks – a government-commissioned report into institutional little one abuse failings revealed in 2022.
The report mentions a number of “vital prosecutions” between 2010 and 2014, together with 35 convictions which befell whereas Starmer was DPP:
- November 2010 – 5 males convicted in Rotherham
- November 2010 – 11 males convicted in Derbyshire
- 2008-2010 – three males convicted in Cornwall
- Might 2012 – 9 males from Rochdale and Oldham convicted
- June 2013 – seven males from Oxford convicted
A Occasions report from 2011 recognized 17 grooming gang prosecutions since 1997.
It stated 14 of them befell through the earlier three years and concerned the on-street grooming of women aged 11 to 16 by teams of males throughout 13 cities and cities.
A report by the Nationwide Police Chiefs’ Council final yr concluded that 5% of kid sexual abuse and exploitation crimes had been group-based – however extra particular figures weren’t disclosed.
ORIONEWS Confirm has despatched a freedom of data request to the CPS asking for a yearly breakdown of prosecutions for little one grooming associated offences.
We’ve got additionally contacted the Ministry of Justice and the House Workplace.
Extra reporting by Lucy Gilder and Gerry Georgieva
