Now is the time for action – not just words – to help child victims of sexual exploitation and abuse

This week in parliament I led for the Labour Party on a debate about child “grooming gangs” and the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.

The debate was specifically about a report that the government released in December exploring the characteristics of group-based child sexual exploitation. It concluded that there is no credible evidence that any one ethnic group is over-represented in such crimes.

As someone who worked for years with child victims of sexual exploitation and abuse, this did not come as a shock to me. I have met girls from many different communities, all different classes and backgrounds, who have been passed around by groups of men as if they were their property. In all of the cases I handled, the perpetrators were also from various different groups, communities, and backgrounds.

In my own life I have experienced group-based sexual exploitation - that was not what we called it at the time of course, but I remember my mate being traded to a friend of the man she called her boyfriend. I recall others being asked for sexual favours to pay back the debts of their boyfriends. We didn’t have the language for this in the early 1990s, we conned ourselves that we, the lusted after teenage girls, were the ones who were in charge. We weren’t. We were made to think this was glamourous and grown-up by dangerous adults.

There is no question in my mind, or in the evidence found during the independent inquiry led by Alexis Jay OBE into an era of terrible abuse in Rotherham, that authorities failed to respond adequately to the horrendous cases of rape and grooming in some part out of fear over cultural sensitivities, in other parts an inability to see the victims in front of them for what they were.

The Home Office report concluded that there was no credible evidence that any one ethnic group is over-represented in cases of child sexual exploitation. No one should use specific cases as a political tool. We should be, every day, seeking to undo the culture of silence and fear that allows any child sexual exploitation to occur, in any situation, in any place. That should be our only priority.

We must be really careful that we don’t make this issue so single focused that we once again fail victims if their cases of sexual grooming and gang-related abuse doesn’t fit a stereotype. To think that grooming for sex only happens in one community or that victims all come from one background, would be to completely silence, and once again ignore, victims from all over the country.

Unfortunately, this is already the case. After all of the years of shock and horror over these crimes we are still currently failing child victims of sexual abuse in this country. Throughout the debate Tory after Tory stood up to praise the home secretary, Priti Patel, for having the courage to tackle this issue and to be the tough voice that we need.

Well, let me tell you, behind the rhetoric, the figures do not lie. In fact, since 2016 the total number of prosecutions and convictions for sexual abuse crimes against children has fallen. Not because fewer crimes are being reported you understand, in fact quite the opposite; more children are coming forward. But a stretched police force, caused by years of cuts, a stretched voluntary sector, a dwindling youth service and a crumbling justice system means fewer perpetrators are now facing justice.

The government’s own strategy outlines that in the year ending March 2020 there were some 58,000 police recorded incidences of "contact child sexual abuse". In the year ending December 2019, in only 2,700 of these cases was anyone actually convicted.

This suggests each year, there are tens of thousands of incidents of contact child sexual abuse reported with “no further action” taken. Tens of thousands of cases that fell apart. Some of these potential perpetrators of child sexual abuse might be among the hundreds of thousands of records that have been lost by the Home Office, which doesn’t make me as a parent feel particularly safe.

The government can talk a good game in this area, they make out that without fear or favour they will tackle the perpetrators of child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse. But year after year they have convicted fewer people, yet still expect us to heap praise on them because they are good at acting tough. I'd prefer tough actions.

Patel, in her foreword on the report into group-based child exploitation characteristics, states that some of the "existing research is limited and data collection is poor”. She goes on to express her disappointment in this poor data collection. Well, I couldn't agree more – it is indeed disappointing that data collection is poor.

As someone who tries and fails often to get data out of the Home Office on all sorts of basic things, I truly do share your frustration in your own ability to have collected the right information. Your department and your government, who have been in power for a decade, have done a poor job at collecting vital data in many areas that would assist us in saving the lives of the most targeted and vulnerable. That’s before I even start on the data that they have lost.

The Conservatives have been in power since 2010. Why then, years on, are they not even collecting the right data? The time for talking a good game is over.

In the words of Sammy Woodhouse, a brilliant and brave campaigner and survivor of the Rotherham gang grooming: “I’m personally sick and tired of report after report and nothing actually being done to prevent and tackle exploitation. They know what needs to be done so get on with it already!”

Amen to that.

Jess Phillips is the shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding and Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley