AN ESTIMATE OF the number of victims of so-called “grooming gangs” have resurfaced amid attacks on the British government for child exploitation scandals, including by prominent figures such as Elon Musk.

Cases in which groups of men, mostly of South Asian backgrounds, were convicted of the sexual abuse of vulnerable girls in a number of UK cities between 2010 and 2014 have been brought back to the fore in recent weeks.

The number of known victims and local estimates of further victims is staggering. However, the true number of victims is unknown and some figures being shared are based on a misunderstanding of the known figures, or on misapplications of statistics.

The Journal has previously fact-checked claims that a million children were the victims of these gangs. That number was an estimate by Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, who, in 2015, told The Mirror: “There are hundreds of thousands and I think there could be up to a million victims of exploitation nationwide.”

However, nowhere in the interview did she specify that she was talking only about organised or gang exploitation (though the paper’s headline does imply that).

Champion recently told Press Association that her extrapolation involved scaling up the figures for a “70-year period”, and acknowledged that was a “completely unreliable” estimate.

That figure was one shared among inflammatory and misleading attacks by Elon Musk on the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his government.

Musk claims Starmer’s government failed to protect children during sexual exploitation scandals (that had occurred under previous governments).

Elon Musk launched a campaign on New Year’s Day on X, a social media platform, he owns.

He has called for Britain’s King Charles to dissolve parliament, for Starmer to be jailed, and for the United States to “liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”.

Musk also claimed that “a quarter million little girls were raped” by grooming gangs.

Musk’s figure echoes that put forward by Malcolm Pearson (or Baron Pearson of Rannoch), who has repeatedly made claims that there were “upwards of 250,000 young white girls raped in this century, very largely by Muslim men, usually several times a day for years”.

In a speech in the House of Lords, Pearson referenced “250,000 victims of radical Muslim grooming gangs, which in itself is probably an underestimate”.

However, what is this figure based on? 

A representative for the office of Pearson emailed The Journal to explain how the figure of 250,000 was derived.

The response starts by noting that it is difficult to estimate the number of victims nationally, before stating:

“Professor Jay’s report ‘conservatively’ identified 1,400 child abuse victims during the period 1999 to 2013 out of a Rotherham population of around 255,000. Jayne Senior reckons the figure should be “at least 1,700… and could be up to 2,000 victims”. If we assume the real figure is mid-point 1,700, then 0.07% of the total Rotherham population suffered at the hands of the rape gangs during those 14 years. More, of course, have suffered before and since.

“Extrapolated across the UK, which proportionately has a lower Pakistani but higher Muslim population than Rotherham, the national figure would be 440,000 victims.

“Telford has a population of 170,000 and, from reports, 1,000 victims. Extrapolated across the UK, this would imply 388,000 victims nationally.”

“Oxford has a population of 152,000 and 373 identified victims according to the Safeguarding Board’s Serious Case Review – but with many more hidden and unidentified children who have suffered too, no doubt. Extrapolated, even these conservative SCR figures indicate that there are 162,000 victims nationally.”

“From the above and other evidence, it is safe to assume that there are at least a quarter of a million (250,000) child victims of rape gangs across the UK.”

While this final figure doesn’t have a clear connection to the statistics presented, it may still initially appear reasonable. However, there are many reasons to doubt the accuracy of this estimate.

Both the interpretation of the data and the method of deriving the final figure are seriously flawed.

The data

Pearson cites data from three towns: Rotherham, Telford and Oxford.

For Rotherham, he cites “Professor Jay’s report”, the 2014 independent inquiry by Professor Alexis Jay, a former social worker, into child exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

Its most cited finding comes from the stark opening line of its Executive Summary: “No one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full Inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013.”

However, note that this figure is not about grooming gangs, or white victims, or Muslim or Pakistani perpetrators. Instead, it is an estimate of all sexually exploited children in the Borough.

The definition of CSE is rather involved, but does not require gangs or other organised groups, nor for the victims to be white or the perpetrators to be Asian. 

It can be read in full on page 145 here.

Pearson goes on to cite another estimate in Telford. Again, this estimate comes from a report that looked at all CSE, not just that by organised groups or grooming gangs.

The final figure given is from Oxfordshire, although it suggests a much lower level of CSE abuse than the others.

Again, that report does identify “around 370 children (330 girls) may have been exploited”. Again, this estimate is using from the same definition of CSE that does not require organised groups, grooming gangs, or racial groupings. 

Also to note, that report was looking into abuse in Oxfordshire (with a population of more than 750,000), not, the just city of Oxford. Pearson had based his statistics on the premise that “Oxford has a population of 152,000”.

It should be noted that while all three of the reports noted that many of the abusers were Asian, they did not break down their estimates of victims by the race of the perpetrators.

However, as we will see, even if these figures were correct, there would be serious issues with how they are being applied to the UK as a whole.

There are no estimates in the report for a national figure, nor are there any credible ones available, often due to the fact that there is no separate legal category for “grooming gang” crimes as opposed to other sexual offences.

However, in all cases Pearson is taking figures of all child sexual exploitation and conflating it with the victims of “radical Muslim grooming gangs”, which is a very specific subset.

Statistical errors

A more glaring issue is that there is no reason to think that Rotherham, Telford, and Oxfordshire are typical English areas. They were not randomly selected. The inquiries and reports into these areas were commissioned because they were the location of some of the most notorious child sex exploitation cases.

In other words, Pearson is applying the rate of CSE in known CSE hotspots to the whole of the UK, when it may not have been appropriate to do so.

Can we assume the real rate is low?

The figures of estimated child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, Telford, and Oxfordshire do not indicate a specific figure for the entire United Kingdom, nor do they represent “Muslim grooming gangs” in their area of study.

However, their conclusions are stark and do show startling numbers of serious cases in these areas. 

Similarly, while the 250,000 figure is based on a misreading and misapplication of statistics, the true figure, if it is ever accurately derived, may still be shockingly high. 

It should also be noted that CSE refers to a particular type of child sexual abuse, and many sex crimes against minors do not fall under that category. That should not be read to mean those other crimes are less serious.

A survey published by The Office of National Statistics in 2020 found that about 7.5% of adults in England and Wales had experienced some form of sexual abuse before the age of 16, including about 3.5% of men and 11.5% of women, equivalent to around 3.1 million people. 

However, the estimate of “250,000 victims of radical Muslim grooming gangs” given by Pearson is not backed up by the available data. 

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