ANALYSIS: Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley reversed the force’s longstanding stance on London grooming gangs, 24 hours after the deadline to a MyLondon/Express investigation
Met Police investigating ‘several current’ London grooming gangs
It always seemed an absurd stance to take. In a capital city home to 13 per cent of the UK’s population: There are “no reports and no indication” of grooming gangs, according to the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. We have “not seen” them, claimed the Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley.
Despite a barrage of questions from Assembly Members over the last year – Do we have grooming gangs in London? Do we have rape gangs in London? Do we have child sexual exploitation gangs in London? – the line stayed the same: “Not here guv”.
But that abruptly changed in City Hall last week, 24 hours after the force responded to a MyLondon/Express investigation by admitting group-based child sexual exploitation in London is “more varied than other parts of the country”.
Fielding an off-topic question from a Labour assembly member on Thursday (October 16), Sir Mark revealed the Met actually has a “steady flow” and “several live current investigations”, with a “very significant” number of historic case reviews that will cost “millions of pounds a year, for several years” to re-investigate.
Hardly “no indication” then.
To bring this to light, our reporters compiled public record evidence of grooming gang abuse hiding in plain sight, using Inspectorate reports on the Met’s response to child sexual exploitation, and statements given to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) about children in Tower Hamlets.
When we asked Rochdale police whistleblower Dame Maggie Oliver and care expert Chris Wild to review our dossier, they concluded the official position of denying that grooming gangs exist in London was “unbelievable” and “deluded”.
How a Subject Access Request exposed the truth
I knew this already though, because when I published a story about an investigation into an alleged grooming gang involving a child from Hounslow, after months of sending Freedom of Information requests to all 32 London boroughs, I was met with a suspicious amount of delay from the authorities involved.
Suspecting there was something going on behind the scenes, I filed Subject Access Requests (SARs) to see what had been said.
In one of those SARs, a member of the Mayor of London’s press team wrote: “The Met has confirmed there is one ongoing investigation into a case in London. No arrests have been made. Met have confirmed that the investigation has been going on for some time – but they don’t have specifics on timings.”
And so, the line: “There’s no indication that there are grooming gangs in London like those that were found in other parts of the country”, was removed from the press officer’s draft statement.
Proof alone, the Met and the Mayor of London’s public position on grooming gangs in the capital was wrong and police knew.
I think I know why, though.
When it comes to grooming gangs, there is no escaping Asian and Pakistani offenders have been the mainstay of media coverage. The original investigation by The Times focussed on ethnicity, and it has been a dream story for the far-right ever since.
But London was always going to be different.
“The victims are as diverse as the perpetrators,” an expert told me early on in my investigation, an insight that has matched up with our research so far.
Read back through the questions from London Assembly Members Susan Hall and Lord Shaun Bailey though, and you will see ethnicity was never even an issue. They made comparisons to Northern towns like Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham, Telford, but this was, to anyone watching, clearly a reference to the modus operandi rather than heritage.
“People taking young girls and grooming them for sex,” said Hall in one viral exchange with the Mayor.
“When a group of men literally coerced young children to have sex with them,” Hall explained to a senior Met officer.
Why the Mayor and the Met insisted on treating every question about grooming gangs as a question about ethnic minorities, only they will know.
‘We are better at finding it’
The evidence is clear and the experts agree: London has a problem with groups of men (gangs) who coerce children into sex (grooming). Yes, some of it is linked to County Lines, but MyLondon and the Express have uncovered evidence that this type of exploitation goes beyond drug dealers treating kids like commodities.
To be fair on Sir Mark, he basically acknowledged the scale of the issue in February when he was asked why there had been a 56 per cent increase in children at risk of sexual exploitation since September 2024.
“It is definitely largely – and possibly entirely – [that we are] better at finding it,” he said, admitting that the Met’s risk assessment process for missing children had been “too geared to managing down demand and we were not classifying enough as high-risk”.
Essentially, the UK’s largest police force confessed systematic issues with its response to the most vulnerable children. Combine that with the victim-blaming language used by some frontline officers, featured in successive HMIC reports, and the result is toxic.
Since those comments earlier this year, more than 1,200 historic group-based CSE cases have been identified across the country for review, including, in Sir Mark’s own words, a “very significant” number in London.
When we asked the Met, the Home Office, and the National Police Chiefs Council, they all refused to tell us what the figure is.
In her audit published this June, Baroness Louise Casey noted: “We’re in a vicious circle; it is this lack of clarity and transparency which leads to people feeling they have no choice but to call for statutory inquiries… We should expect more of our own public institutions than that they should have to be dragged kicking and screaming by the media.”
Perhaps then, these powerful institutions should take note, and tell Londoners about the scale of a problem that, until last week, did not exist.
How the Met and the Mayor responded to our investigation
We asked the Met to comment on the Commissioner’s change of stance, but Scotland Yard had nothing to add from its previous response to our investigation. A Met spokesperson said: “We understand the very real concern the public have around so-called grooming gangs and treat all allegations of sexual offences and exploitation extremely seriously. “Our data shows the group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation picture in London is more varied than in other parts of the country and does not neatly align with patterns of methodology, ethnicity or nationality seen elsewhere and reported on extensively. “We are utterly committed to protecting vulnerable children and bringing those responsible to justice. There is still much work to be done, including encouraging reporting of offences so we have the fullest possible picture, but we have made significant improvements in the past decade to enable us to do that effectively.” A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: “The Mayor has always been clear that the safety of Londoners is his top priority and nowhere is this truer than in safeguarding children. “Sadiq is committed to doing all he can to protect children in London from organised criminal and sexual exploitation and bring perpetrators to justice. This includes his £15.6million Violence and Exploitation Support Service which provides specialist support to young Londoners who are vulnerable, caught up in or being exploited by criminal gangs in the capital as well as supporting the Met to deliver a new child first approach to safeguarding and enforcement action to tackle county lines. “We remain vigilant to emerging and changing threats and will continue to do everything we can to protect children in the capital from abuse, violence and exploitation in all its forms.” Want to contact Callum about this story? Please email [email protected] or Signal +447580255582 Sign up to our London Crimewatch WhatsApp community for the latest major court updates and breaking news delivered straight to your phone. Sign up HERE. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the MyLondon team. We also treat our subscribers to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don’t like our community, you can check out any time you like. To unsubscribe, click on the name at the top of your screen and choose ‘exit group’. If you’re curious, you can read our privacy notice.
