Last week (16th January 2025) the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced a £10m action plan, which the government say is to tackle grooming gangs and child sexual abuse.
Measures in the action plan include:
- Victims and survivors will be able to ask for their closed cases to be reviewed by an independent criminal justice review panel where their previous investigations were not taken forward to prosecution by the police or Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
- Calling on the National Police Chiefs’ Council to request that officers look again at unsolved and closed grooming gang cases.
- National backing for locally-led inquiries into grooming gangs.
- An audit of existing evidence on grooming gangs, led by Baroness Louise Casey.
The Home Secretary also pledged that by Easter 2025 the government will lay out a clear timetable for taking forward the recommendations in the final Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) report.
Rape Crisis England & Wales comments
There have already been inquiries into group-based offending, which have varied in quality and effectiveness and are often time-consuming and very costly. Inquiries can actually stall progress, with the same issues coming up time and time again.
While we welcome any measures to ensure victims and survivors of child sexual abuse receive justice and support, more concrete actions that make a tangible difference to the lives of survivors should be prioritised. These include:
- Ensuring that those working in child protection are appropriately trained to recognise and respond to child rape and sexual abuse.
- That police are relentlessly pursuing perpetrators and adopting the Soteria way of investigating sexual offences.
- Long-term and sustainable funding for specialist sexual violence and abuse services such as Rape Crisis centres.
It is encouraging to see the Home Secretary set out a timeline for implementing the IICSA recommendations, many of which are complicated and require significant stakeholder engagement.
At the same time, we must acknowledge that our member Rape Crisis centres, who provide specialist support to children and young people who have experienced child rape and sexual abuse, are facing significant financial burdens. Cuts in funding and National Insurance increases are putting an additional strain on centres, many of which are already oversubscribed and under-resourced.
If the government is serious about its plans to offer justice to survivors of child sexual abuse, it must ensure that the services that support them are also adequately resourced.