A privately funded inquiry organised by Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party has accused British authorities of allowing organised child sexual exploitation networks to operate across the country for decades, claiming that political sensitivities repeatedly took precedence over protecting vulnerable girls.

The 219-page Rape Gang Inquiry Report is not an official government investigation and did not possess statutory powers to compel witnesses or evidence. Instead, it draws on survivor testimony, whistleblower accounts, court records, previous inquiries, and expert evidence gathered during hearings organised by Restore Britain.

The report examines Britain’s rape gang scandal, a series of cases uncovered in towns and cities across England in which groups of men, largely of Pakistani Muslim heritage, sexually exploited underage girls, often over many years. Previous official investigations in places including Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, and Telford found repeated failures by police, social services, schools, and local authorities to intervene despite numerous warnings.

According to the report, those failures were not isolated incidents but part of a nationwide pattern. The inquiry claims to have identified evidence of grooming gang activity in at least 149 local authority areas across the United Kingdom and argues that organised networks used similar methods regardless of location.

Among the report’s key findings are:

• Grooming gangs operated across much of Britain rather than in a handful of notorious towns.

• Victims were commonly targeted with gifts, alcohol, drugs, and attention before being trafficked and repeatedly abused by groups of men.

• Police, social services, schools, health authorities, and local councils repeatedly failed to act on warning signs and, in some cases, treated victims as the problem rather than the perpetrators.

• A disproportionate number of offenders in major grooming gang cases were of Pakistani Muslim heritage, a pattern the report says authorities were reluctant to discuss openly.

• Fear of accusations of racism and concerns about community relations contributed to inaction from authorities.

• Both Labour and Conservative governments failed to address the problem adequately, despite years of evidence and public warnings.

The report recommends tougher sentences for organised child sexual exploitation, mandatory recording of offender ethnicity, greater accountability for public officials who failed to act, and the deportation of foreign nationals convicted of such crimes.

Its publication comes as Britain’s National Crime Agency continues Operation Beaconport, a nationwide review of historic grooming gang investigations. This week, the agency confirmed that the first batch of previously closed cases had been returned to police forces after reviewers identified potential missed lines of inquiry. Eight police force areas have already been instructed to reopen investigations.

The report is likely to increase pressure on the government’s own statutory grooming gangs inquiry. 

While critics will question the conclusions of a politically organised inquiry, the report’s central argument is that Britain has yet to confront the scale of a scandal that left thousands of victims without protection and many perpetrators beyond the reach of justice.