Our statement against the misinformation around 'grooming gangs'.
In recent weeks, we have seen a spread of misinformation and false 'facts' around the statistics and nature of childhood sexual abuse from Elon Musk and the far-right, which has wrongfully directed a lot of hate towards people of colour and migrants through the narrative of 'migrant gangs', particularly towards Pakistani men.
We want to make a few things clear:
1. Ethnicity does not equal 'abuser'
There is no correlation between your ethnic background/race and a tendency or desire to sexually abuse children (CSA Centre, 2021). If anything, of all convicted cases of childhood sexual abuse in the UK, 91% were white males, where ethnicity was recorded. (National Policing Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme (VKPP, 2024)
2. Grooming gang statistics have been exaggerated.
Sexual abuse and exploitation through gangs does happen, and we stand with all survivors of this. However, the scale of this abuse (5%) is comparatively much smaller than the percentage of abuse happening in domestic spaces (47%), schools (15%) and even the tech industry with the rise of online childhood sexual exploitation (300 million+ in the last year). The statistics around grooming gangs here are being blown out of proportion. (IICSA, CSA Centre, Hydrant programme, We Protect).
3. All genders of people can be survivors of sexual abuse.
A lot of the tweets talk of only "little girls" being survivors of sexual violence. Men, boys and gender-minoritised people can also be survivors of sexual violence, and are so seldom talked about in this discourse. The UK's widest inquiry into childhood seuxal abuse, The Independent Inquiry Intro Childhood Sexual Abuse, found that male survivors accounted for 29% of all reported cases, though given the stigma around disclosing, numbers are likely much higher than the estimate (IICSA, 2022)
4. Stigma fans the flames of misinformation.
A lack of comfort in talking about this issue means that mis-information like this can spread, is more likely to be believed and harder to challenge.
We are tired and disgusted of how often the shock and stigma around childhood sexual abuse is weaponised to further marginalise people of colour and trans communities.
If we need one more emotion in this field, let it be joy and not fear, stigma and hate. In light of all of this news, maybe especially so, we still want to continue to use joy in our messaging to tackle the stigma around talking about childhood sexual abuse.
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To further the sprit of collective action, we are proud to be one of the 60+ organisations in this open letter organised by After Exploitation calling for an urgent shift away from sensationalism and towards survivor support.