Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department has made on its research on the profiling of the perpetrators of child sexual exploitation.

The Home Office has considered evidence from a range of sources including existing research, published and unpublished data, and insight from investigators and safeguarding professionals to better understand the characteristics of group-based child sexual offending. These include the nature and modus operandi of the networks involved, the backgrounds and motivations of individual offenders, and the characteristics of victims. Emerging findings have been shared with relevant partners in law enforcement agencies.

In early 2020 the Government will publish a national strategy, the first of its kind, to tackle all forms of child sexual abuse.

Our new strategy will set out our whole system response to tackling child sexual abuse, including group-based sexual offending drawing on this internal work. It will set out how we will work across government, law enforcement, safeguarding partners and industry to root out offending, protect victims and help victims and survivors rebuild their lives. We will work tirelessly to tackle all forms of sexual abuse; there will be no no-go areas.