Child Sexual Exploitation by Organised Networks

Kim Leadbeater Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate on a deeply traumatic but very important subject, which cannot and should not ever be ignored. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for her ongoing work on CSE and for the bravery and commitment she has shown in tackling the subject over a number of years. I know that it has not been easy.

As the IICSA report states, despite receiving a welcome higher profile in recent years, some of the processes in place to identify and deal with child sexual exploitation have created an institutional hesitancy to intervene and take the necessary action to protect children and catch perpetrators. We cannot be hesitant in addressing the issue, and any denial about the scale of child sexual exploitation either nationally or locally must be challenged.

Sadly, child sexual exploitation is not unique to any part of the country or to any community. West Yorkshire police recently charged 42 people with non-recent offences—many of them from my constituency of Batley and Spen. A further 29 individuals have been arrested. I agree with detectives in Kirklees when they urge victims to come forward, knowing that they will be listened to and that the matters they report will be fully investigated by specialist officers. If we are to treat this issue with the seriousness it demands, we must provide additional resources to the police and to social services to investigate historical cases, so that that does not come at the expense of investigating current cases.

Offenders will go where they think children are most vulnerable and open to manipulation, so more national support is needed to help identify perpetrators and victims of online grooming. Justice delayed is justice denied. Currently victims have to wait too long for cases to come to trial. That adds enormous stress during what is already another hugely challenging time for them and it prevents them from getting on with their lives, so the backlog of cases must be dealt with as a matter of urgency. Once the trial is over, victims and survivors should not be left unsupported. Effective long-term post-trial resources need to be put in place within the health and social care systems.

To help communities that have been affected, and where suspects and perpetrators come from, to understand the issues, we need more education programmes and community projects to support both the survivors of CSE and the families of perpetrators and those who are accused of these crimes—an often overlooked group who face their own traumatic and life-changing experiences, though in a very different way. There have been many failings in cases of CSE, and that is simply not acceptable. Although I do feel reassured by the conversations I have had with West Yorkshire police and Kirklees Council during my relatively short time in office that they will leave no stone unturned in their investigations into CSE, we must all continue to work hard to ensure that we learn from the mistakes of the past, and build on the work of the independent inquiry and the Truth Project to find and prosecute the perpetrators and support all survivors of these heinous crimes.