OXFORD (UNITED KINGDOM)
Our Sunday Visitor [Huntington IN]
January 31, 2025
By Julie Asher
Groups acting on behalf of abuse victims have urged Britain’s Catholic Church to speak up on a case that sent shockwaves throughout the United Kingdom and respond to fresh claims about the mass rape of children by mostly Muslim “grooming gangs,” being attentive to victims that may come from their communities.
“There’s general shock that no one in authority, such as police officers, social workers or local councillors, has been prosecuted or even disciplined for knowing about these under-age rapes and failing to act,” said Timothy Dieppe, head of public policy for the ecumenical Christian Concern. “Yet even in the church, there’s a reluctance to say anything for fear of being branded Islamophobic. This is disturbing and alarming — it’s as if these children have been sacrificed on an altar of political correctness.”
The London-based campaigner spoke as Britain’s home secretary, or interior minister, Yvette Cooper, announced a new “rapid audit” into the grooming gangs in response to nationwide demands.
Meanwhile, another advocate said many victims were “looking to the church” as a “a place of help” and were “really upset” by its latest silence.
‘Pandemic’ of Sexual Abuse
“When something like this happens, it’s an affront to everyone’s human dignity, and those engulfed by this pandemic of sexual abuse need the church now more than ever,” said Antonia Sobocki, Catholic director of the British-based LOUDFence organization.
“The job of church leaders isn’t just to make the church safe, but to provide a refuge for people everywhere. But there’s clearly an anxiety they’ll be labelled racist if they call this out, or accused of hypocrisy given past abuse accusations against the church itself.”
Claims that gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani descent, had groomed, drugged and raped thousands of girls from disadvantaged backgrounds across Britain were confirmed by local reports in Manchester, Oldham and Telford in 2020-2022. One victim told the BBC in 2024 that as her abuse happened in early 2000s, she was “let down” by police — an allegation to which the police responded with an apology and “profound regret” for “poor service.” The victim told the BBC that she was raped more than 100 times starting at age 12.
In October 2022, a 468-page report was published by child protection expert professor Alexis Jay, after a seven-year Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, or IICSA, received evidence from over 7,000 survivors.
Mandatory Abuse Reporting
However, the report’s 20 recommendations, which included mandatory abuse reporting, were delayed by Britain’s July 2024 parliamentary election, prompting bitter criticism from prominent personalities including U.S. business tycoon Elon Musk, whose social media stir made the case come back to mainstream media news as 2025 kicked off.
Speaking Jan. 6, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was Britain’s chief prosecutor in 2008-2013, rejected calls for a fresh inquiry and accused anti-abuse campaigners of “amplifying what the far-right is saying” by “spreading lies and misinformation” about the grooming gangs.
However, in a change of policy, Home Secretary Cooper told parliament Jan. 16 a three-month national audit, accompanied by five local inquiries, would now look at “cultural and societal drivers” of child sex abuse, as well as “ethnicity data and demographics.”
Asked for a church response, the senior press officer of the bishops’ conference of England and Wales, Fionn Shiner, referred OSV News to “relevant dioceses” affected by the mass abuse.
‘No Catholic Link’ to Grooming Gangs
However, the dioceses of Hallam and Salford did not respond to requests for comment on how parishes had been affected, while Caroline Bletso, press and media relations officer of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, which has faced criticism over its response to abuse, told OSV News Jan. 17 that local church leaders were “not aware of any link to grooming gangs and Catholic communities.”
In his interview, Christian Concern’s Dieppe said many Catholics would share a “sense of outrage” that public figures were still “playing down” the impact of the gangs, insisting they were “just active in a few towns and didn’t victimize that many girls.”
Meanwhile, victim-advocate Sobocki told OSV News she believed the “same rules” for helping victims should “apply to everybody,” and said that her LOUDFence organization had urged Christian communities to speak out when “abuse is everywhere.”
“Our bishops should be sending out a message of comfort and hope to people who’ve suffered — making clear the church is their refuge, whatever their denomination or ethnic background,” the lay Catholic advocate told OSV News.
“The church should be providing a field hospital for them. Anyone needing support or help should be able to get in touch with it as their last line of moral defense.”
Grooming Gangs Active over Decades
Media reports said grooming gangs had been active over decades in at least 50 British towns and cities, resulting in thousands of prosecutions, although the ethnic and cultural background of perpetrators and victims was questioned in a November 2024 police report.
The reports said child abuse crimes were increasing annually across England and Wales, with 107,000 recorded by police in 2022, and 115,489 in 2023.
The bishops’ conference Safeguarding Lead, Bishop Paul Mason, did not respond to a Jan. 17 request by OSV News for a reaction to the grooming gangs controversy.
Dieppe told OSV News most British citizens would back the prosecution of people responsible for “heinous crimes,” as well as “those who ignored them” in ways which were “utterly terrible and wrong.”
He added that Christian Concern and other groups were encouraged that public opinion was now “seeing and talking about what happened,” but said the “moral authority” of churches on sexual abuse had been “massively undermined” by past failures, leaving most church leaders fearful “people will turn on them, if they speak out as firmly and confidently as they should.”
Meanwhile, Sobocki said her LOUDFence organization had grown rapidly in its efforts to “address and heal” damage from abuse, adding that she was currently training as a Eucharistic minister to take holy Communion to victims “still too traumatized to enter a church.”
“But we don’t want to have to choose between practicing our faith and supporting the injured — but it’s very important there should be space in the church for this huge, unrepresented group of people,” Sobocki told OSV News.
Jonathan Luxmoore writes for OSV News from Oxford, England.