Overview

• Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told the London Assembly there is a steady flow of live multi-offender child sexual exploitation investigations and a very significant volume of historic cases to review.
• Rowley said re-investigating historic files will cost millions of pounds a year for several years, signaling a major resourcing challenge.
• The Home Office’s Operation Beaconport, overseen by the National Crime Agency, has already identified more than 1,200 closed group-based exploitation cases for review nationwide.
• Journalists from MyLondon and the Express compiled HMIC and IICSA case studies that independent specialists Maggie Oliver and Chris Wild said showed red flags consistent with grooming-gang abuse.
• The Met says London’s group-based child sexual abuse picture is more varied than elsewhere and does not neatly align with ethnicity or nationality patterns reported in other regions.