Grooming Gangs and the Politics of Reporting

Three brothers from Sheffield—Amar, Kamar and Kamran Ilyas—were handed a total of 40 years behind bars on June 22, 2026. Their crimes spanned from 2004 to 2008 and involved the sexual abuse of five girls, some as young as twelve. One victim was assaulted by all three siblings, and Amar fled to Pakistan while on bail; he was later convicted in absentia for 20 offences. The case has many hallmarks of what experts call a grooming gang: several men, multiple victims over years, repeated exploitation, and coordinated family effort. Yet prosecutors never labelled it a “grooming gang. ” The three were Pakistani, an ethnicity that appears most often in such cases. In grooming gang scenarios, children are lured through gifts, drugs or false promises of friendship and then handed over to other men for further abuse. Other ethnicities linked to these cases include Iraqi, Bangladeshi, Indian, Iranian and Turkish. Critics argue that a climate of political correctness shields these groups. Media outlets and law enforcement are said to shy away from linking crimes to migrants or Pakistanis, suggesting the issue is a right‑wing conspiracy or that perpetrators are mainly white. The 2018 Huddersfield case shows how authorities have obscured the ethnic makeup of offenders. Twenty men were convicted for more than 120 offences against fifteen girls between 2004 and 2011. The court could not publish details, including ethnicity, until restrictions were eased.

A high‑profile incident involved former EDL leader Tommy Robinson, who was jailed for contempt after livestreaming a case while restrictions were in place. Supporters claimed he exposed a cover‑up, framing his arrest as an attack on free speech. Government training materials for teachers, supplied by GovernorHub, presented a fictional scenario involving men of a specific religion committing violent acts. Staff were told to flag it as “disinformation” and an online safety risk, sparking accusations of propaganda designed to hide the truth. In 2025 a national audit led by Baroness Louise Casey examined child sexual exploitation across the UK. The report highlighted that data were inconsistent and that ethnicity was missing for two‑thirds of offenders. It also found that Pakistani suspects with known ethnicity made up 6. 9% of cases, compared to a 2. 7% share of the population—an over‑representation factor of about 2. 5. The audit criticised authorities for discouraging public reporting to avoid community tension, citing examples from Rotherham, Oxford and other towns where Pakistani men were repeatedly linked to abuse of white girls. Politicians have been accused of downplaying the issue or mislabeling it as a “white problem” to avoid backlash.

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