There is no evidence of a "Cockbain report" proving Pakistani men commit 80 percent of group rapes. Data states the majority of offenders are white – Fact-Check

 

British Pakistani Grooming Gangs: Myths and Facts

By Riaz Haq
CA

American billionaire and President-Elect Donald Trump's confidante Elon Musk's recent tweets have revived the allegations by the far right that British Pakistani  gangs are mainly responsible for sex crimes against children in the United Kingdom.  Earlier, these claims were repeated by former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman when she said in a television interview that child grooming gangs in the UK were “almost all British-Pakistani”. 

This claim elicited a strong response by British Press regulator   IPSO  which said that Braverman’s decision to link “the identified ethnic group and a particular form of offending was significantly misleading” because the (British) Home Office’s own research had concluded that the offenders were mainly from white backgrounds.

The British Home Office  Report  on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation (December 2021) said that while some high-profile cases involved men of Pakistani ethnicity (2%), the academic literature suggests that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white (88%), according to Professor Tahid Abbas's blog for the  London School of Economics . 

Grooming Gang Sex Crimes Stats - Source Financial Times

Let's examine what the official statistics reveal about sex crimes in England and Wales.  Grooming gangs account for a small fraction (3.7%) of child sexual abuse, even when looking just at group offending. In 2023, there were 4,428 reported offline sexual offenses committed by groups, according to official data for England and Wales published in November, the first time a detailed breakdown was made available. These accounted for 3.7% of all child sexual abuse crimes.  Of these crimes, grooming gangs — organized networks of criminals who target children — accounted for 17%, or 717 crimes, according to the  Financial Times . 

Sex crimes against British children - Source UK Ministry of Justice Via LSE

In terms of ethnicity, Pakistani defendants account for 2% (same as their proportion in the general population) of all defendants charged with sex crimes against children. White defendants make up 88%, proportionally more than the 83% of their numbers in the general population in England and Wales, according to the UK Ministry of Justice. 

Clearly, the British government data doesn't support the allegations made by former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman and tweeted by Elon Musk. So, what is their motivation for it? The only conclusion one can draw is that both Braverman and Musk are motivated by Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism. The demonization of Muslim men has become a common theme in public discourse, with a “Muslim bashing” mentality, particularly among the far-right groups in the West. 

It is important to mention that British Pakistanis who make up just 2% of the general population represent  3.7%  of all  British doctors . 

(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani-American analyst and writer. He blogs at  www.riazhaq.com)