EXCLUSIVE: Some shocking secrets have emerged from an Express investigation into London grooming gangs.
Zak Garner-Purkis has been investigating London’s grooming gangs (Image: Express)
Shortly after becoming mayor in 2016, Sadiq Khan claimed to be so dismayed by the findings of a report into the Metropolitan Police’s handling of child sexual abuse that he gave it a public rebuke.
“Too often, children in our city have been let down when they are most in need,” he told the Guardian after reading Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary’s withering assessment of the force. “This is simply unacceptable and things must change.”
Amongst the case studies Khan saw in the report was the story of a 16-year-old girl raped repeatedly over a three-year period by a group of men from London.
“If she refused to meet the men, threats would be made that they would hurt her and her family,” the Inspectorate explained.
Another example in the document was of a 13-year-old the police had ruled was at risk of sexual exploitation. She was found alone in a house with three men. But, instead of safeguarding the child, she was arrested and the group of men not even questioned.
Though limited in detail, the patterns of the predators in these case studies are clear, they are the same as the grooming gangs who terrorised Northern towns such as Rochdale and Rotherham.
That’s not my assessment but the view of the country’s leading expert on the topic, ex-police detective Maggie Oliver, who we showed these cases to. She described them as “textbook” and “typical” grooming gang behaviour.
It seems clear cut right?
Well, not for Sadiq Khan. His position, stated publicly, is not only are there “no reports” of grooming gangs in the capital but there is not even an “indication” of their existence.
What I find absolutely astonishing is that the mayor of London can read those stories and then make such a claim.
Even judged by his remarkably low bar of there needing to be an “indication”, these victims clearly cross that threshold.
Were these just cases from 2016 we were talking about perhaps the mayor could be forgiven for somehow losing track of these horrendous stories that once apparently showed him that “things must change.”
But it’s not.
In 2024 Sadiq Khan responded to an inspectorate report on child exploitation by saying that “Met reform is a key priority” for his administration.
The report he was responding to contained a case study of a 15-year-old girl whose social worker reported had been coerced to go to a hotel where “she was given drugs and alcohol and made to carry out sexual acts on men.”
When Maggie Oliver read the details of her case she was definite. “That’s 100% a grooming gang,” she said.
Of course we approached Khan with Oliver’s assessment and the glaring ways these horrible victim testimonies undermine his stance and he responded by ignoring them.
Instead he told us he’d “has always been clear that the safety of Londoners is his top priority and nowhere is this truer than in safeguarding children”.
Just as the police did at the time, Khan has discarded the exploited children from the inspection reports, he’s pretending they don’t exist.
Actually he’s gone further, by using his position to deny the crimes against them and action that enables perpatrators.
I still struggle to believe the brazeness. But if he thinks denials and diversions will continue to work he’s seriously mistaken.
Already his line about indications has been proved untrue by his own force.
Shortly after the Express and MyLondon contacted the Metropolitan Police for comment with this clear public record evidence, its Commissioner appeared before the London Assembly and admitted the force’s position that it had “not seen” grooming gang cases in London was not the case.
Sir Mark Rowley said the Met had a “steady flow” of live multi-offender child sexual exploitation investigations and a “very significant” number of cases in the Home Office’s grooming gangs review.
Khan’s statement no longer holds and a reckoning is coming.
