A nationwide police operation to track down grooming gang members has been announced by the Home Office.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) will carry out a nationwide operation to target predators who have sexually exploited children as part of a gang and put them behind bars.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “The vulnerable young girls who suffered unimaginable abuse at the hands of groups of adult men have now grown into brave women who are rightly demanding justice for what they went through when they were just children.
“Not enough people listened to them then. That was wrong and unforgivable. We are changing that now.
“More than 800 grooming gang cases have already been identified by police after I asked them to look again at cases which had closed too early. Now we are asking the National Crime Agency to lead a major nationwide operation to track down more perpetrators and bring them to justice.”
The NCA will work in partnership with police forces around the country and specialist officers from the Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce, Operation Hydrant – which supports police forces to address all complex and high profile cases of child sexual abuse – and the Tackling Organised Exploitation Programme.
Their job will be to give survivors, whose cases were not progressed through the criminal justice system, long-awaited justice and prevent more children from being hurt by these vile criminals, the Home Office says.
The operation comes after the government confirmed that the local authorities and institutions who failed to act to protect young people will be held to account for their actions through a National Inquiry to get to the truth of institutional failings, following a rapid review by Baroness Casey.
This new full-powers statutory inquiry will build on the work carried out by Alexis Jay and her Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, but look specifically at how young girls were failed so badly by different agencies on a local level.
