The Mail on Sunday has been instructed to publish a correction by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) for an opinion piece written by Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Braverman had claimed that UK child grooming gangs were “almost all British-Pakistani men”. Although the correction still linked the claim to high-profile cases like Rotherham, it was deemed misleading. A complaint was brought by the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring, which campaigns for “fair, accurate and responsible reporting of Islam and Muslims”.
In her article, Braverman referred to the systematic rape, abuse, and exploitation of young girls by organised gangs of older men. She focused initially on the Rotherham abuse scandal, but went on to assert that the perpetrators behind the “grooming gangs phenomenon” were “groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani, who hold cultural attitudes completely incompatible with British values”. The IPSO concluded that a “direct link between the identified ethnic group and a particular form of offending” was “misleading” where it was not made clear that this referred specifically to the abuse scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford.
Braverman’s claim was checked with her advisers, who had “no concern” about it. A source close to Ms Braverman called the IPSO ruling “perverse” and “clearly a political attack, co-opting IPSO, from the Muslim Council of Britain”. Despite IPSO’s decision, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak outlined plans for specialist officers to help forces tackle grooming gangs. This comes after Baroness Warsi warned that Braverman’s rhetoric had “emboldened racists” and was putting British Asian families at risk.
Critics have questioned IPSO’s effectiveness and its independence from the newspapers it regulates. Some papers, including the Financial Times and the Guardian, declined to take part in IPSO and set up their own independent complaints systems instead. The Muslim Council of Britain has been approached for comment. The final report from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse described the scale of abuse in England and Wales as “horrific and deeply disturbing”. About 7,000 victims of abuse gave evidence to the seven-year inquiry, which was set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal
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