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  • 6/17/2025
Baroness Louise Casey has told MPs that authorities "do not look hard enough" to identify and tackle grooming gangs operating across Britain. Speaking to the Parliamentary Committee following the publication of her report, Casey said: "I think people don't necessarily look hard enough to find these children in particular. "We've had growth in the visibility of county lines and child criminal exploitation, at the same time that I don't think child abuse or indeed, child sexual exploitation has gone away. "And certainly from the evidence that we saw during the audit and the visits that we undertook to some police forces, it is clear that it is still happening."WATCH ABOVE.

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00:00So, just to set the context, I'm very conscious this is the Home Affairs Committee,
00:05so it's not like I'm appearing in front of people that don't know some things.
00:09So if I'm a grandmother suck eggs, forgive me.
00:12I'm sure you know a great deal about these subjects, as others don't.
00:16But I think it's important to say that what is called group-based child sexual exploitation,
00:21which is quite a mouthful in itself, is thankfully still rare.
00:28It may be the most heinous end of crimes, but we have to get a sense of the proportionality
00:36of where it fits in that 100,000 crimes of child abuse that have been reported in the last 12 months.
00:43I'm fairly sure that it's still happening today. I think that we can explain that if necessary later.
00:50I think people don't necessarily look hard enough to find these children in particular.
00:57I think that the world of crime is quite complicated. We've had, you know, to quote colleagues in the police,
01:04they are awash with online harm and online exploitation.
01:09We've had sort of the growth in the visibility of county lines and child criminal exploitation,
01:18at the same time that I don't think child abuse or indeed child sexual exploitation has gone away.
01:24And certainly from the evidence that we saw during the audit and the visits that we undertook to some police forces,
01:30it is clear that it is still happening.

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