Ethnic Indian men were among groups of people arrested for sexually assaulting multiple women in exchange of drugs, in according to a report published by the police in Newcastle, United Kingdom. Eighteen people, including one woman, were arrested for being part of grooming gangs in the region that have affected 700 women and girls in northeast England.
The report talked about Operation Sanctuary, which was conducted in Newcastle to investigate such grooming gangs that were targeting children and adult women. The perpetrators, who are mostly South Asian and from ethnic minorities, have received a total of 429 years and three months in prison.
Retired barrister David Spicer conducted the review of the operation that started in January 2014 for the Newcastle Safeguarding Adults and Children Boards and said it was clear that adults as well as children were being “targeted, groomed and exploited,” the BBC reported.
He said: “Vulnerability is not determined by age and it is likely that extensive abuse of vulnerable adults is taking place across the country unrecognized.”
In Newcastle, most of the perpetrators were found to be British-born Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, Iraqi, Iranian or Turkish people. Spicer added that the government needs to research the “profiles, motivations and cultural and background influences of perpetrators of sexual exploitation.”
One of the perpetrators interviewed showed no remorse and “spoke in a derogatory manner about a lack of morals in British girls.”
The 18 people convicted were part of one network that gave 22 women and girls aged 13-25 years drinks and drugs before sexually assaulting them between 2011 and 2014. This investigation was called Operation Shelter and was a small part of the Sanctuary project.
“Practitioners did feel that early responses had the appearance of blaming the victims for their behavior and allocating them responsibility for making bad choices,” the report said, according to the Guardian. The lack of coordination and information sharing has permitted some of these crimes to be repeated and treated as separate incidents.
According to another investigation, 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham over a 16-year period and many of the perpetrators were identified as Asian. The reports by children were not investigated due to “their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist” and in some cases their managers told them not to do so, the Guardian said in another report.