Sadiq Khan’s behaviour on this situation quantities to betrayal.
Khan’s evasion denies justice to victims (Picture: Getty)
I requested Mayor of London Sadiq Khan 9 instances in January 2025 whether or not grooming gangs existed in London. The Mayor’s response was to refuse to reply the query and ask me six instances what a grooming gang is. If Sadiq Khan, as Mayor and London’s Police and Crime Commissioner, doesn’t even know what a grooming gang is, how on earth is he, or his workplace for Police and Crime, going to seek out out whether or not they existed in London?
Since my conflict in January final yr with Sadiq Khan at Mayor’s Query Time about grooming gangs, he’s been on the defensive. I requested an easy query – do we now have these gangs within the capital – and his want to evade answering instructed me instantly that there was one thing occurring right here.
Ever since then, I’ve refused to let go: the survivors want justice, and so they want politicians who aren’t afraid to ask the tough inquiries to get solutions.
Due to the laborious work of Zak Garner-Purkis on the Specific, and the investigation he’s been doing to show grooming gangs within the capital, we all know a lot greater than we did in January.
I’ve spoken with him and labored carefully to do what I can to attempt to assist get this data into the general public sphere – but in addition the general public consideration it deserves.
My new report, out this week, explores the historic failures throughout London to sort out baby sexual exploitation and the way London authorities have been asleep on the wheel in addressing these failures.
I trawled via the proof, while listening to from victims who bravely got here ahead, and the image it paints is of a metropolis the place criminality of this type has simply been ignored.
It has been tough, upsetting, and at instances scary – however it needs to be achieved if we’re to get justice for these poor, weak ladies and boys, and cease anybody else changing into a sufferer by the hands of gang baby rapists.
If a grooming gang was working in a lot of London boroughs, it virtually actually wouldn’t have been discovered or uncovered.
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Obfuscation and avoiding the query, and making an attempt to goad his critics into race rows, is just not ok from Sir Sadiq Khan. We’d like solutions, accountability, and honesty concerning the scale and breadth of this insidious evil in our metropolis, if we’re to successfully uproot it.
London have to be a spotlight of the nationwide inquiry if we’re to dig under the floor and look at the historic failures by the police and politicians in our metropolis in tackling this grave situation.
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