Welsh Conservative leader urged to hand over evidence of grooming gangs in Wales to police

Emily Price

Tory Senedd leader Darren Millar has been urged to hand over any evidence he has of grooming gangs in Wales after police forces said there were “no current widespread issues”.

The Welsh Government released the statement on Wednesday (January 15) in response to claims by the leader of the opposition of a young victim who was “raped 1000 times”.

During a tense FMQs session in the Senedd yesterday, the Tories called on First Minister Eluned Morgan to support a national or Wales-wide inquiry into child sex grooming cases.

The UK Government has faced a slew of attacks in recent weeks over the grooming gang scandal that took place in the north of England in the 2010s under the Conservatives.

Probe

The row was reignited when tech billionaire Musk labelled Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” after she rejected calls for a fresh probe.

In the Welsh Parliament on Tuesday (January 14), Darren Millar said the public needed assurances that both the Welsh and UK Governments were doing “all that they can to prevent young girls in Wales from becoming victims of grooming gangs”.

The Tory leader told the FM that media reporting had shown that young girls had been “recruited by grooming gangs” in south Wales before being “gang-raped and then trafficked to Telford, Hereford and Blackpool”.

He said: “One victim has even said that she was strangled, she was threatened with a knife, and her home was threatened with being burned down.

“She was then raped, I’m afraid to say, First Minister, 1,000 times. She didn’t know the number of perpetrators, because there were so many.”

The Welsh Government says that if Mr Millar has evidence of these claims – he should report it to the police.

A spokesperson said: “We have received assurances from all Welsh police forces that there are no current widespread issues with ‘grooming gangs’ in Wales, although they take child welfare very seriously and have defined processes in place to prevent abuse and support vulnerable children.

“If the leader of the opposition has any evidence to support the very serious claims he made yesterday he should hand it over to the police immediately.”

Failings

We asked for a comment from Mr Millar responding to the Welsh Government’s statement and asked for the details of the case he had raised in the Chamber – but we did not receive a response to our specific questions.

A Welsh Tory spokesperson said Mr Millar was referring to details in a GB News documentary which aired online this week and a Wales Online article from three years about rape-gangs in Swansea uncovered by the Jay Inquiry.

Child protection expert Prof Alexis Jay finished a seven-year probe into historical institutional failings to protect children from sexual abuse in England and Wales in 2022.

Concluding her investigation, she said that the nation had been scarred by an “epidemic that left thousands of victims in its poisonous wake”.

One of the bigger reforms included a recommendation for a child protection authority for England and Wales – but the former Conservative government instead pledged to make existing institutions work better.

Support

Six recommendations in the report were made directly to the Welsh Government.

These included improvements to how data is collected by children’s social care and criminal justice agencies concerning sexual abuse, the introduction of a specific cabinet minister for children and specialist therapeutic support for child victims of sexual abuse.

In April 2023, the Chief Social Care Officer for Wales, Albert Heaney, provided a full response to the Jay Inquiry advising how the Welsh Government would manage each recommendation.

In his letter to the inquiry, he wrote: “You will note we have, where possible, set out a narrative for each recommendation, not least where we have already progressed work in this area.

“The recommendations addressed to the Welsh Government require ongoing vigilance and sustained activity which we will actively pursue over the coming years.

“I have set out our response to each recommendation below and where we have more work to do we intend to fulfil the spirit of the Inquiry intentions.”

A Welsh Conservative spokesperson said: “There is already evidence of child sexual exploitation by gangs in Wales that available in the public domain.

“We owe it to the brave victims who have spoken about their experiences to leave no stone unturned to ensure that we don’t have another Rotherham or Rochdale on our doorstep.

“Simply accepting assurances from the police and local councils without testing those assurances by speaking to young people and other stakeholders is what led to the scandals that have already rocked the UK.”