National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

"Casey report" redirects here. For the 2015 inquiry conducted by Baroness Casey, see Casey inquiry.

The National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, also known as the Casey audit, is a government audit of group-based child sexual exploitation in the United Kingdom.^[1] Prime minister Keir Starmer commissioned Louise Casey, Baroness Casey of Blackstock to conduct the audit in January 2025.^[2] The full report was published on 16 June 2025.^[3][2] As a result of the audit, the government has stated it will create a full statutory public inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation.^[4]

Comments

In her audit, Baroness Casey made extensive criticisms of many aspects of the earlier investigations, and in particular, investigative failings regarding the recording of ethnicity of offenders and identification of victims, and treatment of victims as offenders.^[2][5][6] She found that various authorities had a "culture of denial" about the problem.^[7]

Regarding issues relating to the ethnicity and nationality of offenders, she wrote: "Assertions that the majority of child sexual abuse offenders are White, even if true, are at best misleading. In a population with over of 80% of people of White ethnicity, it should always be a significant issue when people from a White background are not in the majority of victims or perpetrators of crime."^[2][8] The report also says "Instead of examining whether there is disproportionality in ethnicity or cultural factors at play in certain types of offending, we found many examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems."^[2][9] She criticised lack of data collection, stating "flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about 'Asian grooming gangs' as sensationalised, biased or untrue." She examined data for three police force areas, and stated "disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation, as well as in the significant number of perpetrators of Asian ethnicity identified in local reviews and high-profile child sexual exploitation prosecutions across the country... at least warrant further examination".^[10]

Recommendations

The report made twelve recommendations, all of which the government has stated it will implement.^[2][11]

They are to:

1. change the law such that adults who sexually penetrate a child under 16 will automatically be charged with rape, with a "Romeo and Juliet clause" to protect children themselves against prosecution
2. launch a set of targeted national police operations and a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation (CSE) in England and Wales
3. review and disregard the convictions of CSE victims found to have been criminalised instead of protected
4. make collection of ethnicity and nationality data mandatory in CSE investigations
5. enforce and monitor mandatory sharing of information between agencies, to be monitored by multiple orginizations including the forthcoming Child Protection Authority
6. introduce a consistent unique identifier system for children to aid in their identification in CSE investigations
7. upgrade relevant police IT systems, including enforcing the use of these identifiers
8. treat child exploitation cases like serious and organized crime
9. perform data reviews and analysis of a wide variety of data sources relating to CSE
10. commission research into the underlying social drivers for group-based child sexual exploitation
11. regulate the taxi industry more rigorously, including stopping "out-of-area" taxi services^[12]
12. commit to providing sufficient resources to implement the above recommendations over a multi-year period, including regular parliamentary review