Posting on X, Badenoch said: “Trials have taken place all over the country in recent years but no one in authority has joined the dots. 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.”
There have been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of young women by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Rochdale and Bristol.
The sexual abuse of young girls by grooming gangs has fuelled a number of far-right campaigns which have focused on cases of large-scale abuse carried out mainly by men of Pakistani descent.
An inquiry into abuse in Rotherham found 1,400 children had been sexually abused over a 16-year period, predominantly by British Pakistani men.
An investigation in Telford found that up to 1,000 girls had been abused over 40 years – and that some cases had not been investigated because of “nervousness about race”.
In Oldham, an inquiry was set up after rumours spread online that children were being groomed in council homes, shisha bars and by taxi drivers.
The report found there was no evidence of “widespread” child sex abuse in those settings, or of a cover-up by the council, but the review did point out other serious failings among safeguarding services in the area.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA), external, which published its final report in 2022, knitted several of these inquiries together alongside its own investigations.
Professor Alexis Jay, who led the inquiry, said in November she felt “frustrated” that none of its 20 recommendations to tackle abuse had been implemented more than two years later.
She said: “It’s a difficult subject matter, but it is essential that there’s some public understanding of it.
“But we can only do what we can to press the government to look at the delivery of all of this.
“It doesn’t need more consultation, it does not need more research or discussion, it just needs to be done.”