Rupert Lowe’s Rape Gang Inquiry: The Truth at Last?

The much-anticipated Rape Gang Inquiry Report instigated by Rupert Lowe was published last week. Alas, you might have missed it if you get your news from the mainstream media – in particular the BBC, which Lowe notes, has completely ignored it. Still, according to Lowe at least a million people have clicked through to the report, and indeed his original post on X has garnered almost 50 million views as of today. That is a good start. 

Lowe deserves considerable credit for taking on this mammoth task: in particular, its front-and-centre focus on victims (rather than instructing them on what they should and should not say), its delivery inside six months (as opposed to the government’s timeframe of years), its promise to extend far beyond the publication’s lifetime in defence of future victims, and Lowe’s pledge that “nothing was off the table”, merely the pursuit of truth and justice. Commendation should also be given to tireless campaigner Sammy Woodhouse, who led the inquiry team. As a rape gang survivor herself, Woodhouse would no doubt have been more receptive to victims than others have in the past. 

The most obvious question which springs to mind, is do we actually learn anything new? After all, independent inquiries into Child Sexual Exploitation are ten a penny – and usually worth about as much. As I wrote upon the release of 2022 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (which took a measly seven years to complete): 

“Coming in just shy of £187 million, the report will do well to justify its eye-watering budget, particularly when one considers how many times we have been here before. Reports from Rochdale (2013), Rotherham (2014), Telford (2022), and Oldham (2022), all preached apologies and avowed that ‘lessons must be learned.’ I’d bet at least 50 of my genders they have not been.”

The short answer is yes and no. While it’s fair to say the majority of the data contained in Lowe’s report was already available in the public domain, there is sufficient new material to make the report newsworthy. Beyond that however, there is a palpable sense that Lowe’s inquiry, in and of itself, has turned a corner; that we are actually hearing firsthand accounts and investigation without the usual filters of “cultural cohesion”, the shameful refusal to publish findings “not in the public interest”, or banal obfuscation like lumping all CSE into one, rather than a specific focus on Muslim rape gangs. What makes this report different is not just the data, but the unflinching horror it lays bare. 

Broadly, the new information is as follows: 

1. While previous reports have mainly focussed on specific areas of the UK (Rotherham, Telford, Oxford etc), Lowe’s report claims organised rape gangs operated in at least 149 separate local authority districts (circa 40% of the UK). 
2. The national victim scale estimate is placed at a minimum of 250,000. While this figure is not new (Lord Pearson had previously referenced the extrapolation), it’s now harder to dismiss it as hyperbole, because of the nationwide scale of the practice. 
3. While the oft-derided Quilliam Foundation report of 2017 claimed that 84% of grooming gang offenders were of Pakistani Muslim heritage, the Lowe Report puts the figure at 87% of those convicted in group-based CSE cases bearing distinctively Muslim names. Prominent Muslim reformer Dr Taj Hargey has gone even further, suggesting the true proportion among the gangs could be as high as 95%.
4. The role of Islam: specifically, the doctrine of Muslim superiority, the Koranic justification for the crimes, the enmity towards non-believers, entrenched misogyny, forced marriage, the lack of a minimum age of consent, the perception of female sexuality as inherently dangerous, a system of sex slavery, and a religiously sanctioned social hierarchy. 
5. Survivor-led structure: the inquiry was careful to prioritise the voices and testimony of victims, without cajoling or politically filtering what they wanted to say. 
6. Broader historical timeline: Lowe’s report suggests the issue of Muslim rape gangs stretches back much further to the 1950s, thereby tying it explicitly to post-war immigration and multiculturalism policy.
7. Emphasis on overseas trafficking: the report highlights girls trafficked to Pakistan and the Middle East for continued abuse and Islamic marriage. 
8. Call for private prosecutions and parliamentary naming: Lowe specifically calls for private prosecutions against those involved, and indeed is determined to name names under parliamentary privilege. 

While many of the broad patterns of abuse contained in the Lowe Report were known from previous local inquiries, several of the most harrowing testimonies appear for the first time in a single public document. Again, this report should be commended for its unflinching attention to detail – although (I must warn you here), the following consolidation of witness statements is extremely unpleasant: 

Extreme Physical Torture 

• Girls were locked in dog cages in the back of vans and inside “red rooms” of extreme torture. 
• Victims were tied upside down, whipped, suffocated, urinated on, and had cigarettes stubbed out on their bodies. 
• Objects including keys, baseball bats, bottle tops were forced into girls – even glass bottles (which were sometimes smashed inside them). 
• One girl had a hot iron pressed onto her back as punishment. 
• A perpetrator named Muhammad branded his victim with the letter ‘M’ as a mark of ownership.
• One girl was raped by a dog while men bet on whether it would vaginally or anally rape her.

Murder

• • One girl was strangled to death in a punishment room after talking back; the abusers laughed and told another victim she would never see her again. 
  • A girl was stabbed repeatedly, beaten, then set on fire while others were forced to watch. 
  • A girl was shot in front of a witness. 
  • Victims were told they would be chopped up and fed to pigs if they spoke out. 
  • One survivor was forced to dig her own grave.
  • Cigarettes were stubbed out on a baby while the mother was forced to watch; the baby was then killed.

Trafficking and Extreme Control

• • Girls as young as 5 or 6 were tied up and abused. 
  • One survivor described being put into a van with seven other girls and two boys locked in crates, then taken to be sold. 
  • Victims were forced to participate in the abuse of other children. 

Institutional Failures and Betrayal

• • Even the Chief Inspector of Police was aware of the abuse. 
  • A social worker who tried to report the abuse was gone the next day. 
  • Police told one mother: “You can’t describe them as ‘Asian men’ because that’s racist. You should just be glad your child is being taught a different culture.” 
  • Officers returned victims to the houses where the abuse was occurring and told the perpetrators to “have fun with her.” 
  • Children’s homes became trafficking hubs, with staff failing to stop older men collecting girls at night. 
  • One family was told their daughter’s rape case was dropped on the day of trial because the perpetrator had a “very good solicitor.” She was subsequently found dead alone in her flat at age 33.

Towards the end of the report, Lowe makes the obligatory list of future recommendations. Unlike other reports however, this is not a rehashed version of “lessons must be learnt”, but instead a genuine template for the eradication of this barbaric practice. Broadly speaking, Lowe demands whole-life sentences for organised CSE and automatic deportation of foreign nationals convicted of the practice; mandatory collection and publication of data; institutional accountability in the form of whistleblower protections and penalties for those who retaliate against staff; safeguarding and prevention in the form of increased family involvement in decisions; specialist training on cultural / religious patterns, and the end of the presumption that children can “consent” to sex with adults. 

Perhaps most significantly, Lowe is not content to simply document failure – he intends to do something about it. He pledges to name names under parliamentary privilege (after careful legal advice), and bring about private prosecutions where necessary. Indeed, his report does name some high-profile individuals; accusing them of varying degrees of negligence and possibly connivance. 

Keir Starmer

While Director of Public Prosecutions, it is claimed over 13,000 Child Abduction Warning Notices (often described as “paedophile ASBOs”) were issued to suspected child sex offenders. 

Sadiq Khan

As Mayor of London, Khan has repeatedly denied the existence of Muslim rape gangs operating in the city, describing whistleblower evidence as “politically motivated”. According to campaigner Maggie Oliver, the scale of abuse in London is more catastrophic than that witnessed across the country. Furthermore, Khan has been accused by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp of facilitating a cover-up

Jess Phillips

Despite presenting herself as a stalwart defender of women against misogyny, Phillips has been consistently silent on the ethnic and religious patterns of the rape gangs. Having voted against an inquiry into grooming, she was also so uninterested in the truth that survivors resigned from her victim panel in disgust; condemning the process as a sham. 

Andy Burnham

Again, according to Maggie Oliver, Burnham is accused of focussing exclusively on the failures of the past, with two reviewers resigning from the final phase of his inquiry when they were “blocked” from accessing vital documents by Greater Manchester Police. 

While much of the criticism of senior politicians was already in the public domain, I must reiterate that Lowe has made it clear he intends to go further, using parliamentary privilege to name more individuals, and pursuing private prosecutions where the State has failed. 

As for an official response, the government did finally manage to launch its long-promised statutory inquiry on 13^th April this year – but the process has been painfully slow; taking well over a year from initial announcement to inception. And with a target completion date conveniently set for 2029, I’d give it at least five years (if not ten). 

In closing, I feel compelled to comment on the tenor of the abuse contained in these harrowing 218 pages. Regular readers may infer my position (and for that repetition I apologise), but to the wives, the teachers, the social workers, the police, the judiciary and the parliamentarians who were complicit in this abuse or merely looked the other way, I suggest lengthy jail terms are appropriate. To the men who committed these heinous acts, I can conceive of no punishment too severe. For many, only the reintroduction of the death penalty would feel like justice. And I count myself firmly within their number. 

If a report this damning does not finally force a national reckoning on Muslim rape gangs – including a referendum on the death penalty, then nothing ever will. 

 

Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West and The Frank Report, which you are welcome to subscribe to.

 

If you enjoy The New Conservative and would like to support our work, please consider buying us a coffee – it would really help to keep us going. Thank you!