At least 1,860 foreign nationals were arrested last year over sexual offences against children in England and Wales, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.
And campaigner Dame Jasvinder Sanghera – who has received death threats for speaking out – said she had ‘no doubt’ grooming gangs were continuing brazenly to target youngsters. She demanded a new public inquiry.
The Centre of Migration Control think tank last week published data showing foreign nationals were 3.5 times as likely to be arrested for sex offences as British suspects.
Police made more than 9,000 arrests of foreign nationals for sexual offences in the first ten months of last year in 41 of the 43 forces in England and Wales, more than 26 per cent of the total estimated 35,000 sexual offences arrests, despite foreigners making up just nine per cent of the population.
Now the Mail on Sunday can reveal that the think tank’s freedom of information requests – answered by 22 forces – allows the figures to be broken down for child sex offences by region.
Arrests for child sex offences by foreign citizens were at 660 in London for the first ten months of last year, 309 in the West Midland, 187 in Greater Manchester, 162 in Kent and 105 in Essex.
At least 312 foreign nationals were arrested for sexual offences on children under the age of 13, with 98 in London, 61 in the West Midlands, and 40 in Greater Manchester.
There were more than 265 foreign citizen arrested for creating, possessing or distributing indecent images of children, with 95 taking place in the capital.
Campaigner Dame Jasvinder Sanghera – who has received death threats for speaking out – said she had ‘no doubt’ grooming gangs were continuing brazenly to target youngsters
And at least 67 foreigners were arrested for prostitution-related offences.
Those figures will understate the full extent of the scandal, as they are for just half of the forces, and are for just ten months of the year.
The revelations come as the controversy over grooming gangs of Pakistani heritage targeting white girls shows little sign of abating with Sir Keir Starmer still trying to end off calls for a public inquiry.
Dame Jasvinder, who was shunned by her family aged 16 after refusing an arranged marriage to an older man, founded Karma Nirvana, a charity helping victims of honour-based abuse in the UK, in 1993.
She told the Mail on Sunday: ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times victims have come to me saying they are not being taken seriously because people are worried about community tensions.
‘People are worried about being called a racist. People are worried about treading on cultural ties and and then on the back of that, people have not acted in response to these victims.
‘I’ve spent nearly 30 years trying to get agencies to recognize that this issue has to be dealt with as a safeguarding issue and not an issue you can just tiptoe around because it’s from a different culture.
‘Cultural acceptance does not mean accepting the unacceptable.
‘I’ve sat opposite victims who were harmed by grooming gangs and they have said to me, ‘Jasvinder, these perpetrators will say to us go to the police, but they’re not going to believe you, because we will just say they’ve been racist.’
People fearing being branded racist gives perpetrators power, she added.
‘If perpetrators believe somehow they are untouchable because professionals may not take them as seriously, because they are fearing being called a racist or fearing treading on cultural ties, you’re giving the perpetrators more power.’
In the first ten months of last year at least 131,000 foreign citizens were arrested in England and Wales, accounting for 16.1% of arrests. They also accounted for 26.1% of sexual offences.
Dame Jasvinder said: ‘I’m absolutely horrified and shocked to hear that.
‘The prevalence of offences still being committed implies to me that the deterrent isn’t high enough.
‘Something’s wrong whereby this is an area of crime that isn’t reducing…the deterrent is not working.’
She criticised the government’s decision not to launch a new national inquiry into grooming gangs.
The government has said it would adopt the recommendations made in 2022 by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse led by Professor Alexis Jay (pictured)
The government has said it would adopt the recommendations made in 2022 by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse led by Professor Alexis Jay.
She said the Jay Report does not go far enough in exploring ongoing grooming. She added: ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s still happening.’
On Thursday, Simon Morton, a former police officer who led a grooming investigation in Oxford, told the BBC it is ‘obvious’ grooming is still ‘happening in every city around the country.’
He said that perpetrators are ‘influencing and arranging others to do the same thing’ and ‘guys we couldn’t catch are still out there.’
Dame Jasvinder said: ‘In my community this bigoted culture exists.
‘Men have a significant position in comparison to what women do. I’ve seen that in my own experience.
‘I’m one of seven sisters, and the preference of males to females was pretty obvious to me in terms of how we were treated.
‘They believe we are different and they can harm these individuals because they don’t see them in the same way.
‘My family and mother would say the worst insult of all is that you are behaving like a white woman.’
‘I am Indian by descent. How many of the significant leaders from that community, be Indian, Afghan, Pakistani, have stood up and spoke out for these girls and said ‘we are ashamed to hear that.’
‘I have campaigned for almost 30 years and I can say with conviction I never received support from my community.
‘I’ve had death threats from my community. I’ve had to put panic alarms in my house.
‘The very community where these things happen, people did not stand up and speak out against it. That needs to happen. That outcry from that very community, and we need to hear them telling us what they do to propose a change, because they’re the ones with the power.