NEWNow you can listen to Fox News articles!
Elon Musk has refocused international attention on Britain’s gang scandal this week, promoting a citizen-funded report that accuses the UK government of failing to protect children and young people from organized sexual exploitation.
“Politicians who ignore Britain’s rape must go to jail,” Musk wrote in X on June 16, after Rupert Lowe, MP for Great Yarmouth and leader of Restore Britain, released an independent report of more than 200 pages into the scandal.
The report, commissioned by lawyer Graham Smith and released by Rupert Lowe’s inquiry into private gangs, was funded by public donations. Its Crowdfunder page showed nearly $1.1 million raised from more than 23,000 backers as of Wednesday.
Lowe’s report says many British people no longer trust the government to investigate its failure after years of outrage by gangs in cities including Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oxford and Oldham, where girls were raised, raped, trafficked and abused by gangs of men, including a large number of Pakistani decent, while the police repeatedly failed to help the public.
ELON MUSK WANTS UK’S STEP IN WORLD TO STRENGTHEN Amid GROWING CALLS FOR TESTING: ‘NATIONAL QUESTION NOW!’
Rupert Lowe, British MP for Great Yarmouth, has released an independent report into Britain’s gang scandal. (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
The Lowe report says organized crime gangs “operated with the active or passive approval of government authorities” and describes the scandal as a “rotting stain” on British history. Its recommendations include a comprehensive overhaul of sentencing guidelines, primary detention centers for organized child rape, deportation of foreign nationals convicted of child sexual exploitation, a dedicated Crown Prosecution Service, stronger protection for child witnesses and private prosecutions of officials suspected of failing to exercise restraint.
“If they fail to take appropriate action, we will file a private prosecution to finally get justice,” Lowe wrote in the report.
The report also made claims about the race and religion of the perpetrators, saying that Muslim men, particularly men of Pakistani heritage, were overrepresented in grooming gangs. It says the number of victims could reach at least 250,000 when known local patterns are extrapolated nationally.
A woman stands in her home in England, Britain, on January 8, 2025. She was 14 years old when she was sexually assaulted by a gang in Rochdale. (Hollie Adams/Reuters)
That number has never been confirmed by the British government. Baroness Louise Casey’s government-commissioned 2025 inquiry found serious institutional failings and said authorities often avoided tough questions about race for fear of accusations of racism.
He wrote, “We found that the nationality of the perpetrators is left far behind and has not been recorded in two-thirds of the perpetrators, so we cannot provide any accurate assessment from the data collected nationally.”
However, his report also stated that “Despite the lack of a full picture in national data sets, there is sufficient evidence available from local police data in the three police areas we examined showing disproportionate numbers of men of Asian descent among gang-based child sexual abuse suspects, as well as the large number of perpetrators of Asian ethnicity and serious sexual abuse identified in the analysis of Asian children. in the country, to at least warrant further investigation.”
His research also identified other perpetrators, including White British, European, African or Middle Eastern.
FARAGE BREAKS THE SECRET OF REIMMING AFGHAN REFUGEES TO UK, LOOKS FOR SEXUAL FAILURES AMONG ARRIVALS
A fan wearing a police helmet and holding fake money criticizes the police’s handling of a gang scandal on January 29, 2022 in Telford, England. (Martin Pope/Getty Images)
Emma Schubart, a researcher at the UK-based think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital: “The government should take this report seriously. While some of its headline figures rely on extrapolation and parts of its methodology will rightly be challenged, it raises questions about organized gangs, institutional failure and the number of victims that cannot simply be ignored.”
The British government has already launched a formal national inquiry into gangs in England and Wales. The inquiry was officially launched in April 2026 and is expected to examine institutional failures, local and national responses, potential hidden factors and the role of ethnicity, religion and culture in gang-based child sexual exploitation.
Elon Musk arrives at US President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 4, 2025. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
A Home Office spokesperson told Fox News Digital: “The gang scandal is one of the worst moments and shameful failures in our nation’s history, and we pay tribute to the great courage of those who have shared their experiences in the fight for justice.”
“We are determined to get the victims and survivors the answers they deserve. That is why we have launched the Independent Inquiry on Grooming Gangs with the power of the law to hold institutions accountable for past mistakes, and we are supporting the police with a record amount of money to track down and jail the perpetrators,” said the spokesperson. “There will be no hiding place for those involved.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told Parliament last year that more than 800 previously closed training and child abuse cases had been identified for formal review, with the number expected to rise to more than 1,000. He also said the government would introduce mandatory reporting, tougher prosecutions of perpetrators and the collection of new citizenship and citizenship data.
STATE DEPARTMENT WARNS UK AGAINST CRIMINALS: ‘IMPOSSIBLE VIOLENCE’
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a press conference at Downing Street in London to announce government action to protect children online on June 15, 2026. (Carlos Jasso/Pool Photo via AP)
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has previously dismissed attacks on his handling of the scandal, accusing critics of spreading “lies and misinformation” and saying some were more interested in politics than the victims. Starmer defended his record as director of public prosecutions, saying he had reopened closed cases and changed the way child sexual abuse was prosecuted.
Against Lowe’s report is that Britain is already holding several inquiries into child sex abuse and gangs, including a seven-year independent inquiry into child sex abuse, and that the urgent priority should be to implement recommendations and prosecute offenders rather than launch a similar inquiry.
But others say the very existence of privately funded investigations reflects a deep erosion of public trust. They argue that previous investigations uncovered failures but did not provide sufficient accountability for victims or consequences for officials who ignored warnings.
“Perhaps the most remarkable finding is not in the report itself but how it was funded,” Schubart told Fox News Digital. “The fact that more than 20,000 people contributed to the citizen-sponsored investigation shows a growing lack of hope that government agencies are willing to deal with this issue fully. Whether you agree with all the conclusions or not, that hopelessness should affect policymakers just as this report found.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS PROGRAM
A protester holds a placard accusing the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, of ignoring the Grooming Gang scandal during a rally. Millwall fans joined supporters of other football teams in London in a protest called “Football Lads Against Grooming” in a march to Downing Street. (Photos by Lab Ky Mo/SOPA/LightRocket via Getty Images)
This issue has drawn public criticism from the Trump administration. The State Department has previously warned the UK over its handling of the gang scandal, saying thousands of girls were inexplicably abused before authorities took action.
Lowe said the government’s official inquiry risks becoming another lengthy process that delays accountability, comparing it to other British scandals where an official count emerged a few years later.
