London – British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced on Thursday that a series of new local investigations into years-old child-grooming gangs will be launched with the support of central government, weeks after Elon Musk accused British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of failures to handle crime in a series of tweets. The crimes took place ten years ago, when Starmer was the country's chief prosecutor.
Musk's tweets aimed at Starmer personallysuggesting that he should be in prison and that “America should free the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”, bringing crime back into the political conversation in Britain.
Starmer defended his record and condemned the criticism as politically motivated.
“Those who spread lies and misinformation as far and wide as possible are not interested in the victims. They're self-interested,” Starmer told reporters after Musk's tweets earlier this month, without mentioning the tech mogul and a close associate of Donald Trump by name.
In 2012, a newspaper report about the grooming led to a major government investigation, which two years later revealed that at least 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in Rotherham, northern England, between 1997 and 2013. Similar exploitation was discovered in other cities, which led to a national investigation.
The prosecutor's office, which Starmer led between 2008 and 2013, was criticized in the report for not bringing charges in Rochdale because it believed the victim was “unreliable” following an investigation between 2008 and 2009. This decision was later overturned by Starmer's appointee.
“Mr Starmer has been committed to improving the treatment of victims of sexual abuse in the criminal justice system throughout his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions,” the Home Affairs Committee's 2013 report said.
In response to Musk's tweets and the political pressure they generated, Starmer strongly defended his record.
“In this particular case, I opened the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang … it was the first of its kind. We changed, or I changed, the whole approach of the prosecution because I wanted to challenge and I challenged the myths and stereotypes that hindered the feelings of these victims,” Starmer said. “When I left office, we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases ever.”
Starmer initially said further investigations into carer gangs could delay action to tackle child abuse.
“We will be victim-led and what we've heard from victims is that they don't want to see another national inquiry,” a Starmers spokesman told reporters a week ago.