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The Muslim grooming gang panic is a moral panic alleging that Asian (i.e. South Asian, Pakistani and Muslim) men are sexually abusing young White girls in the United Kingdom. Right-wing and far-right activists, as well as more mainstream individuals, helped popularise the terminology in the 2010s.[1][2][3][4]
Public concerns about South Asian grooming gangs began after multiple high-profile child sex abuse scandals perpetrated primarily by South Asian men, including the Rotherham child sexual abuse scandal in late 2010. It was later exacerbated by the Rochdale child sex abuse case and the Telford child sexual exploitation scandal.[5][3]
A report from the Home Office was unable to prove any link between sexual assault and South Asian ethnicity. White perpetrators, who make up the majority race in the UK, have been shown to be more represented in sexual assault and group-based sexual abuse crimes than any other ethnicity in the United Kingdom.[4][6][7] The report suggests there is likely no connection between ethnic groups and child sexual abuse.[8] Despite the lack of evidence, British media outlets have reinforced the stereotype by disproportionately reporting on South Asian group-based sexual assault crimes at the expense of other similar cases involving White abusers.[3]
The British media's construction of a specifically South Asian notion of hegemonic masculinity began long before the recent spate of high-profile cases of child sexual exploitation and grooming. The Ouseley report on the Bradford race riots (Ouseley 2001),and the Cantle Report on the Oldham, Burnley and Bradford riots (Cantle 2001), focused on cultural difference as the primary causal factor for these events, maintaining that British South Asians and white Britons led 'parallel lives'. Media coverage of the riots described angry young men who were alienated from society and their own communities, and had become entangled in a life of crime and violence, a vision that provided the bedrock for the construction of what Claire Alexander calls the 'new Asian folk devil' (2000).
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was invoked but never defined (see the help page).it is likely that no one community or culture is uniquely predisposed to offending