"Grooming gangs" refers to organized groups of individuals who target vulnerable children and young people for sexual exploitation. These groups build trust with their victims over time, often using manipulation tactics before initiating abuse. The term can also be interpreted more broadly as an online network facilitating child grooming or an organized criminal network where grooming is a feature.
Several government reviews have highlighted institutional failures in preventing, identifying, and prosecuting group-based child sexual abuse cases, which primarily occurred between the 1990s and 2010s. These failures have led to allegations of governmental and institutional cover-ups. Media coverage has often focused on the ethnic backgrounds of perpetrators, particularly in high-profile cases involving British Pakistani men. However, there is a lack of comprehensive data on the backgrounds of grooming gang members nationally. A 2025 audit noted that the ethnicity data collected for victims and perpetrators of group-based child sexual exploitation was "not sufficient to allow any conclusions to be drawn at the national level". In June 2025, the British government announced a national inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation.
