Ethnicity and Grooming
Of our respondents, people who self identified as having been groomed, 271 respondents identified their ethnicity.
Of these:
215 were white (79%)
14 identified as Hispanic/Latino (5%)
20 identified as Asian (7%)
12 identified as black (4%)
The remainder were primarily mixed race/multiracial (4%)
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2021, England and Wales only, people from ethnic minority backgrounds make up 17% of the United Kingdom. So this data more or less fits that pattern, but it’s also very clear that not every respondent was in the UK.
This breaks down as follows:
Black, Black British, Caribbean or African: 4.0% of the population
Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh: 9.3% of the population
White: 81.7% of the population
Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups: 2.9% of the population
Other ethnic groups: 2.1% of the population
The people who self identified as having ben groomed very closely match the same pattern as the general population.
We think it’s fair to say, from the data sample that we have, that groomers don’t pick specifically on a certain ethnic group, despite anything that media reports might suggest.
In line with many of the other characteristics of victims, such as age or marital status, it is becoming clear that no one group is any more or less targeted than any other, with the possible exception of gender (with women the most likely group to be groomed).
Grooming is all about the groomer, not about something the victim is or does.
Lessons learned
After our research was launched, we had gone back and added the ethnicity of victims as data to collect. We didn’t ask the ethnicity of their groomers. This was, at the time, deliberate. There was a lot of anti-Asian feeling following strong publicity around ‘Asian Grooming Gangs’ when we knew that the language used by the media was discriminatory. No-one described Epstein’s operation, for example, as a White Grooming Gang.
Going forward, we will review this decision, particularly as people being groomed for indefinite leave to remain in the UK start to recognise that what has happened is a form of adult grooming and are likely to participate in research. Your thoughts on this are welcomed. (Contact us.)
Note: Our research questionnaire allowed people to self identify. In the odd case this caused confusion, and in others we have had to make assumptions. For example ‘British’ could signify anything, but we assumed whilst collating the data that it meant ‘white British’ on the basis that other ethnics groups would more usually identify, if asked the ethnicity question, as, for example, British Asian or Black British. We assumed ‘Australian’ would mean white Australian on the basis than someone of Italian origin might have self described differently, and someone Aborigine would self identify as Aboriginal. Therefore the data used here should be treated as trends rather than fact.
The further advantage of this data collection is that it has allowed us to see how people self identify in terms of ethnicity, so that future data collection can be more accurate.
