British MP Rupert Lowe on Monday (June 1) shared the testimonies of multiple survivors of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. A victim recalled being raped by ‘600 or 700 different men over three years’. Another claimed that the perpetrators targeted ‘white girls’. The abusers in the grooming gangs scandal, haunting the UK for decades, have been found to be mostly men of Pakistani heritage
Horrific accounts of sexual abuse linked to the United Kingdom’s “grooming gangs” have emerged. Rupert Lowe, the independent MP for Great Yarmouth, shared graphic testimonies of the survivors in Westminster Hall, the oldest building in Parliament, on Monday (June 1).
I want the world to hear what we heard. pic.twitter.com/2DtCS0QztE
— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) June 1, 2026
“I sincerely urge this Parliament to listen to the testimonies from these brave survivors and to act, to finally act,” he said. As per Lowe, he compiled these accounts of the survivors during his independent inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse.
British MP Lowe read out testimonies of multiple survivors who were sexually abused as children. The accounts reveal severe abuse, alleged police misconduct and racial targeting of the victims, often over years.
One of the survivors revealed her abuser “forced” a liquor bottle “up inside me” when she was a teenager. “He took the bottle of Jack Daniels and he forced it up inside me. He broke the glass. I was about 12 or 13,” she recalled.
In a chilling testimony, another survivor said she was raped by hundreds of men. “I was raped by probably about 600 or 700 different men over three years,” she alleged, recalling that abuse began when she was 13 years old.
A third survivor alleged she was raped by multiple police officers in different parts of the country.
“I was bleeding from both my vagina and my back passage and was so swollen I could not sit down. I told hospital staff my drink had been spiked, and I did not know what had happened because I was too afraid to tell the truth. They did not ask any questions. They gave me tablets and discharged me. I was 15 years old,” alleged another.
Disclosing distressing details, some victims said they were treated like animals. “I remember a man opening the back of a van, and I saw 15 to 20 girls locked in dog cages,” one woman said.
According to another survivor, she was gang-raped and after the assault ended, “the men hit me repeatedly, threatened to find me, kill me and harm my loved ones if I ever told anybody what had happened.”
Another alleged that a perpetrator “put a cigarette out on the baby’s face”.
As per the statement read by Lowe, a survivor claimed that these gangs targeted white girls.
“Race did play a part and motivated the selection or demographic of the victims. Throughout my exploitation, the other girls I encountered or who were abused alongside me were almost exclusively white.”
Another said that a victim got pregnant by a perpetrator whose father was a Muslim cleric. “She had a baby by him, and his dad was an Imam. His dad knew. And he got his son married and said that he wasn’t allowed to see the child. They look after their own community.”
A third survivor recalled that the incidents of sexual abuse increased around festivals. “Things would escalate around Eid and holidays. Parties got bigger, got worse, got more violent. More people involved, more girls involved. The parties were just bigger.”
Another survivor alleged she was teased over her Christian faith. “The main clash that I kind of had with the religion side of it was, I grew up a Christian. I would wear my cross because it was something really, really special to me. It was just used as a way to break me down. They said, ‘Where is your God now? Why has your God forsaken you?’”
The perpetrators used racial comparisons to defend the way they “treated and controlled” women.
According to a separate testimony, “Comments were constantly made suggesting that ‘white girls’ and Christian girls were viewed as having fewer morals or lower value, whereas ‘Muslim girls’ were described by some of the men as having dignity and higher moral standing. These comparisons were used to justify the way I was treated and to further humiliate and control me.”
Years of child sexual abuse by “ grooming gangs” have rocked the UK. Last year, Lowe headed a private investigation that detected “gang-based child sexual exploitation” in at least 85 areas across the UK.
In a statement in August last year, the British MP said the probe found that “rape gangs”, mostly comprising men of Pakistani heritage, have been operating for decades and “far more widespread than thought”.
“Patterns of predominantly Pakistani males, combined with gross negligence from public bodies, are identifiable,” the statement added, accusing authorities of failing to act on the systematic abuse.
The scandal first came to the public attention around 2001 when the names of taxi drivers who allegedly picked up girls from care homes in Rotherham to abuse them were shared with the police and council. The convictions in the case came in 2010 when five men of Pakistani origin were imprisoned for several offences against girls as young as 12 years of age.
Similar systematic abuse of children was reported in 50 other cities across the UK, including Rochdale, Oxford, Telford and Bristol.
As per a 2014 report by Professor Alexis Jay, more than 1,400 children were sexually abused between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham alone. Many of the victims were abducted, raped and trafficked by predominantly British-Pakistani men. Authorities hardly intervened due to fears of being labelled racist.
The UK government’s investigation into these grooming gangs has found that perpetrators are mostly “taxi drivers and market traders of Pakistani heritage”.
Keir Starmer’s government has announced a near tenfold surge in funding for detectives hunting grooming gangs. Last June, his government ordered a national inquiry into organised child sexual abuse. This came after a report by Baroness Louise Casey criticised decades of institutional failure to protect children from these gangs.