27th June 2025 – Following Baroness Casey’s audit on group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE) and abuse (CSA), we have grown concerned by the lack of recognition for CSE support, compared to disproportionate focus on the ethnicity and nationality of victims and perpetrators of CSE in politics and the press. Meanwhile, the government continues to characterise CSE as a ‘group-based’ crime, despite many victims not experiencing CSE in this way.
Nearly 50 survivors, academics, charities and law firms with expertise in exploitation have signed a joint letter to Yvette Cooper, calling for a greater focus on survivors’ needs and the diverse realities of CSE. We explain that, when CSE is oversimplified or stereotyped, professionals and the public are not equipped to spot it.
Dear Yvette Cooper,
We write as charities, survivors, legal professionals, and academics with expertise in modern slavery, human trafficking, and child sexual exploitation (CSE). We are deeply concerned that the government’s current narrative and response to CSE, echoed in both political discourse and media coverage, is dangerously narrow, reductive, and harmful to both survivors and the wider public.
An incomplete picture
Current government framing, which focuses almost exclusively on group or gang-based exploitation, fails to reflect the varied realities of CSE. It erases the fact that many victims are exploited by people known to them: family members, peers, neighbours, or partners. These cases are neither rare nor less severe, yet they are absent in the government’s response to Casey’s findings.
By narrowing public understanding of CSE to just group-based abuse, the government sends a damaging message: that only certain types of CSE “matter”, namely those that fit a particular profile of criminal networks. This ignores the lived experiences of countless victims and survivors, whilst risking a repeat of the very systemic failures the government claims to be addressing. Many survivors have told us that their abuse was not group-based, yet the trauma and injustice they endured was no less real or deserving of redress.
We are alarmed by the government’s apparent disregard for non-group-based exploitation and its devastating impact on CSE victims.
Survivors’ needs still ignored
Despite the growing visibility of CSE, the practical needs of survivors continue to be sidelined. Victims today are having to “prove” their exploitation in order to access safe housing or ring-fenced counselling, and many never get the help they need. Meanwhile, research consistently shows that victims rarely receive compensation, a further blow to those already failed by systems meant to protect them. These are issues which are in the government’s power to address.
Meanwhile, children currently living through sexual exploitation face inconsistent, often inadequate responses, in part due to overstretched and under-resourced children’s services. Without a structural commitment to ensuring their safety and recovery, rhetoric around ‘righting wrongs’ is meaningless.
Stereotyping harms survivors
The disproportionate focus on the ethnicity of victims or perpetrators fuels harmful stereotypes and obstructs justice. Survivors have told us that such portrayals have made them feel invisible or disbelieved when their experiences do not fit the dominant narrative. Over 70 experts, including survivors, academics, and charities, have already warned the Home Secretary that racialised and oversimplified depictions of CSE undermine frontline understanding and response.
CSE is a deeply complex crime. When policymakers promote narrow stereotypes around what perpetrators look like or how they operate, it actively endangers victims whose cases fall outside the “mould.”
Taking action
The government must commit to real, systemic action for survivors. We urge the government to take immediate action to:
- Recognise and respond to all forms of CSE, not just those involving gangs or groups
- Guarantee access to support, including safe and secure housing, mental health services, and compensation, for all victims of trafficking
- Invest in children’s services in order to better protect children at risk today
- Refrain from stereotypical narratives that deter disclosure, undermine identification and harm communities;
- Ensure no CSE survivor is excluded from the government’s review and response to the Casey audit
If the government is truly committed to correcting historic and ongoing failings, it must place rights, recovery, and justice for all victims and survivors at the heart of its response.
Signed,
After Exploitation,
African Rainbow Family,
AFRUCA Safeguarding,
Anti-Slavery International,
Asylum Matters,
Basis Yorkshire,
Black Box Research and Consultancy,
Black Country Women’s Aid,
Duncan Lewis Public Law,
Ella’s,
FACES Luton,
Freedom United,
Good Law Project,
Hibiscus,
Institute of Race Relations,
Refugee Action,
Runnymede Trust,
Secrets Worth Sharing,
Shiva Foundation,
Snowdrop Project,
The Voice of Domestic Workers (VODW),
Tulia,
UK BME Anti-Slavery Network (BASNET),
We Are Survivors,
In addition, this letter is supported by 26 experts with lived experience of CSE, and academics across seventeen universities and research institutions.
After Exploitation 