SNP SHAME: GROOMING GANGS INQUIRY BURIED

 

SNP's Disgraceful Cover-Up: Burying the Truth on Grooming Gangs For Over a Decade

The Scottish National Party has enjoyed being in power for almost two decades, yet they now dare to act as if the nightmare of grooming gangs in Scotland is some fresh discovery. They conducted a full, year-long parliamentary inquiry in 2013 and 2014, complete with expert testimony, harrowing evidence, and twenty-eight urgent recommendations. Most of it was shamefully hidden behind closed doors, then quietly shelved and forgotten. Today, they scramble in panic, inventing excuses, minimising the crisis, and pretending no serious investigation ever happened. This blatant evasion is beyond contempt. It is an insult to every victim.

Even their own former MSP, Chic Brodie, who died in 2022, issued a stark warning to his party not to bury this issue. He demanded answers in Holyrood about why the report was gathering dust and accused them of "reinventing the wheel" through inaction. But the SNP brushed him aside. They ignored the evidence. They ignored the victims. Now the scandal erupts again, and they frantically try to smother the flames while downplaying calls for proper accountability.

The Scottish Parliament already undertook a detailed probe into child sexual exploitation across towns and cities. Yet the SNP government stubbornly refuses a full public inquiry now. Ministers reel out flimsy justifications. Justice Secretary Angela Constance even broke the ministerial code by misquoting an expert to dismiss the need for action, then dragged her feet correcting the record.

When UK media sources from the Express and others sought to scrutinise that 2013-2014 Public Petitions Committee work, the truth emerged. Nine out of thirteen sessions on "Tackling child sexual exploitation in Scotland" took place entirely in secret. No minutes released. No transcripts. Nothing for the public to see.

Four further meetings heard public evidence from senior officials, only for discussions to retreat into private with adviser Dr Sarah Nelson, the acclaimed Edinburgh University expert later awarded an OBE before her death in 2025.

The committee finally published a report in January 2014. It exposed damning truths, including frontline professionals paralysed by fear of being labelled "racist" for confronting ethnic minority grooming gangs. This exactly mirrored the catastrophic failures in Rochdale and Rotherham, where political correctness let hundreds of girls suffer rape and abuse.

After twelve months of work, MSPs still could not secure hard figures on the scale of grooming in Scotland. Crucial papers by Dr Nelson remain hidden to this day.

The public evidence alone was devastating. On 30 April 2013, children's minister Aileen Campbell conceded government-commissioned research showed that "although there is a lack of research on child sexual exploitation in Scotland, what is known is consistent with what is known to be taking place in other parts of the United Kingdom".

On 11 June 2013, Daljeet Dagon of Barnardo's Scotland described "a young person in Glasgow who died", adding: "We all knew that she was involved in sexual exploitation, was accommodated and was involved in drugs and alcohol. When she came out of a secure setting, she died within seven days. That is when Glasgow pulled together: we had an inquiry that established the vulnerable young person procedures that are still operating in the city 12 years on."

Daljeet Dagon of Barnardo's

This points to sixteen-year-old Michelle Kearney, who overdosed on heroin in a Glasgow flat in October 1999 after social workers ignored secure care recommendations. Her Fatal Accident Inquiry revealed she had begun working as a prostitute while underage. Today, that tragedy would demand far stronger response.

In the same hearing, deputy convener Chic Brodie challenged: "How do we look at perpetration without either being culturally insensitive or, in case we might create racial tensions, taking no action against abusers?"

Anela Anwar of Roshni replied: "What you are trying to get at, deputy convener, is that we have to admit that yes, across the Asian and African minority ethnic communities there are individuals who exploit young people, as there are in the mainstream white Scottish community.

"Minority communities also need to accept that fact. However, we should not stigmatise or stereotype one specific community as being the only type that will perpetrate child sexual exploitation, because that is not helpful."

She admitted frontline workers often backed away from cases involving minority ethnic perpetrators or victims, terrified of racist accusations.

Senior prosecutors and police gave evidence, yet Operations Cotswold and Dash, the major probes into organised exploitation mainly by ethnic minority men around Glasgow, were never publicly examined. Those operations uncovered 100 to 140 potential victims, some only ten years old. Just four convictions followed, with only two jail terms. One abuser, failed Afghan asylum seeker Javaid Akhond, got six years in 2014 for raping and abusing girls aged twelve, thirteen, and fifteen.

The report's release sparked brief outrage and hollow promises. But the independence referendum swallowed all attention, and vital recommendations were kicked into oblivion.

In October 2014, SNP backbencher John Wilson voiced grave doubts about Scotland's safeguards against a Rotherham repeat. Chic Brodie thundered "we ignore this issue at our peril". He went on: "As an acquiescent back bencher, I am not sure whether I am angry or disappointed... We had a full and comprehensive inquiry that embraced goodness knows how many witnesses. If the report of that inquiry is lying on somebody's office shelf, I would like to understand why, and I want to know why we are reinventing the wheel.

Chic Brodie raised his fears in the country's parliament before his death

"There should be a fairly robust question from this committee as to why the matter is not being given the attention that it deserves. I suspect that we are now reacting to what happened in Rotherham although there are issues on our own doorstep that we need to address."

Over a decade later, with rightful demands mounting for a proper public inquiry into the identical horrors, the burning question stands. Why has the SNP government, across all these years, repeatedly failed to confront this evil? Why do they still feign ignorance and start from scratch? The victims have been betrayed. Scotland has been betrayed. After nineteen years of SNP dominance, this calculated amnesia and cowardice is utterly indefensible.

This craven collapse in the face of hard truths, when any self respecting government would have charged straight at the problem, now forces Scots from every corner to confront one searing question; exactly how many young lives have been wrecked beyond repair by this gutless paralysis? When these weans needed protection more than anything else in their short young lives, SNP ministers were too busy nursing their own tender egos and quaking at the thought of being called names from the perpetrators’ own communities, or worse, they might lose their votes. How sick is that? They chose the warm glow of moral vanity over the cold duty of looking after our weans. Indefensible barely scratches it. It's unforgivable, and the stain won't wash out.