Watch: Cooper says "words not enough" for victims of grooming gangs
The ethnicity of people involved in grooming gangs has been "shied away from" by authorities, according to a new report by Baroness Louise Casey.
The finding comes after the peer was tasked with producing an audit on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse in England and Wales.
The report said ethnicity data is not recorded for two-thirds of grooming gang perpetrators, meaning it is not robust enough to support conclusions about offenders at a national level.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper apologised to victims as she presented the findings to MPs and announced a new national inquiry into grooming gangs.
In the report, Baroness Casey said: "We as a society owe these women a debt.
"They should never have been allowed to have suffered the appalling abuse and violence they went through as children," she added.
On the question of ethnicity, the report said: "We found that the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators, so we are unable to provide any accurate assessment from the nationally collected data".
However, it added that at a local level for three police forces - Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire - there was enough evidence to show a "disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation".
Cooper said: "Ignoring the issues, not examining and exposing them to the light, allows the criminality and depravity of a minority of men to be used to marginalise whole communities."
In a later interview, Lady Casey said the data should be investigated as it was "only helping the bad people" not to give a full picture of the situation, adding: "You're doing a disservice to two sets of population, the Pakistani and Asian heritage community, and victims."
The report concluded that ignorance and a fear of being seen as racist meant organisations tasked with protecting children turned a blind eye to abuse.
"We found many examples of organisations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions or causing community cohesion problems", the report said.
The audit criticised the "failure" of the authorities to "understand" the nature and scale of the problem to date.
"If we'd got this right years ago - seeing these girls as children raped rather than 'wayward teenagers' or collaborators in their abuse, collecting ethnicity data, and acknowledging as a system that we did not do a good enough job - then I doubt we'd be in this place now," the report stated.
PA MediaBaroness Louise Casey led the audit, which has prompted a national inquiry into grooming gangs (file photo)
Cooper told the Commons the government would follow all 12 of the report's recommendations, including suggestions to:
Ensure adults who engage in penetrative sex with a child under 16 "face the most serious charge of rape" instead of lesser chargesLaunch a new national criminal operation overseen by the National Crime Agency (NCA) to tackle grooming gangs and hold a national inquiry that co-ordinates targeted local investigations into abuseReview the criminal convictions of victims of child sexual exploitation and quashing any convictions where the government finds victims were criminalised instead of protectedMake the collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases mandatoryCommission research into the drivers for group-based child sexual exploitation, including the role of social media, cultural factors and group dynamicsBring in more rigorous standards for the licensing and regulation of taxi drivers following cases of them being used to traffic victimsCooper said: "To the victims and survivors of sexual exploitation and grooming gangs, on behalf of this and past governments, and the many public authorities who let you down, I want to reiterate an unequivocal apology for the unimaginable pain and suffering that you have suffered, and the failure of our country's institutions through decades to prevent that harm and keep you safe."
She added: "Baroness Casey's first recommendation is we must see children as children. She concludes too many grooming cases have been dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges because a 13 to 15-year-old is perceived to have been in love with or had consented to sex with the perpetrator."
The report is focused on "group-based child exploitation" by grooming gangs, a crime which is defined as involving "multiple perpetrators coercing, manipulating and deceiving children into sex, to create an illusion of consent".
Fiona Goddard, a survivor of a grooming gang that operated in the Bradford area, told BBC News the "vast majority" of those who abused her "were Pakistani men".
She said: "I do not believe it was just a misunderstanding and not understanding the crime or the victims.
"I think that the crime was allowed to happen, one, because of the race of the perpetrators, and two, because of who the victims were."
Before the publication of the report, the Home Office confirmed that a nationwide policing operation to bring grooming gang members to justice would be led by the NCA.
According to the Home Office, the NCA will work in partnership with police forces to investigate cases that "were not progressed through the criminal justice system" in the past.
Downing Street has said the full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs would look "specifically at how young girls were failed so badly by different agencies on a local level".
A national statutory inquiry is an investigation set up by the government to respond to events of major public concern - in this case grooming gangs - that has legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence.