Newly-obtained documents have revealed the institutional failures behind the horrific rape gangs scandal across Britain.
Journalist Adam Wren joined GB News’ Steven Edginton to explain why grooming gangs are still operating around the nation, how organised crime networks traffic and control vulnerable girls, and why victims face almost insurmountable barriers to justice.
Drawing on newly obtained court transcripts, Mr Wren revealed the scale of institutional failure across policing, social services, and the media and explained much of the truth has remained hidden.
Although the scandal has nabbed headlines since 2024, piling greater pressure onto Labour to launch a national inquiry last April, Mr Wren said the public might be aware that the gangs had existed.
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However, he said the public remains "largely unaware they still exist and are still operating", failing to understand what grooming actually entails.
"They don't understand that the initial gifts, attention and affection very quickly turn to coercion and violence and torture and threats," the journalist explained.
"And there's some of that violence and torture is really horrific and that the threats in some cases are carried out that these people are very dangerous.
"One thing that really goes misunderstood, even by people who are familiar with the topic, is that these aren't grooming gangs - their primary purpose is not to groom these girls.
Adam Wren revealed details of the bombshell court documents
|GB NEWS
"They're really organised crime networks for whom the the grooming and trafficking of these girls is just one facet of what they do, which is drug smuggling, weapons smuggling, money laundering, fraud.
"The grooming is is not just sexual. These girls will be groomed into handling weapons and drugs for them."
He continued: "These aren't isolated gangs. They're often networked. They know each other, and they seem to share a methodology.
"They seem to use the same kind of tactics and even in some cases, the same language, the same kind of words."
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He added the predominant factors appears to be a "very clan-ish, insular, inward group with cultural attitudes vastly different from ours".
"And it reminds me almost of the Italian mafia, in the United States. There's this code of silence within the community that kind of allowed them to operate unheeded.
"And there's a ethnic solidarity that allows them to have extremely high levels of trust within their own group."
The ethnicity of offenders is a "problem", but he claimed it was not solely a "Pakistani problem" but rather an issue of multiculturalism overall.
Calling for more work to be done, he said: "This is even within the people who understand this topic and have followed it and are interested in it.
"There's the idea that the police were negligent, but the truth is, in many cases, the police were complicit. It's not a problem of dereliction of duty."
He claimed the institutional failures were often "glossed over" during the trials, when attempting to establish the facts and evidence.
"There's almost no focus on the failings of the institutions," he fumed. "And one of my great fears is if we overly focus on just the perpetrators, we really are missing the obvious corruption in plain sight in the institutions that's allowed this to happen."
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