A quarter of sex offenders luring children off the streets into systematic sexual abuse are young Asian men, the first official report into localised grooming found yesterday.
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) identified 2,379 offenders in a six-month national snapshot of the issue and said that 26 per cent were from Asian backgrounds, mostly men aged 18-24. Between 4 and 6 per cent of the British population as a whole are estimated to be from Asian backgrounds.
Ceop said that its research, commissioned after The Times exposed the scale of the street-grooming problem this year, suggested that 90 per cent of the abuse victims were white girls in their early teens.
Many were in care, had run away from home or played