‘I’ve worked with grooming gang victims in London – it’s deluded and dangerous to deny it exists’
EXCLUSIVE: Chris Wild, who has written two books about the care system, told MyLondon about a girl who soiled herself to protect herself from sexual exploitation by a group of men in London
11:01, 21 Oct 2025
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The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is “deluded” to say there is “no indication” of grooming gangs in London while the capital’s most vulnerable children are being sexually exploited by groups of men, a care expert has claimed. Chris Wild, an author and national campaigner, made the comments in reaction to public record evidence, compiled by MyLondon and the Express.
Our reporter presented Mr Wild with Metropolitan Police inspection reports from 2016 to 2025, plus evidence about children in Tower Hamlets, given to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in 2019, asking him to assess whether he thought the disturbing accounts involving London kids represented signs of grooming gang activity.
Confronted with a case study from a 2016 Met Police inspection report about a 16-year-old girl who reported being raped over a three year period by a group of men who would threaten to hurt her if she spoke out, Mr Wild said: “Yeah, that’s ubiquitous, [it’s] happening all over London.”
Asked about another child from the Tower Hamlets inquiry that was suspected of being plied with alcohol and raped by a group of men from the age of 13, Mr Wild said: “I would say if you’ve got 80 girls in care, 79 of them will have a story like that.”
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Sir Sadiq Khan at Mayor’s Question Time in City Hall last week(Image: Facundo Arrizabalaga/MyLondon)
Sir Sadiq has previously said there are “no reports and no indication” of grooming gangs like in Rotherham and Rochdale in London. In February, the Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said child criminal exploitation is the focus in London, but he “cannot guarantee” there are no child sexual exploitation groups at large that his officers have “not seen”.
Asked about this stance, Mr Wild said: “I’m constantly vocal about this in London, and to hear reports but the Mayor’s office say: ‘But this is not a problem here’. The guy’s deluded. People who work there are deluded. But you’ve got to ask yourself that question: Who are they protecting? What are they protecting?
“It worries me… and that’s always bothered me… When I’ve worked in London for 15 years, I would say I’ve seen over 30 to 40 cases of children who have been raped and sexually abused and just nothing’s happened.
“I’ve seen kids committing suicide because nothing’s happened. It’s on the rise. The statistics are not going down, they’re going up.
“This is 2025 in England. This is not another part of the world where they’re really struggling economically or financially. We’re one of the richest countries in the world, but we can’t keep children safe in our care system. What does that tell you?”
Days after MyLondon and the Express contacted the Metropolitan Police for a comment on our investigation, the Commissioner appeared before the London Assembly and reversed the force’s longstanding stance it had “not seen” grooming gang cases in London.Answering an off-topic question from a Labour Assembly Member, Sir Mark revealed the force has a “steady flow” of live multi-offender child sexual exploitation investigations, and a “very significant” number of cases that would need to be reinvestigated as a result of the Home Office’s grooming gangs review, requiring “many many many millions of pounds” of investment.
Click the case studies below to read all the evidence.
‘Grooming victim defecated to protect herself’
During an interview at the Central London headquarters of violence against women and girls charity The Vavengers, Mr Wild also disclosed case studies from his own experiences working in London’s care sector, which has included stints in Enfield, Hackney, Croydon, and Camden.
His first-hand accounts include claims of:
- A young girl who was repeatedly taken from a care home by a group of men in a car and made to do things against her will. She resorted to soiling her underwear in an effort to protect herself from the abusers.
- Boys from Albania who were brought to London by criminal gangs, then taken to other parts of the country to be sexually abused by ‘paedophile gangs’. The boys would return ‘dishevelled’ and privately disclose the abuse.
- Girls from London who went missing and were raped by older men for money. They never saw any payment from the criminal gangs organising the abuse.
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When Baroness Louise Casey published her audit on group-based child sexual exploitation in June, London was only mentioned explicitly a few times. The mentions included:
- a reference to ‘live operations’ involving the Met Police, where there was ‘an overlap between child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation’
- a mismatch between the Met’s police reports of contact child sexual abuse (2.77 contact child sexual abuse cases per 1,000 children) and London local authority child in need assessments (1.3 per 1,000 children for child sexual exploitation)
- the Met Police using an alternative definition of child sexual exploitation to the statutory one brought in by the Department for Education (DfE) in response to the last national enquiry
Reacting to the audit at the time, Mr Wild wrote on X: “When it comes to grooming gangs in London, it’s dangerously naïve to believe they don’t exist.” When MyLondon asked him about his comments, Mr Wild said it was because his experience of London showed the picture was “10 times worse” and “on another level” compared to the rest of the UK.
Chris Wild’s response to public record evidence
Chris Wild told MyLondon child sexual exploitation in the capital is ‘ubiquitous’(Image: Facundo Arrizabalaga/MyLondon)
“These cases are not isolated incidents — they are happening across London right now. I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly through my work with young people in and leaving the care system. Vulnerable children, often already failed by the institutions meant to protect them, are being targeted, exploited, and left without justice.
“Each of these statements reflects what frontline workers, youth advocates, and survivors have been shouting about for years — that the systems designed to safeguard children are too often slow, disconnected, and reactive. Reports go uninvestigated, crucial evidence is ignored, and the focus shifts away from protection to blame.
“When a 13-year-old is labelled as ‘streetwise’ instead of being recognised as a victim, we are witnessing a deep failure of understanding and empathy. When a child hands over a phone full of evidence and the case is closed without review, that is institutional neglect. And when multiple victims describe exploitation by groups of men, yet no coordinated strategy or arrests follow, it exposes a broken response system that is putting other children at risk.
“I’ve worked with care-experienced young people across London — in Enfield, Hackney, Croydon, Camden, and beyond — and these patterns repeat themselves. The victims’ stories here are not just believable, they are tragically familiar. The lack of urgency, the missed opportunities, and the misplaced judgment of children’s credibility all point to a system that needs reform from the ground up.
“These cases show what happens when vulnerable children fall through the cracks of fragmented safeguarding and under-resourced policing. Until we start listening, believing, and acting with urgency, London’s children will continue to be exploited while the system looks the other way.”
Mr Wild also stressed sexual exploitation groups in London include “any ethnicity”. Using London’s Albanian gangs as an example, Mr Wild said Albanian boys who come to the UK as unaccompanied asylum seekers follow ‘a script’ which sees them placed under the care of Albanian gang members who then traffick them elsewhere for “drugs, sex”.
While Mr Wild welcomes the focus on wider criminality, because “it’s not just sex and rape and abuse”, he thinks an increased focus on prosecuting gang members for child sexual exploitation offences would have a larger impact on their criminal behaviour.
“Let’s stop giving them this bravado name of gangsters and criminal gangs. They are paedophiles,” said Mr Wild, “If you rape a child, you are a paedophile. And then if you start labelling them in court, putting them on a sex register list as well for the rest of your life, it’s going to be a deterrent.”
‘Stop calling them gangsters. They are paedophiles’
Mr Wild, who was in care in West Yorkshire from the age of 11, believes children in care are seen as “second class citizens” and “dogs are treated better by the RSPCA”. He has written two best selling books to highlight the issues , and he is currently campaigning for:
- Making care the tenth protected characteristic, which should force public bodies to take care issues more seriously and stop discrimination from employers.
- Getting the Government to step in when local authorities are failing, which he argues would cut bills for future taxpayers due to the poor outcomes for care leavers, especially in the justice system.
- Stronger laws around safeguarding children in care. For example changing the wording on current guidance from ‘be alert’ to giving ‘due regard’, which will deter local authorities from failing children due to the increased legal risk.
On what needs to be done in the capital, Mr Wild said: “London in particular, the central government don’t seem to be interested. ‘It’s not their problem’. [But] it will be when these people end up in jail, end up in our hospital wards, in our cemeteries, because it will come at a taxpayer’s cost.”
‘The picture in London is more varied’
A spokesperson for Mayor of London Sadiq Khan (left, pictured with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley) said he remains ‘vigilant to emerging and changing threats’
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: “The Mayor has always been clear that the safety of Londoners is his top priority and nowhere is this truer than in safeguarding children. Sadiq is committed to doing all he can to protect children in London from organised criminal and sexual exploitation and bring perpetrators to justice.
“This includes his £15.6million Violence and Exploitation Support Service which provides specialist support to young Londoners who are vulnerable, caught up in or being exploited by criminal gangs in the capital as well as supporting the Met to deliver a new child first approach to safeguarding and enforcement action to tackle county lines.
“We remain vigilant to emerging and changing threats and will continue to do everything we can to protect children in the capital from abuse, violence and exploitation in all its forms.”
Met Police investigating ‘several current’ London grooming gangs
A spokesperson for the Met Police said: “We understand the very real concern the public have around so-called grooming gangs and treat all allegations of sexual offences and exploitation extremely seriously.
“Our data shows the group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation picture in London is more varied than in other parts of the country and does not neatly align with patterns of methodology, ethnicity or nationality seen elsewhere and reported on extensively.
“We are utterly committed to protecting vulnerable children and bringing those responsible to justice. There is still much work to be done, including encouraging reporting of offences so we have the fullest possible picture, but we have made significant improvements in the past decade to enable us to do that effectively.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The sexual abuse of children by grooming gangs is among the most horrific crimes imaginable, and every allegation must be investigated thoroughly, wherever it leads.
“That is why we have initiated a new policing operation, Operation Beaconport, overseen by the National Crime Agency, which has already flagged more than 1,200 closed cases of group-based child sexual exploitation for review.”
Want to contact Callum about this story? Please email callum.cuddeford@reachplc.com or Signal +447580255582
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