(Continued)
“… Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a full national public inquiry into what she called the UK's "rape gangs scandal".
But the party has also criticised Musk for "sharing things that are factually inaccurate" and distanced itself from his call for Phillips to be jailed.
Alicia Kearns – who shadows Phillips as the Conservative spokesperson on safeguarding –
told BBC Radio 5 Live Musk had "fallen prone" to sharing things on his X platform "without critically assessing them".
She accused Musk of "drawing away attention from the survivors and from the victims" of rape gangs, and "lionising people like [far-right activist] Tommy Robinson - which is frankly dangerous".
Meanwhile, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage praised Musk as "an absolute hero figure" and "very helpful to our cause" on Friday. The two men met at Trump's Florida retreat last month.
He told the BBC that Musk had not donated to his party, but that "
he's fully in support of us, he wants us to win the next election". He said that Musk "has said he's minded to give us some money if there's a legal way to do it".
… There have been numerous investigations into the systematic rape of girls and young women by organised gangs, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire and Bristol.
Inquiries into Greater Manchester Police's (GMP) handling of historical child sex abuse cases in Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale have also been carried out.
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said tackling grooming gangs was "not something to be politicised".
"We've done this when others were looking in a different direction," Burnham added.
… "There comes a point where we don't need more inquiries, and had Elon Musk really paid attention to what's been going on in this country, he might have recognised that there have already been inquiries," he said.
The
Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA), which published its final report in 2022, described the sexual abuse of children as an "epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake".
It knitted several previous inquiries together alongside its own investigations.
Professor Jay said in November she felt "frustrated" that none of her report's 20 recommendations to tackle abuse had been implemented more than two years later. …”