The Oxford child sex abuse ring was an alleged group of 22 men who were convicted of various sexual offences against underage girls in the English city of Oxford between 1998 and 2012. Thames Valley Police launched Operation Bullfinch in May 2011 to investigate allegations of historical sexual abuse, leading to ten men being convicted. Upon further allegations in 2015, Thames Valley Police then launched Operation Silk, resulting in ten more different men being convicted and Operation Spur which resulted in two more convictions. The term itself and the investigation has been heavily criticized by Muslims and Left Wing members for being highly racially motivated and Islamophobic. Some have put the blame on media and the police for ignoring such crimes if they really happened for so long Some have even questioned the narrative of grooming gangs as similar events elsewhere in India and Nigeria have instead been blamed as a conspiracy by right-wing Hindus and Christians.
In March 2015, a report revealed that more than 300 children, mostly girls from the city of Oxford, could have been groomed and sexually exploited in the area. It accused the Thames Valley Police, then led by Chief Constable Sara Thornton, of disbelieving the girls and failing to act on repeated calls for help, and Oxfordshire Social Services of failing to protect them despite compelling evidence they were in danger. The report also called for research into why a significant number of perpetrators of child grooming are of "Pakistani and/or Muslim heritage". A Home Office report published in December 2020, however, concluded "research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white. Some studies suggest an overrepresentation of black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending".
Perpetrators
The first seven men included two pairs of brothers with three other men in June 2013. One of the gang was further convicted further in June 2014 along with two other men. Three of the men were further convicted in another trial in January 2019 under another operation named Operation Silk. There were two further groups of men convicted under Operation Silk, eight men in June 2018 and a further two men in February 2020, along with a man who was further convicted. A man was convicted in March 2015 and two cousins convicted in July 2016. Those found guilty include:
Abuse
From 2004 to 2012, the men groomed children from 11-15 years-old from dysfunctional backgrounds who were unlikely to be believed by others living in care homes. They were given presents, plied with alcohol, and introduced to crack cocaine and heroin. After the girls became dependent on the men, they were guarded so they could not escape and threatened that they and their families would be harmed if they tried to leave. The girls were raped vaginally, orally, and anally, sometimes by several men, the abuse occasionally lasting for several days at a time. Some girls were groomed to be prostitutes and taken to guest houses in Bradford, Leeds, London, Slough, and Bournemouth where men paid to have sex with them. The girls were subjected to extreme sexual violence, biting, suffocating, and burning. They were tortured with knives, baseball bats, and meat cleavers and were occasionally urinated upon. One 14-year-old girl was burned with a lighter when she tried to resist having sex. The mother of another girl said that "she had begged social services staff to rescue her [daughter] from the gang", who had "threatened to cut the girl's face off" and "slit the throats" of members of the girl's family.
One girl aged 12 was forced into prostitution. She was abused in various places around Oxford, including a flat, the Nanford Guest House, Travelodge and in Shotover Woods. She frequently contracted chlamydia and was covered in burns from where men had stubbed out their cigarettes. She began to self-harm and described her experiences as "living hell". She said that the men sometimes seemed to be aroused by her crying.
Mohammed Karrar, the ringleader of the gang was "brazen in his exploitation". According to the Guardian, he "acted in the belief that the authorities would never challenge him—something that for years proved to be true." He branded the buttocks of one under-aged victim with his initial, "M", marking her as his property and charged men between £400 and £600 to have sex with her. Karrar visited the girl at her house where she was a carer for her deaf and ill parents. He performed an illegal abortion on the same girl.