London grooming gang victims 'killing themselves' while Sadiq Khan 'turns a blind eye'

Victims of London grooming gangs are killing themselves while "delusional" Sadiq Khan denies the city has a problem, an author and campaigner for children in care has claimed.

Chris Wild, who has spent the past 15 years working in London's care system, said he had first-hand experience dealing with over 40 cases of child sexual exploitation where the authorities took no action.

"I've seen kids committing suicide because nothing's happened," he said.

"I worked in a children's home where four girls were being sexually abused and raped. I remember going through that process of reporting it to the police.

"[I did a] Missing Persons Report, [for] a young girl who had been picked up by grown men in a car in London, driven to a location [and] forced to do things against her will. [She'd] come back to the children's home crying her eyes out.

"She used to soil her pants [to] protect herself so nobody would want to go around that area because it would be seen as unhygienic. That is fear on a different level.

"When [I] report[ed] it to the police they didn't take it seriously. Can you imagine how demoralising that is? You lose faith in your human instinct, everything, you lose faith in humanity.

"When you see it as a care worker, you're willing to do anything to risk your own job to keep her safe. [But] it's not my job to do that."

Wild has been a longstanding critic of official denials that grooming gangs don't exist in London. In June, shortly after the mayor claimed there were "no reports" or "indications" of such groups in the capital, he wrote on X: "When it comes to grooming gangs in London, it's dangerously naive to believe they don't exist."

The best-selling author said his experience showed that the capital was "10 times worse" and "on another level" compared to the rest of the country.

He added: "It's on the rise. The statistics are going up [and] children will continue to be abused because we don't have the right laws or legislations in place. We don't take it seriously.

"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, but we can't keep children safe in our care systems. What does that tell you?"

Wild said he was dismayed by the messages coming from City Hall about grooming gangs and questioned why Sadiq Khan would deny that London has an issue.

He added: "To hear reports from the Mayor's office saying 'but this is not a problem here' show the guy's deluded. You've got to ask yourself the question: 'who are they protecting? What are they protecting?'"

In response to questions on child sexual exploitation, both Khan and the Met have frequently said that drug gangs pose a bigger threat to young Londoners.

And while Mr Wild welcomed the emphasis on broader criminality, he believed that gangs who sexually exploit children should be made to wear the shame their horrific crimes carry.

"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.

"It will be their problem when they end up in prison."

Wild was one of the experts the Express consulted for our investigation into public reports read by Sadiq Khan that appeared to show evidence of grooming gangs.

His verdict was not only that these were examples of child sex abuse rings in London, but just a small sample of many.

Wild's response to a victim case study from a 2016 Met Police inspection report that described a 16-year-old girl being raped over a three-year period by a group of men who would threaten to hurt her if she spoke out was: "Yeah, that's ubiquitous, happening all over London."

Presented with details about another child from Tower Hamlets discussed during the 2022 Grooming Gangs inquiry, who 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."

After being presented with the findings of our investigation, the Metropolitan Police made a remarkable reversal of its previous official stance on grooming gangs by admitting it had a "very significant number" of cases being reassessed as part of an official Home Office grooming gangs review.

In response to the issues raised in this story 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."

A spokesperson for the Met Police added: "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."