The Scottish Government must urgently set up a national taskforce to dismantle grooming gangs targeting children and vulnerable adults, Ash Regan has said.
The independent MSP raised an urgent question with Justice Secretary Angela Constance on Tuesday evening, a day after a Romanian gang was jailed for crimes including rape and sexual assault of girls as young as 16 in Dundee.
During her question, which was not taken until around 9.30pm thanks to a lengthy debate on land reform, Ms Regan said the Dundee gang proved Scotland was not immune to sexual exploitation by organised grooming gangs.
She said: “Police Scotland deserves real credit for bringing the perpetrators in Dundee – and in Glasgow’s “beastie house” case – to justice.
“But to truly protect the vulnerable we must detect the patterns of organised exploitation before harm happens.
“A Police Scotland FOI and the Government’s own response to my written question expose fundamental gaps in our data systems.
“Police Scotland confirmed they have markers for exploitation but none for group or gang-based abuse.
“The Interim Vulnerable Persons Database has an ‘at-risk’ marker for child sexual exploitation – but cannot flag when that abuse is organised or networked.
“If we can’t even identify grooming gang patterns, how can we dismantle them?”
She urged the Government to commit to establishing a national taskforce and to closing any data gaps to tackle grooming.
Ms Constance said protecting children and vulnerable adults is “an absolute priority” for the Scottish Government and said Police Scotland was already targeting those who abuse and exploit people.
She said: “Right now Police Scotland are reviewing previous investigations as well as current cases of the nature that the member is rightly concerned about and she is also correct to say that there is absolutely never any room for complacency.”
The Justice Secretary said she would raise the data issues with police on Wednesday morning.
During the question, Tory MSP Liam Kerr said he had tried to amend the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform Bill to set up a grooming gangs inquiry but was voted down by SNP and Green MSPs.
He asked Ms Constance if “rejecting the inquiry was a missed opportunity” and urged her to set one up.
Ms Constance rejected Mr Kerr’s claims, saying his amendment would have set up “research at some point further down the line”, rather than an inquiry – something she said she was open to “if that was assessed as a necessity”.
“If there is any reflection that should be done,” she said, “it should be done by Mr Kerr who has been completely disingenuous about the integrity of the majority of this Parliament and has played politics with child abuse and has dangerously gaslit other members of this Parliament and that is a disgrace.”
On Monday, Mircea Marian Cumpanasoiu, Cristian Urlateanu, Remus Stan, Catalin Dobre and Alexandra Bugonea were found guilty in January this year of a range of offences including rape following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
The trial, involving 10 victims, lasted six weeks and came after a police investigation launched in 2021 to target suspected human traffickers operating in the Tayside area.
The group were sentenced when they returned to the High Court in Glasgow on Monday, the Crown Office said.
Ring-leader Cumpanasoiu, described in court as a “smirking, winking pimp”, was given an extended sentence comprising 20 years in custody and four years of supervision upon release.
Urlateanu was sentenced to 18 years in custody followed by a two-year extension period of supervision.
Stan was jailed for 12 years, Dobre for 10 years and Bugonea for eight years.
All five individuals, who are from Romania, have been added to the sex offenders register for an indefinite period.
