Grooming gangs hearings in Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry to begin next year

The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry will examine grooming gangs and the failures of institutions to protect children in care when a new phase begins.

Lady Smith’s inquiry, which began in 2015, will focus on the exploitation of children who were in care at the time of the abuse.

This could include grooming or exploitation which took place outside the child’s placement or foster home.

In February, the Scottish Government ordered a separate inquiry into grooming gangs north of the border with “full investigatory powers”, to be chaired by Professor Alexis Jay.

Phase 11 of Lady Smith’s inquiry will be titled “Protecting children in care in Scotland from abuse: present and future”.

Closing submissions in Phase 10 of the inquiry will begin on Thursday.

Describing the next phase, Lady Smith said it will examine whether government and other institutions failed to protect children from abuse.

Phase 11 will begin later in 2026, with the section on child exploitation starting in early 2027.She said: “The structure of Phase 11 hearings will also allow for some specific themes to be explored.

“For example, later this year we will consider ‘Why children abuse other children’.

“Also, I recently made an announcement in relation to our work regarding the exploitation of children in care and we plan to include it in our presentation of Phase 11.

“By exploitation, I mean a type of abuse in which a single person or groups of people persuade or force a child to engage in sexual or other activity.

“When groups of people do this, they may be referred to as ‘grooming gangs’.

“So long as the exploited child was in care, we can investigate the abuse even if the grooming or the exploitation took place outside the placement or foster home.

“And, we can investigate allegations of abuse which happened before the end of December 2014 and, to be clear, we can investigate abuse which began before and continued after that date.

“We plan to focus on the exploitation of children in care in our Phase 11 hearings in the early part of 2027.”