India, June 17 -- Britain's Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, addressing the House of Commons on Monday, 16 June, unveiled a far-reaching crackdown on grooming gangs following the publication of Baroness Louise Casey's national audit into group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Cooper acknowledged for the first time in Parliament that men of Pakistani heritage were disproportionately involved in some of the country's worst child abuse cases, and condemned what she called a "collective failure" by public institutions to protect vulnerable children.

Her statement came just three days after a jury convicted seven men in Rochdale for the systematic rape and exploitation of teenage girls between 2000 and 2006. The men-taxi drivers and m...