Statement on misinformation regarding the work of Dr Ella Cockbain

There is no such thing as the ‘Cockbain report’.

We wish to clarify that there is no such thing as the “Cockbain report”. Rather, the materials posted online, particularly social media, appear to be generated by third parties based on a book written by Dr Ella Cockbain, a member of staff at UCL. Dr Cockbain’s book, Offender and Victim Networks in Human Trafficking, published in 2018 by Routledge, is an academic work based on her PhD research. This book is not a government report or inquiry as some have suggested online. 

The book examines the trafficking of British children within the UK for sexual exploitation. It takes a case-study approach, focusing on six major police investigations. These investigations started between 2008 and 2010 and primarily dealt with abuse in Telford, Rochdale, Rotherham, Derby, Manchester and Blackburn. 

It is important to note that while a majority of offenders in the cases covered in Dr Cockbain’s book were of Pakistani heritage, the research focused on a specifically (and non-randomly) selected set of cases and the sample size was small. Therefore, it should not be seen as representative of all child sexual exploitation cases or all group-based child sexual exploitation cases in the UK, and the findings should not be treated as generalisable. Unfortunately, numerous social media posts have misrepresented some of the data from the book and used it to make generalisations about offender demographics. 

Other misinformation 

Further, Dr Cockbain’s published commentaries on the topic - which take into account the broader landscape of child sexual exploitation/abuse in the UK - should not be viewed as inconsistent with her findings, as some online posts have suggested.

Misinformation has also spread about Dr Cockbain’s involvement in the two Home Office reports on group-based child sexual exploitation, published in 2020. 

Dr Cockbain was not involved in the writing of either of these reports.