West Yorkshire: FOI (2000) Data on Rapes & Ethnicity

Introduction

To anyone reading, it should be of no surprise that in recent years there’s been huge disclosure surrounding the topic of rape and sexual assault in Great Britain and it’s involvement relating to race, ethnicity and nationality, especially with the recent spikes in both illegal and legal immigration. 

Taking an interest in this subject myself, I’ve took it upon myself to file numerous FOI requests to police forces around the UK in an attempt to get information regarding this matter, as well as the circumstances regarding relationship and age. Getting more information than I expected, I felt it would be worth publishing findings based on this data, in order to give people in political circles/crime studies a clear picture of the nature of this crime. 

Now of course, it is understandable that many will be skeptical of these findings, considering the increase in mistrust towards UK police in recent years. The goal here is merely to present the data in an analytical, informative and unbiased context rather than one that is ideological, how people interpret it is purely their own mind to make up.

General Trends

One of the first forces I submitted to West Yorkshire Police. Initially just requesting information on offender/victim demographics and relationship, the force surpassed my expectations with an entire dataset providing information on recorded rape offences (age of offender/victim, relationship, district e.g.) from 2020 to 2025. 

West Yorkshire remains a fairly diverse county, with percentages (per the 2021 census) at 76.6% White (72.0% White British), 15.9% Asian or Asian British, 3.1% Black or Black British, and 4.5% Mixed/Other. It is heavily urbanised, consisting of Leeds and Bradford in addition to various small towns (Dewsbury, Huddersfield e.g.). These characteristics made the county a relevant source of research. As such, West Yorkshire Police came through more than I anticipated, providing me with a fully detailed dataset containing info on age groups, offender/victim ethnicity, relationship and district occurrence. Using Excel, I was able to generate some useful results.

Ultimately, since this is more of general breakdown of ethnicity rather than nationality, it's not possible to determine how many of these offenders are illegal migrants/”asylum seekers”. The frequent prominent origins of such migrants (Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran e.g.) will most likely sit within the Asian Other, Black African/Other and Arab categories.

Now what is noticeable is the percentage of cases where an offender, victim or both was Unknown or Not Recorded, amounting to an alarming 29-41% of cases in total. While it is fair that many will see this as a case of authorities covering up minority involvement, it’s not really known what causes this, and could be related to numerous factors like victim/offender non-disclosure, early-stage recording practices, police policy on when ethnicity is required, or even data-entry inconsistencies. The only way to determine if systematic under-recording of certain ethnic groups exists to examine the proportion of unknown offenders across districts of differing ethnic diversity.

As we can see, the proportion of cases where offender ethnicity is Unknown doesn't appear to have much of a stark difference, whether diversity is high as in Bradford (38.9% Non-White) or low as in Wakefield (7.0% Non-White). While this still doesn't entirely rule anything out, it also doesn't confirm wholesale that Unknown cases are a result of systematically masking minority offending. The Unknown category (typically between 20% and 35%) remains substancial even when accounting for more personal relationship types (Acquaintance, Family, Partner e.g.), where identity would be readily more identified.

Race and Ethnicity

For many, it's clear that the topic of race/ethnicity is the most important factor regarding this subject, and West Yorkshire Police's dataset was detailed enough in a way to generate offender/victim combinations based on race and ethnicity. After adjusting the data in Excel to account for cases involving multiple offenders and victims (while keeping overall totals consistent), each figure represents a distinct offender–victim ethnic pairing (i.e., one pairing per offender–victim combination), rather than one row equating directly to one case file.

And here's what the results (where both offender and victim ethnicity was known) show…

As we can see, Whites make up the largest category of offenders and victims, with Asians and Blacks following up. This to an extent confirms the left-wing argument of most reported rapists being White males. However, what also can't be ignored amongst Non-White groups is the higher per-capita offending rate, along with a much higher prevalence of interracial offending in which there was 1,667 instances of Minority-on-White assaults, compared to only 331 for the reverse.

Now we'll see how these trends persist across different districts…

Bradford, which for reasons that should be obvious to most reading has the highest proportion of Asian offenders at 38.2%, though with White offenders making just over half of reported offenders.

Calderdale, which is the home of Halifax and Brighouse among other places.

Kirklees, home to the likes of Huddersfield, Batley, and more infamously, Dewsbury.

Leeds, an important inclusion considering it's status as the UK's third most populous city. Unlike London or Birmingham, Leeds remains a fairly White city for the most part (79% per 2021 census), and this is reflected in these stats where they make up 70.5% of reported offenders, abet with disproportionate involvement from Asians and Blacks (the latter having the highest offending proportion here).

Wakefield finally, with the high proportion of White offending owing to it's low level of diversity.

Relationship Trends

Now we shall have a look at relationship patterns. For the most part, the overwhelming majority of reported incidents occur between parties known to each other, with Acquaintances and Partners/Ex-Partners making up the largest categories. Incidents involving Strangers (arguably the most alarming form) only make up between 5% and 7% of cases, though it’s possible a sizeable number could also be in the ‘Unknown’ category.

Now breaking down ethnicity for individual relationships…

As we can see, Familial and Partner/Ex-Partner incidents are overwhelmingly intra-racial, Acquaintance incidents being less so. On the other hand, we witness a different trend with Stranger incidents, essentially the most alarming (and stereotypical) variation of rape in which a victim is attacked by someone completely unknown to them. 

While these incidents appear to be statistically uncommon compared to more domestic or known party-type incidents, there a noticeably higher prevalence of inter-racial offending within these cases, in which minority groups show a high prevalence of out-group victimisation (74-90% against Whites), as opposed to White offenders who offend almost exclusively intra-racially (94%).

Under 18 Victims / Grooming Gangs?

And now comes the real elephant in the room. Many will be wondering about this data in regards to the infamous "grooming gang” scandals that have been exposed across the country in the past several years, with more disturbing findings recently uncovered by the likes of Rupert Lowe. Such scandals have been uncovered within the county, predominately linked to the Asian Pakistani population residing in West Yorkshire.

Ultimately, the data only gives us so much to go on, and considering that police in these scandals have been documented as turning a blind eye out of apathy and political correctness, it is reasonable for one to assume that there will be an undercounting of such instances within this data. If any grooming-related rapes have been recorded here, the only thing to do is to examine relevant trends in victim and offender characteristics involving victims under 18, starting with individual districts.

Now countywide…

As shown, there is a large prevalence of out-group offending when it comes to Asian offenders, with 429 instances of assaults on White Victims (compared to only 19 for the reverse!). This pattern persists when breaking down further to include cases with 2 or more offenders (which will almost certainly include grooming gang-type cases).

Again, we see sizeable Asian-on-White offending, and this likely undercounts the total number of offenders if reports of girls being victimised by many different men is put into consideration. Regardless, this is as deep as the data allows me to explore regarding this scandals.

Misc Trends

Finally, a series of charts detailing other trends, including multiple Offenders/Victims and Offenders aged Under 18.

Conclusion

While I could document more from this dataset, I want to avoid cramming it up to the point where it appears messy, so I've only chosen to highlight the trends that will be of relevant interest for most people. Even before writing up this blogpost, I have received data from many other police forces, some with less information than others. While I am not terminally online enough to put out articles regularly, it is possible I will be writing more about those in the coming months. 

In the meantime, I hope this will serve as useful information