London – British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced on Thursday that there will be a series of new central government-backed local inquiries into years-old allegations of child grooming gangs, weeks after Elon Musk accused British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of handling failings with crimes in a series of tweets. The crimes took place ten years ago when Starmer was the country’s chief prosecutor.

Musk’s tweets targeted Starmer personallysuggesting he should be in prison and that “America should free the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”, pushing the crimes back into the political conversation in Britain.

Starmer defended his record and dismissed the criticism as politically motivated.

“Those who spread lies and misinformation as far and wide as possible are not interested in the victims. They are interested in themselves,” Starmer told reporters after Musk’s tweets earlier this month, without mentioning the tech mogul and a close associate of Donald Trump by name.

In 2012, a newspaper report on grooming led to a major government inquiry, which two years later revealed that at least 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in Rotherham, northern England, between 1997 and 2013. Similar exploitation was discovered in other towns, which led to a national investigation.

The prosecution, led by Starmer between 2008 and 2013, was criticized in the report for not bringing charges in Rochdale because it deemed the victim “unreliable” following an investigation between 2008 and 2009. That decision was later overturned by a Starmer appointee.

“Mr Starmer sought to improve the treatment of victims of sexual assault within the criminal justice system during his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions,” a 2013 Home Affairs Committee report said.

In response to Musk’s tweets and the political pressure they generated, Starmer vigorously defended his record.

“I brought the first major prosecution of an Asian groom gang in this particular case. … it was the first of its kind. We changed, or I changed, the whole approach of the prosecution, because I wanted to challenge, and I did, the myths and stereotypes that prevented those victims from being heard,” Starmer said. “When I left office, we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases prosecuted.”

Starmer initially said further investigations into groom gangs could delay action to tackle child abuse.

“We’re going to go after the victims and what we’ve heard from the victims is that they don’t want to see another national inquiry,” a Starmers spokesman told reporters a week ago.