Elon Musk has “politicised” the rape of young girls in the UK in an attempt to attack Keir Starmer, a former health worker who exposed a major paedophile ring has told the Guardian.
Sara Rowbotham, who gathered evidence that led to the imprisonment of nine men in Rochdale, said the tech billionaire had launched a “political swipe” at the prime minister that overlooked the plight of abuse survivors.
The Tesla owner, who will have a key role in Donald Trump’s incoming administration, on Friday called on King Charles to step in and dissolve parliament after Labour rejected a call for a national inquiry into child grooming.
Musk triggered the row on Thursday over Starmer’s handling of child abuse in Oldham after he suggested the prime minister had failed to bring “rape gangs” to justice when he was director of public prosecutions.
Rowbotham, who made hundreds of referrals detailing the abuse and sexual grooming while working for the NHS in Rochdale between 2005 and 2011, said: “What is [Musk’s] motivation for interfering? It seems very political. The person he is trying to go after is Keir Starmer – it is a political swipe that is nothing to do with the women and girls who have been abused time after time.”
Musk, who owns X, formerly Twitter, has used the social media site to post or repost about child grooming in the UK more than 40 times over the past 24 hours.
Several posts are from UK MPs including Reform UK’s Rupert Lowe and the Tories’ Robert Jenrick, while others include a video featuring the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who in October was jailed for 18 months for contempt of court.
On Friday, Musk shared a post asking whether the king “should dissolve parliament and order a general election … for the sake and security” of the UK. He retweeted the X thread with a one-word comment: “Yes.”
The safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, previously said in a letter to Oldham council that instead of the government leading an investigation, Oldham must follow in the footsteps of other towns such as Rotherham and Telford and commission its own inquiry into the historical abuse of children.
A national inquiry by Prof Alexis Jay concluded in 2022, and investigations into Greater Manchester police’s handling of child sexual abuse cases in Manchester, Oldham and Rochdale have also been carried out.
Rowbotham, who was played by Maxine Peake in the award-winning BBC drama Three Girls, dismissed Musk’s calls for another public inquiry, but said the UK still needed to get to the bottom of the motivations of paedophile rings, which she said were often dominated by Asian men.
“We need to discover the motivations, not just sexual, behind this abuse, if we are going to prevent it from happening again and again,” she said.
In a further intervention, the father of a woman who was a main prosecution witness against the Rochdale paedophile gang said it was “strange” that a US billionaire was attempting to intervene in the UK.
The man, whose eldest daughter was known as Girl A during court proceedings, said: “It is strange that the richest man in the world has got time to start getting involved in UK politics.”
Girl A was groomed and abused in Rochdale by at least 50 men from the age of 12. Her family discovered the abuse after she smashed up a restaurant at the age of 14. While being interviewed by police, she told detectives how she and other girls had been plied with drugs and drink and repeatedly raped and trafficked around nearby towns and cities.
The comments follow criticisms of Musk from two other key figures in the Rochdale inquiry.
Asked about Musk’s comments on Friday, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, told ITV News the criticisms were “misjudged and certainly misinformed”.
“Some of the criticisms that Elon Musk has made, I think are misjudged and certainly misinformed, but we’re willing to work with Elon Musk, who I think has got a big role to play with his social media platform to help us and other countries to tackle this serious issue.
“So if he wants to work with us and roll his sleeves up, we’d welcome that,” he said.
