“Grooming gangs” – It’s a term for group-based child sexual abuse that’s been battered about between the benches of Westminster and the frontlines of the UK’s online political sphere. At the centre of both, the victims seem to have been long forgotten.
It was no surprise to see that four survivors of the grooming gangs have now removed themselves from the inquiry’s victim liaison panel.
Fiona Goddard, Ellie Reynolds, and Elizabeth (pseudonym) resigned this week, citing concerns over shortlisted chairs who served previously in policing and social services – two sectors which were intrinsically involved in the failings that caused the cover-up of the grooming gangs.
The proposed chairman for the inquiry, Jim Gamble, has also stepped back, at a time when many are calling for Jess Phillips to resign over her handling of the issue.
The inquiry was designed to investigate how the state failed women and girls. Now, victims say there are attempts to expand the remit beyond the grooming gangs, completely defeating the inquiry’s purpose.
Jess Phillips, Home Office and Safeguarding minister, denies these claims. Stating in a letter to MPs, she said: “We are committed to ensuring that the survivor perspective remains at the heart of the process.”
Going by the statements from the victims themselves, this is simply a lie.
It feels so true to the time and archetypal of Starmer-led Labour to have perverted the course of this inquiry so badly, in the name of “not causing offense,” which is what started the scandal in the first place.
A report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in 2022 found child sexual exploitation continues to occur across England and Wales, despite waves of scandals throughout the early 2000s and now again in recent years.
Inquiry officials have called for ethnicity data of the grooming gang members to be recorded and urged against a culture that inadvertently protects perpetrators due to their minority ethnic backgrounds.
Secretary to the IICSA, John O’Brien, said: “We need to break the culture where people are worried that they might be accused of being racist just because they record factual information.”
Facts should come first in these cases, and if feelings of any sort are to be involved, the only ones taken into account should be the countless number of women and girls affected by these crimes. Yet the victims continue to be ignored.
Two of the four victims who have left the inquiry panel made statements accusing the Home Office of being resistant to discussions around ethnicity and race in relation to the gangs.
Lady Casey’s inquiry in February of this year concluded that police officers across England were hesitant to take action on the majority Pakistani heritage gang members who raped and abused hundreds of young girls because the officers were scared of being labelled “racist.”
Astonishingly, this same problem is being recreated in the inquiry itself, as Phillips cites fluffy, ambiguous language like “community tensions” as a reason to avoid addressing the real heart of the issue.
The political left of Britain’s largest blind spot remains to be their fear of division, which, in a sadly ironic way, only feeds it.
Hundreds of working-class women were brutalised across England. This should be a national scandal, not a game of identity politics. Most of all, the inquiry should not be led by the very institutions that birthed the issue itself.
People are angry about this subject, and the far-right will continue to weaponise the grooming gang story to push their narrative. Starmer’s government cannot expect to put a lid on a boiling pot and simply magic the steam away, yet they continue to do so.
What is most damning about this inquiry is that it has failed before it could even begin. Victims are completely disengaging from something that was created with the intent to protect people like them.
Where has this left us: In a political environment that will only believe victims when the perpetrators fit their narrative.
