Keir Starmer only begrudgingly commissioned a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal in June this year after initially accusing supporters of such a probe of jumping on a “far-right bandwagon.” Now, he is being accused of sabotaging the inquiry, which many have long warned could wind up being a total whitewash.
Any hope that the inquiry might do some good was greatly damaged when two victims quit a liaison panel on Monday and claimed they were being “silenced.” One said that officials were pushing to downplay the ethnicity and religious background of (predominantly Pakistani heritage) perpetrators.
The two victims, Fiona Goddard and Ellie Reynolds, were groomed by gangs as teenagers. Goddard said “we have repeatedly faced suggestions from officials to expand this inquiry,” creating a “real fear” that grooming gang victims will again be “forgotten.” She told the Telegraph that others were considering quitting.
Reynolds also said that victims had been “kept in the dark” from “the beginning.”
The Home Office held meetings we were not told about, made decisions we could not question and withheld information that directly affected our work.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch responded that “many will now suspect Labour is sabotaging the Grooming Gangs inquiry and deliberately dragging it out beyond the next election.” Although, as can be said about almost every suspect, her own party’s record on this front is far from squeaky clean.
More reliably, Maggie Oliver, the former detective who blew the whistle on the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, told the Telegraph that “it really is another cover-up, another attempt to water down what this national inquiry should be.”
They’re even trying to expand it to cover child sexual abuse and not grooming gangs, any form of group-based abuse, again trying to muddy the waters and pretend that this kind of offending is not still going on and it is a national scandal.
The Home Office, of course, said that any suggestion the inquiry is being watered down is “completely wrong.”
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