❓WHAT HAPPENED: A group of survivors of Muslim grooming gangs has left an official government inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation, citing trust issues.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Survivors Ellie-Ann Reynolds, Fiona Goddard, Elizabeth Harper, and “Jessica,” alongside former police officer Jim Gamble, Baroness Louise Casey, and Jess Phillips, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls in Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s government.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Recent developments were discussed in Parliament and detailed in correspondence shared by survivors.
💬KEY QUOTE: “Being publicly contradicted and dismissed by a government minister when you are a survivor telling the truth takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again.” – Survivors’ letter.
🎯IMPACT: The survivors have outlined conditions for their return to the inquiry, while the Labour Party government faces challenges in appointing someone to lead the inquiry.
Four survivors of Muslim grooming gang abuse in the United Kingdom, including Ellie-Ann Reynolds and Fiona Goddard, have criticized the British government’s inquiry into group-based child sexual exploitation, saying it has been watered down to obscure the racial and religious factors behind their abuse. The women, who recently resigned from the inquiry’s advisory panel, said the investigation’s scope had been widened in a way that risks losing focus on the particular issues with Muslim, predominantly Pakistani-background grooming gangs targeting mostly underage white girls at scale.
In a letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood—roughly equivalent to the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary—the survivors set out several conditions for their return, including the resignation of the Jess Phillips, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, and the appointment of a judge to lead the inquiry, with survivor input, and guarantees that victims can speak freely without fear of reprisal.
The letter, shared publicly by Goddard, said: “Being publicly contradicted and dismissed by a government minister when you are a survivor telling the truth takes you right back to that feeling of not being believed all over again. It is a betrayal that has destroyed what little trust remained.”
Former police officer Jim Gamble also stepped down from consideration to lead the inquiry, saying some survivors lacked confidence in his role due to his past in policing. He called claims that he would align with a political agenda to protect institutions “nonsense,” but given police leaders’ central role in downplaying and covering up grooming gang abuses for decades, victims do not believe a current or former police officer should lead the inquiry.
Prime Minister Starmer has announced that Baroness Louise Casey will assist the inquiry. Casey previously led a national audit that found many police forces and other public agencies avoided addressing ethnicity or cultural issues in grooming gang crimes because they feared being labelled racist.
The controversy follows years of public anger over how police, social services, and municipal governments have handled cases of organized sexual exploitation across towns such as Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford. Multiple investigations revealed that predominantly Pakistani-heritage men targeted vulnerable white girls, while officials refused or failed to intervene for fear of damaging so-called community relations or being branded racist by the predators.
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