The fledgling official inquiry into the child rape grooming gang scandal is facing accusations of being compromised as members of the victims’ panel resigned on Monday, citing “disturbing conflicts of interests” among those set to lead the investigation.
Following months of domestic and international pressure, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer backtracked from his initial opposition to conducting a national inquiry with statutory authority on the grooming gang scandal, after previously tarring the idea as “far-right”.
In addition to examining the scourge of mostly Pakistani Muslims sexually exploiting and raping mostly young working-class white girls, the inquiry is set to examine the failures of local officials, police, and care workers, many of whom have been found to have ignored or covered up the scandal out of politically correct concerns. Victims, who were often exploited for years, were frequently dismissed by authorities at the time as “prostitutes” despite being under the age of consent.
On Monday, Fiona Goddard, a grooming gang survivor, resigned from the inquiry’s Victims/Survivor Liaison Panel, after discovering that the planned chairs of the inquiry are reportedly set to include a police officer and a social worker, which she asserted were the “very two services that contributed most to the cover up of the national mass rape and trafficking of children.”
“This is a disturbing conflict of interest, and I fear the lack of trust in services from years of failings and corruption will have a negative impact in survivor engagement with this inquiry,” Goddard wrote in her resignation letter.
She noted that in the 2019 trial against her abusers, members of the jury were dismissed if they had any connection to the police or social services to prevent bias from impacting the decision.
“This inquiry should be held to the same stands as a criminal case, if not higher,” Goddard said. “Having a police officer or social worker leading the inquiry would once again be letting services mark their own homework, the shortlisting of these potential chairs shows the government’s complete lack of understanding of the level of corruption and failings involved in this scandal.”
Goddard also raised questions about those on the survivors panel, claiming that there are members with “affiliations” to the Labour Party government, presenting “a potential conflict of interest and incentives, pushing in opposition to the honest representations of survivors’ voices.”
Such conflicts may prove critical, given that many of the main areas in England identified as hotspots of grooming gang activity were under the control of councils run by the Labour Party. Furthermore, questions have also been raised about Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer’s own role in the scandal, given that he served as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service when allegations of cover-ups began to emerge.
Additionally, Goddard expressed concern that there are attempts to broaden the scope of the grooming inquiry into other forms of child sexual abuse and exploitation, which she argued has been done in previous reports, resulting in grooming gang victims being “forgotten”.
“Grooming gangs or “gang based sexual exploitation” is a unique crime with its own markers. It also often differs from other areas of CSA or CSE in that victims have experienced decades of failure from statutory services. Expanding the scope of this inquiry risks it being watered down and once again, failing to get to the truth,” she said.
Shortly after Goddard’s resignation, fellow survivor Ellie-Ann Reynolds also left the panel on Monday, claiming that the government has kept the victims “in the dark” about the inquiry, saying: “When I asked for clarity, I was treated with contempt and ignored. I watched on, as it becomes less about truth and more about a cover up.”
“You isolated us by discouraging contact with each other and with our support networks. You dictated what we could say publicly, edited our words, and made it clear that speaking openly would jeopardise our place on the panel. Work with us, or not at all became the unspoken rule,” Reynolds said.
The resignations from the panel has sparked accusations from opposition leaders that the Labour government is attempting to impair the inquiry before it gets off the ground.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “The government never wanted this inquiry to start with – now it looks like they are sabotaging it.”
Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick argued that since the scandal “implicates every arm of the British state”, it is imperative that the inquiry be led by someone with unimpeachable impartiality, suggesting that a judge from abroad be brought in to oversea the investigation.
“A senior judge with deep experience of criminal and family cases, is best placed to interrogate the evidence and extract answers that are not forthcoming,” Jenrick said, adding that “Keir Starmer dragged his feet before setting up this inquiry and this latest development suggests that once again he is just not serious about delivering answers the victims so desperately deserve.”
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