Two survivors of child sexual abuse have quit the national inquiry into grooming gangs, citing a “toxic, fearful environment” and a “high risk of people feeling silenced all over again”.
In a resignation letter on Monday, Fiona Goddard said the process so far had involved “secretive conduct” and instances of “condescending and controlling language” used towards survivors.
Goddard, who was groomed and repeatedly raped by a gang of men of Pakistani heritage from the age of 14, expressed concern about the candidates shortlisted to chair the inquiry: Jim Gamble, a former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), and Annie Hudson, a social worker.
“I fear the lack of trust in services from years of failings will have a negative impact in survivor engagement with this inquiry,” 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 failings involved in this scandal.”
Goddard told The Telegraph other victims on the liaison panel advising the Home Office were considering quitting for similar reasons. She said deliberate delaying tactics “could be a factor because the timescale is really getting dragged out, which is the opposite of what Baroness Casey recommended” in her review of grooming gangs.
She said she was concerned that moves to widen the remit of the inquiry beyond grooming gangs to include other forms of child sexual abuse risked “it being watered down and once again failing to get to the truth”.
Goddard appeared with the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch in June when the inquiry was announced
DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
Her fellow survivor Ellie-Ann Reynolds, from Barrow, has also made the decision to quit the panel. She said the “turning point” was the “push to widen the remit in ways that downplay the racial and religious motivations behind our abuse”.
In a statement seen by The Guardian, she said: “The Home Office held meetings we weren’t told about, made decisions we could not question and withheld information that directly affected our work. When I asked for clarity, I was treated with contempt and ignored.”
She claimed that one of the candidates for chairing the inquiry had links to Labour that had not been disclosed to survivors and said victims felt they were being manipulated.
Maggie Oliver, the former detective who blew the whistle on the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, told The Telegraph: “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. It is a national scandal.”
There is mounting pressure on the government to move forward with the inquiry, by setting out terms of reference and appointing a chair. Sir Keir Starmer faced opposition criticism over the resignations on Monday, the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch telling him to “grow a backbone” and “do everything possible to ensure criminal investigations run in parallel now, across the entire system”.
Badenoch said: “This is deeply troubling. Many will now suspect Labour is sabotaging the grooming gangs inquiry and deliberately dragging it out beyond the next election.”
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Jess Phillips, the Home Office minister, told MPs last month the appointment process for a chair was in its “final stages” and a panel of survivors and victims would be involved in the selection.
“The chair must have credibility and experience to command the confidence of victims and survivors, as well as the wider public,” she told the Commons last month. “Meaningful engagement with victims and survivors is paramount. To support this, a dedicated panel of victims and survivors has been established which will contribute to that chair selection process.
“This is a critical milestone and once an appointment is confirmed, the House will be updated at the earliest opportunity.”
Asked about the resignations, the prime minister’s spokesman said: “We’re grateful to everyone who shared their insights with us. I’m sure you’ll understand our concerns about speculation. We’re still going through this process. That’s why we’re not going to give a running commentary on it. But the abuse of children by grooming gangs, as we’ve said before, is one of the most horrific crimes imaginable.”
He added: “We’re working flat out to get the right chair in place to take this forward and victims and survivors are absolutely at the heart of what we’re doing.”
Gamble, 65, has a hard-won reputation for fighting child abuse and confronting politicians when he believes they have failed to take action.
After a career in policing, which included leading the Royal Ulster Constabulary special branch in Belfast, he was the founding boss of Ceop, which sources said “punched above its weight” and forged international alliances.
Jim Gamble
KEN MCKAY/ITV/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
He resigned from Ceop in 2010 after a public clash with Theresa May, then home secretary, over merging the unit with the National Crime Agency.
Since then he has conducted numerous independent reviews of abuse scandals, delivering critical verdicts on Oxfam and the Church of England.
He also conducted the review of the strip searching of a 15-year-old black girl in London in 2020, concluding that police had acted unacceptably and were likely to have been influenced by racism.
A Home Office spokesman said: “Any suggestion that this inquiry is being watered down is completely wrong. We are committed to delivering a robust, thorough inquiry that will get to the truth and provide the answers that survivors have so long campaigned for.”