UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has met with survivors of grooming gangs in Oldham and Rotherham. Speaking to GB News, she described the meeting as “quite shocking” and said it was “extraordinary” hearing victims describe going “to the authorities multiple times… and in one particular case the police actually handed her, a 12-year-old, into the hands of her abusers”. Badenoch has been calling for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
There have been reports that she had failed to meet any victims, leading to criticism. Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, joined growing calls for a full investigation, saying “nothing less… will restore faith in our safeguarding systems”. Badenoch said she was “going to do everything, and the Conservative Party is going to do everything, to make sure that you [survivors] get justice”.
The previous Conservative government did not commission an inquiry into grooming gangs as it was thought that the existing inquiries would be enough. Badenoch believes a new national inquiry should look at a “systematic pattern of behavior” among certain communities in the country. She said a “culture of silence” in the state needed to be addressed.
Several areas of the country, including Oldham and Rotherham, were blighted between 1997 and 2013 by gangs of predominantly Pakistani descent who raped and trafficked children as young as 11. An independent report, published by Prof Alexis Jay in 2014, estimated that 1,400 girls had been abused in Rotherham. There have also been a series of local reviews into child sex abuse in Manchester, Rochdale and Oldham, which found authorities had failed to protect children from sexual exploitation by gangs of predominantly Asian men
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