Inquiry Now

Jessica was 12 years old when she was asked if she "wanted to come out" by a girl already involved with grooming gangs. What followed was five years of systematic sexual abuse in Kirklees, West Yorkshire. At one point, she was taken to Milton Keynes with other girls. "Once the guys had decided they were done with us they didn't want to bring us home so they dumped us in the town centre," she recalls.

She is one of thousands—possibly tens of thousands—of British girls failed by every institution meant to protect them. And after resigning from the government's inquiry panel this month, she has a simple message: the system that failed her is now failing to properly investigate itself.

"100% I felt it was being watered down."

Jessica told ITV News in October 2025, explaining why she quit the victims liaison panel meant to guide the national inquiry into grooming gangs.

She is not alone in that assessment.

The £200 Million Inquiry That Changed Nothing

Between 2015 and 2022, Britain conducted one of the largest and most expensive investigations in its history. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, examined 4 million pieces of evidence over seven years. More than 6,200 victims and survivors shared their testimonies. The inquiry heard 725 witnesses over 325 days of hearings.

The final report, published in October 2022, described child sexual abuse as "endemic" across England and Wales. It made 20 urgent recommendations for reform, including mandatory reporting laws, a national compensation scheme, and the creation of Child Protection Authorities with power to inspect any institution associated with children.

"The publication of the report should have been a landmark moment," Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips told Parliament in April 2025, "but victims and survivors were failed again when recommendations were not properly taken forward under the previous government."

The cost: £200 million. The result: institutional inertia.

This is not incompetence. This is evidence of something far more troubling.

The Pattern of Denial

The Rotherham scandal should have been Britain's wake-up call. Professor Jay's 2014 investigation revealed that at least 1,400 children had been sexually exploited in the South Yorkshire town between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by men of Pakistani heritage. The report documented how "several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist."

But Rotherham was not unique. Similar patterns emerged in Rochdale, Telford, Oxford, Newcastle, Bristol, Derby, Oldham, and numerous other towns across England. In each case, the failures were remarkably similar:

The Crown Prosecution Service refused to prosecute. In 2008, the CPS declined to charge members of the Rochdale grooming gang, deeming the main victim—a 13-year-old child—"unreliable" and claiming she had "made a choice to work as a prostitute." The decision was only overturned in 2011 when Nazir Afzal became chief prosecutor for northwest England.

Police ignored repeated warnings. Sara Rowbotham, an NHS crisis intervention coordinator in Rochdale, made more than 100 attempts between 2003 and 2014 to alert police and social services to patterns of sexual abuse. She was told the witnesses were not reliable. The police halted their investigation after the CPS dropped the case.

Social services looked away. Children in care were particularly vulnerable, yet the very institutions meant to protect them often refused to acknowledge what was happening.

Victims were criminalized. As Baroness Louise Casey noted in her June 2025 report, victims "have been ignored, treated like criminals and often arrested themselves." Many survivors now carry criminal records for offences committed while being exploited—records that prevent them from working with children or even attending their own children's school trips.

The Questions a New Inquiry Must Answer

When Home Secretary Yvette Cooper finally announced a national inquiry in June 2025—after months of pressure from survivors, politicians, and international attention sparked by tech billionaire Elon Musk's intervention—it should have been a moment of vindication for victims.

Instead, the inquiry is already mired in chaos.

Four survivors quit the victims liaison panel in October 2025. Two potential chairs withdrew from consideration. Survivors report feeling "gaslit" by consultation documents asking whether the inquiry should take a "broader approach" beyond grooming gangs—precisely the kind of scope creep that could dilute focus on the specific failures that allowed predominantly Pakistani-heritage gangs to abuse white working-class girls with impunity.

"It was ultimately gaslighting us into thinking we shouldn't be saying anything about where our abusers came from, what ethnicity, it was really awful."

Survivor Ellie-Ann Reynolds told the New Statesman in October 2025.

This matters because the ethnic dimension is not incidental—it appears to have been central to both how victims were targeted and why authorities failed to act.

The Names That Must Be Examined

A comprehensive inquiry cannot shy away from naming individuals and examining their roles:

Keir Starmer - As Director of Public Prosecutions (2008-2013), he oversaw the CPS during critical years when multiple grooming gang cases were declined. While Nazir Afzal credits Starmer with later supporting prosecutions, the initial failures occurred on his watch. An inquiry must examine what he knew and when.

Police Chiefs - Senior officers in South Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, and other forces who received repeated warnings and took no action must answer for their decisions. Louise Casey's 2025 report noted "the reluctance of Rochdale Council and Greater Manchester Police to cooperate with the review team on past events."

Council Leaders - Local authorities in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oldham, and other affected areas whose social services departments repeatedly failed to protect children in their care.

Home Office Officials - Senior civil servants who allegedly issued guidance preventing police investigation of child sexual exploitation must be identified. If such guidance existed, who wrote it? Who authorized it? If it didn't exist, why do multiple sources claim it did?

Current Government Ministers - Jess Phillips's decision to initially reject an Oldham inquiry in October 2024, and the subsequent mismanagement of the victims liaison panel, must be examined. Her text messages to survivors seen by the New Statesman raise questions about whether the inquiry's scope is being deliberately broadened to dilute focus.

Why Independence Is Non-Negotiable

Jessica, the survivor from Kirklees, put it simply: "I don't understand how anybody who has links to the police or social services—the two authorities that failed us for decades—could be in charge of this inquiry."

When Annie Hudson, a social worker, and Jim Gamble, a former police officer, were shortlisted as potential chairs, survivors revolted. Hudson has since withdrawn. The principle stands: you cannot ask institutions to investigate their own failures and expect truth.

The Human Cost

Behind every statistic is a child whose childhood was stolen. Girls who were groomed, raped, trafficked, and then told they'd made a choice. Girls who went to police for help and were arrested. Girls who carry criminal records from crimes they committed while being exploited. Girls who were called unreliable when they tried to tell the truth.

Some didn't survive to see justice. Others live with trauma that will never fully heal. Many struggle to trust any authority. All deserve to know why every institution that should have protected them chose not to.

Sammy Woodhouse, Dr Ella Hill, Samantha Smith, Elizabeth Harper, Fiona Goddard, Ellie-Ann Reynolds, Jessica, and thousands of other survivors whose names we'll never know have shown extraordinary courage in coming forward. They have relived their trauma in interview rooms, courtrooms, and inquiry panels. They have been disbelieved, vilified, and failed again and again.

They have earned the right to truth.

The Test of a Nation

Britain now faces a choice. It can conduct a genuine, independent, unflinching examination of how thousands of children were systematically failed—or it can stage another carefully managed inquiry that protects institutional interests while providing the appearance of accountability.

The early signs are not encouraging. An inquiry announced under pressure, a victims liaison panel in revolt, potential chairs withdrawing, and consultation documents suggesting scope creep all point toward the second option.

But survivors are watching. The public is watching. The world is watching.

The question is no longer whether there will be an inquiry. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced one in June 2025. The question is whether it will be allowed to function as it must—independent, comprehensive, and committed to truth regardless of who that truth implicates.

Every day of delay is another day that current potential victims remain at risk. Every diluted term of reference is another betrayal. Every institutional compromise is another cover-up.

These children—Britain's most vulnerable citizens—were failed by their police, their social services, their prosecutors, their councils, and their government. They were failed by people who feared being called racist more than they feared allowing children to be raped. They were failed by institutions that prioritized their own reputations over child safety.

An inquiry that does not expose all of this, name everyone responsible, and provide binding recommendations for systemic change is worse than no inquiry at all. It becomes part of the cover-up.

The victims deserve justice. Future children deserve protection. Britain deserves the truth.

The only question remaining is whether those in power have the courage to allow it.