0:00
John, I assume you've worked with victims of grooming gangs and groomers in general
0:07
How do you expect they feel, knowing that the government has chosen to water down what already was a pretty watered down offer when it came to local inquiries
0:17
Well, yet again, the victims here will feel completely let down and very, very frustrated
0:24
it's one of these things if you go back over the 25 30 years and longer that these things have been
0:31
going on at what stage at what stage will a government has to be say government rather than
0:37
a party will one government actually stand up and say right let's be honest let's actually
0:42
look into all this let's look into why there's been 45 50 cities over hundreds of victims of this
0:50
type of child sexual exploitation, basically abduction and rape, gang rape of young girls
0:57
When are they going to stand up and say there has to be a public inquiry into this? Because
1:01
there have been individuals, there have been people in authority, and that includes the police
1:06
social services, government, CPS and local authorities, who've let the victims down
1:11
Because what have they done? They've ignored it. They've actually said it hasn't happened
1:15
Well, guess what? It has. Now, the government continually points to the Alexis J report
1:21
which looked at all areas of child sexual exploitation, from the Church of England to the Jimmy Savile affair and everything in between
1:32
What it didn't really focus on was this specific model that some have alleged is racially motivated
1:39
Pakistani Muslim gangs targeting in particular white girls young white children who they see as perhaps less pure or more out to get it
1:55
and target people based on their race. That's something that hasn't been explicitly explored
2:03
You're right, Tom. And the funny thing about this is that you know it, I know it
2:10
Emily, you know. We all know who the victims, how they're going to be targeted
2:13
We know where they were going to be targeted, and we know by whom. We know that now, and yet still the people in authority won't do it
2:19
The Alexis J-20 recommendations, I've got them written down here. They're in my brain. I think, well, they've already been in place
2:27
I spent 20 years in child protection doing all the investigations. We had the training. We had the individuals
2:34
But as you're quite right, when it came down to specific, which is talking about, as we call it, grooming gangs
2:42
there's been no mention of this. When you are a detective, what you look at is things like
2:46
the offender methodology, the MO, what are they doing, how are they doing, how are they picking their victims
2:53
who are the vulnerable victims, why are they vulnerable? Right, we can prevent it there
2:57
And then you want to investigate. So you say, well, who's actually committed the crime? That can be intelligence-led, but it also comes from victims reporting it
3:04
Well, these victims weren't believed. And why weren't they believed? Well that's a lot to do with power and the people they were speaking
3:10
That includes the police, social services, local authorities who wanted to turn the blind eye, have a cover up
3:16
Why? Because in some ways they might be implicated themselves because of that cover up
3:20
Then they've got, now we've moved on, social media's come into it, so now people are worried about being cancelled
3:26
having that race car pulled against them and actually finding themselves in the position, well, you're not going to be working here
