Bradford Child Abuse Victim Calls For Local inquiry

A woman repeatedly raped as a child by a depraved Asian grooming gang has demanded Prime Minister Keir Starmer launch a national inquiry into the scandal - claiming past investigations have not even "touched the surface" to expose the full extent of the abuse.

In a damning account of repeated failings, Fiona Goddard, who has bravely waived her right to anonymity as a sex crime victim, blasted politicians for their years of silence on child sexual exploitation until controversial American tech billionaire Elon Musk penned an inflammatory series of social media posts on the subject.

And she described Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's announcement of local reviews into grooming gangs as "just not good enough".

She said: "It shouldn't have taken the world's richest man - who isn't even from this country - to get us talking about the mass rape of young girls. It should already have been front and central on our MPs lips.

"But we needed the Home Secretary to announce a nation inquiry because these local ones allow the councils to cover up their own failings and the decision is being decided by the same place that failed in the first place, having the same people that enabled abuse decide if they should be investigated or not just doesn't work and leaves a total lack of confidence of it being done properly."

Fiona was a promising school pupil with aspirations of becoming a lawyer when her life spiralled downhill after she was taken into local authority care and placed in a Bradford children's home.

She claims she was subjected to a sickening catalogue of abuse in which she and another teenage girl would be plied with drink and drugs before being trafficked around northern towns and cities and “used as a prostitute.”

Her abusers were finally jailed for a total of 132 years in 2019 but some are now just four years from being back on the streets.

Fiona, now 31, and a mother of five children of her own, fears that without a wide-reaching national review to fully expose the issue, children like her daughters will always remain in danger.

"You know that a 13-year-old girl is not responsible for her own sexual abuse. People had opportunities to speak out and didn't and we still need to know why they were silent.

"I know Elon Musk is trying to blame Keir Starmer for being responsible but if Mr Starmer wasn't responsible then who was and why wouldn't he like to find out who is?

"I watched him say this week 'if we lose anchors to the truth then things start falling apart' in relation to what Elon Musk was tweeting, but surely if that's his stance then why isn't he wanting to find out the real truth?

It's condescending and I don't feel like a single one of them has our best interests at heart."

She says she has been left angered by senior politicians who have done nothing whilst in power.

She added: "Members of the government branding things as lies is so detrimental to our fight because it downplays the issue. I'm not saying Elon Musk is right - but at least he has got everyone talking about it. I just wish someone had given him more accurate information in the first place.

"But no MP can take the moral high ground by using child sexual abuse for their own political gain."

Fiona believes a national inquiry would finally provide accountability for why social services and police forces the length of the country all chose to respond in a similar manner by labelling the victims as being the cause of the problem rather than the paedophile gangs.

She said: "If every police force in the country had a problem with this and every single one responded exactly the same then someone is responsible for getting that information to them?

"There is no way they all reacted in the same way individually. It's a nationwide problem so who was the person who decided the policy, where are they now and what responsibilities does that person now have?"

Fiona's calls have been backed by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch who has revealed how she recently had "quite shocking" meetings with survivors of abuse in Rotherham and Oldham.

Her intervention came after Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, said a full inquiry was needed as "nothing less... will restore faith in our safeguarding systems".

Ms Badenoch said she was "going to do everything, and the Conservative Party is going to do everything, to make sure that survivors get justice".

She said she believed a new national inquiry should look at what she called a "systematic pattern of behaviour" among certain communities in the country but added that a "culture of silence" in the state needed to be addressed.

Fiona said “If the PM was sat in front of me now I'd tell him my story, I'd tell him everything that I had to go through because for me them getting sent to prison was not enough.

They were not the only people who abused me - the people in positions of power, the professional services who were there to protect vulnerable people abused me.

They told me this was my fault, they made me feel like I was the problem, then they made me feel that bad that I tried to kill myself, I self-mutilated my body to try and get away from what was going on and rather than getting me help they have blood on their hands.

And why shouldn't I get justice for that? Can you imagine if this happened in a private setting, if my parents were letting gangs of men rape and abuse me whilst telling me it was all my fault? They would be serving prison sentences. So why is this any different?’