Grooming Gang Inquiry in Turmoil as Two Survivor Panel Members Resign, Calling it a Cover-Up
Two women who survived some of the most horrific abuse imaginable have walked away from the government’s grooming gang inquiry. Not because they’re tired. Not because they’ve given up. But because they’ve recognised what many of us suspected from the start: this inquiry was never meant to find the truth. It was meant to manage it.
Fiona Goddard and Ellie-Ann Reynolds, survivors of child sexual exploitation in Bradford and Barrow, resigned from the inquiry’s advisory panel on Monday. Their resignations weren’t quiet affairs. They were acts of defiance. Public statements accusing the Home Office of contempt, political interference, and a systematic attempt to dilute the inquiry’s focus away from the racial and religious motivations behind their abuse.
Read their words carefully, because they matter more than anything a politician will tell you.
Ellie-Ann Reynolds: “The final turning point for me was the push to widen the remit of the National Inquiry in ways that downplay the racial and religious motivations behind our abuse. 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.”
Fiona Goddard: “Expanding the scope of this inquiry risks it being watered down and once again, failing to get to the truth. We have repeatedly faced suggestions from officials to expand this inquiry, and there is real fear from survivors, including myself, that it will turn into another IICSA, with grooming gang victims forgotten.”
These are not the words of conspiracy theorists. These are the words of women who were failed by every institution that should have protected them. Police who ignored their screams. Social workers who returned them to their abusers. Politicians who prioritised community relations over children’s safety. Courts that treated them as accomplices rather than victims. And now, a government inquiry that won’t even tell them what meetings are being held about their own abuse.
Four months after Sir Keir Starmer bowed to pressure and announced this statutory inquiry, it still doesn’t have a chair. The terms of reference are still being “discussed.” And the two survivors who were supposed to be at the heart of the process have resigned in disgust because they’ve watched the establishment do what it always does: protect itself whilst pretending to seek accountability.
Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. This isn’t incompetence. This is deliberate. The Home Office is stage-managing an inquiry designed to avoid uncomfortable truths, and the survivors can see it.
The push to widen the inquiry’s scope comes primarily from Tracy Brabin, the Labour mayor of West Yorkshire, and her deputy Alison Lowe. They lobbied Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to expand the investigation across their entire region rather than focusing on specific known cases in Rotherham, Rochdale, and Bradford.
On the surface, this sounds reasonable. Examine the whole region. Get the full picture. But survivors know better. They know what happens when inquiries become too broad. They take longer. They produce vague recommendations. They avoid naming names. They conclude with gentle suggestions about “lessons learned” and “systemic failures” without holding anyone accountable. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) took seven years and delivered exactly that: a report that acknowledged failures without consequences for those who failed.
As one survivor source told The Guardian: “Survivors want justice and that means focusing on specific victims in specific places and getting to the bottom of who knew what and when. If you widen the inquiry, it will become too vague.”
Exactly. Because that’s the point. Vagueness protects the guilty. Broad regional investigations obscure individual responsibility. When everyone failed, no one failed. When the system is at fault, no person is. This is how institutions avoid accountability whilst performing the appearance of seeking it.
But it gets worse. The two candidates being considered to chair this inquiry are Jim Gamble, a former deputy chief constable, and Annie Hudson, chair of the child safeguarding practice review panel. Read that again. The inquiry into how police and social services covered up the rape and trafficking of children for years might be chaired by either a former police officer or a social work professional.
Fiona Goddard’s resignation email addresses this directly: “This is a disturbing conflict of interest, and I fear the lack of trust in services from years of failings and corruption will have a negative impact on survivor engagement with this inquiry.”
She’s being diplomatic. Let me be blunt. You cannot investigate how police covered up child rape by appointing a former police officer to lead the investigation. You cannot examine how social services failed victims by putting a social work professional in charge. This isn’t complicated. It’s a fundamental conflict of interest that any competent government would recognise immediately.
Unless, of course, the conflict of interest is the point. Unless the goal is to ensure the inquiry produces exactly the kind of institutional hand-wringing that protects careers and reputations whilst delivering nothing resembling justice.
Goddard also raised concerns about stakeholders having “affiliations with members of the Labour government that presents a potential conflict of interest.” This should alarm anyone who still believes inquiries should be independent. When the party in government has connections to those shaping the inquiry, when political considerations override survivor voices, when mayors lobby to change the scope and survivors are told to shut up and be grateful, you’re not witnessing justice. You’re witnessing a cover-up in real time.
Richard Scorer, head of abuse law at Slater and Gordon, who represents about 30 grooming gang victims, put it perfectly: “I’m very concerned at the suggestions I’ve heard that the Home Office is seeking to stage manage this process. To be effective this inquiry has to be able where necessary to criticise the actions of politicians both at national and local level. Political interference at such an early stage in the process, if that is what is going on, does not bode well.”
Stage management. That’s exactly what this is. A carefully choreographed performance of accountability designed to avoid actual accountability. The Home Office holds meetings without telling survivors. Makes decisions without survivor input. Withholds information that directly affects their work. Treats their questions with contempt. And when they resign in protest, the response is predictable: denial, reassurance, insistence that everything is fine.
Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, in a letter to the home affairs select committee, denied any cover-up. “This could not be further from the truth,” she wrote, before explaining that it’s “by no means exceptional” for an inquiry to take months to appoint a chair, and insisting that claims of political interference are “categorically untrue.”
But Phillips isn’t answering the actual accusations. Survivors aren’t complaining about how long it takes to appoint a chair. They’re complaining about being excluded from meetings, about attempts to dilute the inquiry’s focus, about potential conflicts of interest, about being treated with contempt by officials who are supposed to be serving them.
Phillips insists the inquiry will be “laser-focused” as recommended by Baroness Casey. But Baroness Casey recommended focusing on specific grooming gang cases in specific places. That’s precisely what survivors want and precisely what’s being undermined by demands to expand the scope regionally. You can’t claim to follow Casey’s recommendations whilst ignoring the core one about maintaining a narrow focus.
The Home Office spokesperson offered the usual platitudes: “The abuse of children by grooming gangs is one of the most horrific crimes imaginable. We will do everything in our power to ensure these crimes never happen again.”
Everything except listen to survivors. Everything except avoid conflicts of interest. Everything except keep them informed about meetings concerning their own abuse. Everything except resist political pressure to dilute the inquiry. Everything except appoint a chair who doesn’t come from the institutions being investigated. Everything except treat them with basic respect and transparency.
Let’s talk about what survivors are actually asking for, because it’s not complicated. They want an inquiry that focuses on specific known cases where children were raped, trafficked, and exploited whilst authorities looked the other way. They want to know who knew what and when. They want to understand why police officers didn’t act on reports. Why social workers returned children to dangerous situations. Why councillors and officials prioritised avoiding difficult conversations about race and religion over protecting children. They want names. They want accountability. They want someone to finally tell the truth about how this happened and who let it happen.
And they want the inquiry to examine the role that racial and religious motivations played in these specific cases. Not because they’re racist. Not because they want to demonise communities. But because in Rotherham, Rochdale, Bradford, and other towns, the evidence shows that predominantly Pakistani Muslim men targeted white working-class girls for abuse. And the evidence shows that authorities were terrified of being called racist for acknowledging this pattern. That fear of being called racist led directly to children being abandoned to their abusers.
This is not a comfortable truth. It implicates everyone. Police who didn’t investigate. Social workers who didn’t intervene. Councillors who prioritised community relations over child safety. And yes, community leaders who didn’t confront the reality that men from their communities were committing horrific crimes. Everyone failed, and everyone needs to be held accountable.
But that kind of accountability requires unflinching honesty about what happened and why. It requires naming the specific failures and the specific people who failed. It requires examining uncomfortable questions about how progressive ideals about multiculturalism became a shield for abuse. It requires a chair with no institutional loyalties to protect. And it requires including survivors in every stage of the process, not excluding them from meetings and treating their concerns with contempt.
Labour’s handling of this inquiry reveals everything about what this government values. When survivors demand focus, they’re told the inquiry needs to be broader. When they raise conflicts of interest, they’re ignored. When they ask for transparency, they’re kept in the dark. When they resign in protest, they’re dismissed with reassurances that everything is fine.
This is what institutional protection looks like. The same police forces that failed these children for years might be represented by a former officer chairing the inquiry into their failures. The same social services that returned children to abusers might be represented by a social work professional examining their failures. The same Labour politicians who didn’t act when it mattered are now shaping an inquiry into why no one acted.
And the survivors, the people who actually lived through this hell, who carry the trauma in their bodies every day, who have spent years fighting for justice whilst institutions fought to avoid accountability, are being pushed out of their own inquiry.
Ellie-Ann Reynolds said the inquiry had become a “cover-up.” Fiona Goddard fears it will turn into another IICSA, with grooming gang victims forgotten. They’re not wrong. Every sign points to an inquiry designed to produce a report that changes nothing whilst protecting everyone who needs to be held accountable.
This is Labour’s test. Does this government prioritise victims or institutions? Does it demand accountability or manage optics? Does it tell uncomfortable truths or comfortable lies? Right now, the answer is clear. And two survivors who dared to demand better have walked away because they’ve seen enough cover-ups to recognise another one in progress.
If Starmer’s government continues down this path, if it appoints a chair with institutional conflicts, if it allows the inquiry to be watered down regionally, if it excludes survivors from the process, then this inquiry will fail. Not fail accidentally. Fail deliberately. Fail in exactly the way the establishment prefers: with a report that acknowledges mistakes without naming the people who made them, that recommends changes without demanding consequences, that protects institutions whilst sacrificing the truth.
The survivors who resigned have done more for justice with their resignations than this inquiry will likely achieve in years of stage-managed proceedings. They’ve told the truth that politicians won’t speak: this process is corrupted before it’s even begun. They’ve drawn a line and said no more. No more meetings we’re not told about. No more decisions we can’t question. No more contempt disguised as process. No more protecting those who failed us.
Their courage deserves better than a government performing accountability whilst avoiding it. Their pain deserves better than an inquiry designed to manage truth rather than reveal it. Their voices deserve better than being excluded from a process supposedly centred on them.
When survivors resign from their own inquiry calling it a cover-up, believe them. They’ve survived worse than uncomfortable truths, and they recognise a lie no matter how it’s dressed up.
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