Grooming gangs inquiry should probe every UK council and police force – victim

A child sexual exploitation survivor has urged the grooming gangs inquiry to investigate every council and police force in the UK after the probe outlined its terms of reference.

Rotherham abuse victim Sammy Woodhouse said the inquiry’s scope should be expanded to include the period before 1996 because the issue “goes back many more decades”.

The £65 million inquiry will look into how grooming gangs operated and how institutions, including the police, local authorities, health services, social care services and schools, responded.

Local investigations will be carried out in areas where serious failures have been identified in response to child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs.

Inquiry chiefs are still deciding which local areas to review, but Oldham has been confirmed as one location.

Posting on X, Ms Woodhouse said: “The national inquiry has made an update today. They need to be speaking with whistleblowers, parents, and people born from the rapes, as well as survivors, to give a better understanding of what has happened in the UK.

“They also need to extend it beyond 30 years. This issue goes back many more decades.

“They also need to investigate every council and police force in the UK.”

Ms Woodhouse, who was targeted, groomed and abused as a teenager, was part of Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe’s private investigation into grooming gangs, which has claimed to have found child sexual exploitation in 85 local authorities in the UK.

Earlier this month, inquiry chairwoman Baroness Anne Longfield wrote to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood asking for permission to change the scope of its investigation, a letter published on Tuesday showed.

Lady Longfield said the terms of reference should include a “more explicit requirement to consider how ethnicity, religion, and culture, both in relation to perpetrators and victims, may have influenced offending patterns, as well as institutional responses.”

Ms Mahmood accepted the recommendations in full.

In a statement, she said: “The chair and I have agreed that the inquiry will be laser focused on grooming gangs and will explicitly examine the role of ethnicity, religion and culture of the offenders and in the response of institutions.”

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the terms of reference appeared to have been “significantly strengthened”, but Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said he has “absolutely no faith” that the grooming gangs inquiry will get justice for victims.

Mr Farage said: “I’ve wanted a national grooming gangs inquiry, I’ve done everything I can to try and push the Government into it.

“The problem is any third party inquiry is a waste of space unless you can subpoena police officers, social services, civil servants, who were all part of of turning the collective blind eye, and I think everything this Government has done on this issue is an attempt to literally kick the can down the road, to not fully open this up.

“I’m in touch with quite a few of the victims of this, one or two of them want to be candidates of ours as we go ahead over the course of the next few years, and they’re very, very angry that they’ve never been taken seriously right from the age of 12 or 13 years old up until the present day. I have no confidence at all.”

The Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, Claire Waxman, welcomed the terms of reference.

She said: “The inquiry must now move at pace, taking a trauma informed approach and ensuring survivors are meaningfully engaged and properly supported throughout. It is right that it follows the evidence wherever it leads.”

The inquiry will hold public hearings, which will be livestreamed, and transcripts will be published after each hearing.

Findings will be published progressively rather than being held until a final report.

The inquiry has a maximum duration of three years, to conclude no later than March 2029, and has a budget of £65 million.