The victim of a Bradford grooming gang has said that most girls at the children’s care home where she lived were being sexually exploited and has called for an inquiry, alleging that child rape gangs across the country — including in Rochdale and Rotherham — are linked.
Fiona Goddard, 25, told BBC Look North, “I lived in a care home and I know that most of the girls, barring about three, were all getting sexually exploited as well.
“I also met numerous girls while we were out with other guys that maybe didn’t come from care homes, but came from broken backgrounds and they were all getting exploited.”
On the extent and organisation of the abuse she said, “When I was at that house [where she was raped], people came from Birmingham, Rochdale, Rotherham, Blackburn, Glasgow, Oxford.
“It is widespread and they are all linked.”
“There definitely needs to be a public inquiry; it needs to be an independent one,” she added.
A woman who was groomed & abused in Bradford wants a public inquiry into CSE. Fiona Goddard lived in a children’s home when the abuse started. She says the scale of CSE in Bradford has been under estimated. Exclusive report @BBCLookNorth pic.twitter.com/qVBjLVp6z7
— Emma Glasbey (@emmaglasbey) March 25, 2019
Bradford Council’s interim child services chief Gladys Rhodes White said of Ms Goddard’s call for an iquiry, “I’m not seeing evidence that there is a wide-scale, large issue specific to Bradford.
“I think if it did come to light that there were lots of victims that had been missed,” she added, it would be something the Safeguarding Board would want to “look at”.
Ms Goddard came forward with her complaint in 2014, after seeing a report on the abuse of more than 1,500 girls in Rotherham, and warned that while some rape survivors had gone to the police, “there are girls that either lack the understanding or aren’t in the situation where they can [come forward].”
She gave evidence in a trial at Bradford Crown Court last month that resulted in the convictions of Parvaze Ahmed, 36, Naveed Akhtar, 43, Saeed Akhtar, 55, Zeeshan Ali, 32, Keiran Harris, 28, Izar Hussain, 32, Fahim Iqbal, 28, Basharat Khaliq, 38, and Mohammed Usman, 31.
The child rapists were found guilty of 22 offences including inciting child prostitution and rape, in abuse that began in 2008 when she and another unnamed victim were 14 years old; all nine were given terms of between 18 and 20 years — but will likely be released from prison much earlier.
The young woman waived her lifelong right to anonymity to discuss her case and reach out to other potential victims of grooming gangs.
Concerned About ‘Giving Oxygen to Racists’, MPs ‘Ignored Our Cries for Help’: Rotherham Victim https://t.co/EOprb33GEy
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 9, 2018
Authorities at cities across the country, notably Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford, have been accused of ignoring the abuse of white, working-class girls –a recently-publicised report also highlighted the abuse Sikh girls across the country — by predominantly Muslim gangs of Pakistani heritage, who groomed and raped vulnerable children often from broken homes.
Child rape survivors and whistleblowers have reported that while some politically correct authorities refused to tackle the issue for fear of being labelled racist, while others treated the victims as the authors of their own victimisation, with police in Rotherham and Rochdale regarding the children as prostitutes.
A report by think tank Quilliam has found that more than eight out of ten men convicted of grooming gang offences have an 'Asian' background, while victims are "almost exclusively white girls". https://t.co/WMYGngGPDf
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 10, 2017
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.