In the early hours of the morning, cars would pull up outside the children’s home in Bradford where 14-year-old Fiona Goddard was living. Staff knew she was at a “high level of risk from unknown males,” yet the policy was clear: intervention was only triggered if a child’s behaviour became overtly concerning or if a girl was seen being “dragged into a car.” That policy failure allowed a grooming and rape network to operate under the noses of the adults charged with her protection.
Eventually, the perpetrators were convicted—but only by the time Goddard was in her mid-20s. It took a further two years for the local authority, Bradford Council, to publish a review showing how badly she and other children were failed by multiple agencies.
In the face of immense personal courage—waiving her anonymity, rebuilding her life, and joining the survivors’ panel advising a promised national inquiry into so-called grooming gangs—it is all the more devastating that Goddard, together with three other panel members, has now quit. They argue they no longer trust the government, the process or the two shortlisted chairs for the inquiry.
If you have survived rape and exploitation, institutional betrayal becomes much harder to ignore. Social workers, local authorities, politicians—all familiar figures in the lives of vulnerable children—sound like yet another authority that let them down. In Goddard’s case in Bradford, one of her former care-workers says she tried to raise the alarm with the police and was told to stop wasting time. In another scandal in Rotherham, there are allegations that victims were assaulted by serving police officers—and that complaints led to threats of being returned to their original abusers. There is a criminal investigation ongoing. When betrayal lurks around every corner, trust becomes all but impossible.
For victims of child sexual exploitation, unresolved trauma often leads to hyper-vigilance—and this can too easily widen the gap between survivors and those who claim to help them.
The two prospective chairs for the inquiry—former police officer Jim Gamble, long regarded as a child-protection champion, and former director of children’s services Annie Hudson—have both now withdrawn. Gamble cited the toxic atmosphere of “political opportunism and point-scoring,” attacking the very basis of the process: that victims’ fragile confidence would survive this environment.
Meanwhile, the survivors’ panel is deeply split. Four departing members have demanded the resignation of the Home Office minister Jess Phillips, arguing she is no longer a safe partner in the process. At the same time, five remaining members say they will only continue if Phillips stays. The inquiry’s leadership remains in disorder, while its most critical stakeholders — the survivors — are suspecting betrayal once more.
What has happened to this inquiry is both a tragedy and a warning. It illustrates how collapsing trust in public institutions, propelled by bad-faith politics, can lead to paralysis. For the survivors—who already endured institutional failures at multiple levels—being made into pawns in a political game is unconscionable.
On Wednesday, minister Kemi Badenoch used Prime Minister’s Questions to raise accusations of a “cover-up,” referencing other national controversies. On a different day, shadow home secretary Chris Philp called for the removal of survivor-liaison officer Sabah Kaiser—herself a victim of abuse—from the inquiry team, pointing to remarks she made two years ago about the difficulties of discussing perpetrators’ ethnicity or religion. Kaiser, who was abused from the age of seven in both the UK and Pakistan, is now caught in a political cross-fire despite being a survivor advocating for other survivors.
It is not too late to steer back from the brink. The inquiry that reform-aligned MPs demanded appears to be theirs: the governing party has extracted commitments from the home secretary Shabana Mahmood and opposition leader Keir Starmer that the investigation will not be watered down, and that questions relating to perpetrators’ ethnicity or religion will not be avoided. What must now happen is for both sides to set aside the short-term victory of having the inquiry in principle, and instead focus on ensuring it works. That means rebuilding survivors’ trust, centring victims’ voices, and delivering truth and accountability—not playing political theatre.
The women and girls at the heart of this scandal have already been failed too often by institutions that did not want to see what was happening. They must not be failed all over again—this time by a political system absorbed in its petty conflicts and blind to the danger staring it in the face.
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grooming gang inquiry, survivors panel resignation, trust in public institutions, political point-scoring, child sexual exploitation inquiry, grooming scandal UK
