Sentencing of 15 men shows why there still needs to be a reckoning over the grooming gang scandal
The grooming gang scandal is a scourge on the nation’s conscience. The evidence that has emerged so far has been shocking but the reality is that the public is still no closer to truly understanding the scale of the scandal.
There has been a lack of reckoning as to what allowed gangs, predominantly of British Pakistani men, to sexually abuse young girls for such a prolonged period of time.
If there is anyone who thinks that this issue has been dealt with and should be left in the past then the sentencing of 15 men to a combined 188 years in jail for their involvement in the rape and sexual offending against a child in Bradford should be a wake up call for them.
The survivor was aged between 14 and 18 years old at the time of the abuse which took place between 2007 and 2011.
She said: ‘‘The men involved have taken more away from me than what I can ever describe in words and looking back now I feel sad for my 12-year-old self knowing what was to come. All in all, this has consumed my life for just short of 20 years, it is not something which I can forget.”
A sobering reminder of why this scandal cannot be swept under the carpet. It is about childhoods being snatched away from victims. Lives altered forever.
That is why the whole district of Bradford must be included in the national grooming gang inquiry. No stone must be left unturned. The former children’s commissioner Baroness Anne Longfield, who hails from Ilkley, is the right person to be chairing the Government’s £65m three-year statutory probe into child sexual exploitation.
But the fact that it has taken this long to appoint the correct person as chair and to get a probe set up is in itself a shame.