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A woman who was raped in Oldham aged 12 has branded Labour’s new plan for government-backed local inquiries into grooming gangs as “appalling”.
Samantha Walker-Roberts, who has bravely waived her right to anonymity, was gang raped in a house in Chadderton, northwest England, in 2006. Shakil Chowdhury was jailed for six years for the brutal attack but released on licence after three. Her other attackers were never caught.
Last week the government, in particular Keir Starmer and safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, came under furious attack from right-wing figures, led by X owner Elon Musk, after it decided not to hold a national inquiry into the scandal.
Ms Walker-Roberts has been campaigning for a government probe into crimes in Oldham, fearing a local inquiry led by Oldham Council will not see professionals held accountable for their failings in handling the abuse.
Despite a partial climbdown on Thursday as the government announced “rapid national audit” into grooming, the survivor said she was “disgusted” after Yvette Cooper’s plans to tackle the crisis were unveiled.
The “no holds barred” rapid review into the scale and nature of grooming gangs across the country, which will report within three months, will be led by crossbench peer Louise Casey and will “look at the cultural and societal drivers for this type of offending”, Ms Cooper said.
The home secretary also pledged five new local inquiries, including one in Oldham, backed by £5million in government funding in a statement to the Commons.
However Ms Walker-Roberts, 31, insists the probes must be put on a statutory footing to have any effect and called the £5million of additional funding “absolutely shocking”.
“If that’s £5million for five inquiries, that’s £1million each,” she said, adding that the Telford inquiry, which the local probes will be modelled on, cost far more.
“It’s disgusting. We need it to be statutory. I would say that is the problem, we need it to be a statutory inquiry so that people are forced to give evidence.”
She wants to see a government-led statutory inquiry focussing on each town individually, which will eventually feed into a national review on grooming.
The survivor said she felt she “couldn’t get a word in edgeways” as she joined other survivors at a meeting with Ms Phillips as the plans were announced on Thursday.
She also fears the government’s audit of group-based offending, which will also consider perpetrators ethnicity, risks inflaming racial tensions.
“I have tried all week to say to this is not about race it’s about paedophilia,” she told The Independent.
It comes after last week she hit out at the far-right for hijacking the cause. She said she believed some people, including jailed far-right political activist Tommy Robinson, who has styled himself as a campaigner exposing Asian grooming gangs, were misrepresenting the issue as a problem with Pakistani grooming gangs. Her abuser was from Bangladesh.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp called the government’s plans “wholly inadequate” and said the local probes would not have the power to compel witnesses to appear.
Labour MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion said the inquiries would only have the power to stop cover-ups if they had statutory powers. She urged the home secretary to expand the inquiry nationally and ensure it can compel witnesses to attend. “Is it possible this can be UK-wide, as I don’t believe this is only happening in England and Wales,” she said.
Elon Musk responded to Ms Cooper’s announcement by writing on X: “I hope this is a proper investigation.”
Ms Cooper also said she wanted police forces to reopen “cold cases” relating to child sexual exploitation and ordered police chiefs to review any grooming gang investigations that were closed down.
Victims will also get new powers to demand an independent review into decisions made to stop investigating alleged crimes, under the package of measures announced on Thursday.
She told MPs that all police forces will be expected to make “problem profiles of the grooming gangs in their area”. Ms Cooper added that the government will set out before Easter how they will take forward all 20 recommendations from Professor Alexis Jay’s independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, which concluded in 2022.
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