Pressure is growing on Jess Phillips to resign after she “called a grooming gang victim a liar” over a bid to water down the national inquiry and as a fifth survivor quits saying she has been offered “no support”. The Telegraph has more.
A fifth grooming gangs survivor has quit as an adviser to the national inquiry, saying she has been “overwhelmed” by the political storm around the process.
Gaia Cooper, who was repeatedly raped and exploited by a grooming gang at the age of 14, told the Telegraph she had been offered “no support” during the controversy – and told all parties to stop using the inquiry as a “political battering ram”.
She said “both sides are complicit in cover-ups and failures”.
Ms Cooper has withdrawn with the pressure mounting on Jess Phillips, the Safeguarding Minister, to quit over claims from other grooming gang victims that she had “betrayed” them.
Four other survivors who this week quit as advisers to the grooming gangs inquiry issued a statement on Wednesday calling for Ms Phillips’s resignation. She is in charge of setting up the inquiry.
On Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer was calling survivors to reassure them he is committed to an inquiry as he tried to fend off their calls to sack his Minister.
Survivors are concerned over the potential for the inquiry to be widened beyond grooming gangs, a block on speaking about the inquiry to others and the possibility of former police officers or social care workers serving as inquiry chairman.
In a letter to Dame Karen Bradley, the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Ms Phillips had claimed the idea that the inquiry’s scope could be widened was “untrue”.
The four – Fiona Goddard, Ellie-Ann Reynolds, Elizabeth Harper and ‘Jessica’ – said their “legitimate concerns” about the direction of the inquiry had been branded “untrue” by Ms Phillips.
“It is a betrayal that has destroyed what little trust remained,” the four said in their statement, as the Telegraph revealed.
They told Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, that they would return to the inquiry only if Ms Phillips stood down.
In a letter to NWG, the charity running the victims’ liaison, Ms Cooper said that she did not “align” herself “with any political agendas” but said the inquiry was “dear to her heart” because it recognised the women who did not survive their experience of child sexual abuse.
She wrote: “I deeply hope that both sides of the political spectrum will have the good grace to support this inquiry with the sensitivity and care it deserves, and not to keep using it as a political battering ram. Let’s be honest, both sides are complicit in cover-ups and failures.”
She backed the other four victims’ calls for the inquiry to be led by a judge, suggesting Wendy Joseph, an Old Bailey judge who has overseen many cases involving vulnerable women, or Dame Carol Black, who has advised the Government on tackling drug abuse.
Ms Cooper added: “Numerous times during this process, which I agree is in its infancy, we have been offered counselling and support, but during this media storm there has been nothing, and that is the time I have felt I needed it the most.
“Due to the silence I had to speak to a journalist who I trust implicitly yesterday just to explain what is actually going on as, from NWG, there has been no statement. No emails to address any of it.”
The calls by other victims for Ms Phillips to resign has been backed by the Tories. Chris Philp, the Shadow Home Secretary, told the Telegraph: “Jess Phillips should resign or be fired, as grooming gang survivor Fiona Goddard has said.
“Jess Phillips called Fiona, a grooming gang victim, a liar – but Fiona has documentary proof she is telling the truth. It is shameful for a minister charged with protecting victims to have done this.”
Worth reading in full.
Featured image: inkl.com
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