The political “tug of war with vulnerable women” abused by grooming gangs must stop before a new national inquiry into the crimes, survivors have told the Guardian.
Holly Archer and Scarlett Jones, two survivors who played a key role in a “gold-standard” local inquiry in Telford, have urged politicians and those without experience of abuse to allow women to shape the investigation.
“We have to put politics aside when it comes to child sexual exploitation, we have to stop this tug of war with vulnerable women,” said Archer, the author of I Never Gave My Consent: A Schoolgirl’s Life Inside the Telford Sex Ring.
“There are so many voices that need to be heard. There’s some voices, though, that need to step away,” she said. “We can do it, let us do it – we don’t need you to speak on our behalf.”
Jones, who works with Archer at the Holly Project, a support service helping survivors of child sexual exploitation (CSE) and their families, said: “There are so many people out there at this moment exploiting the exploited – it’s happening all the time.”
The government announced on Monday that police would collect ethnicity data for all cases of child sexual abuse, after a report from Louise Casey found evidence of “overrepresentation” of men of Asian and Pakistani heritage among suspects in local data collected in Greater Manchester, West and South Yorkshire.
But Casey also urged the public to “keep calm” over the ethnicities of grooming gang offenders, saying police data from one region suggested that the races of child abuse suspects were proportional with the local population.
Archer, who founded the Holly Project, said the collection of ethnicity data of offenders had to improve but also urged those discussing CSE not to rely on stereotypes surrounding perpetrators or their victims. While she was groomed from the age of 14 by men of Pakistani origin, the majority of men who went on to “buy” her and rape her as a child were Chinese.
Jones, the author of Just a Girl, said she was first abused within her own white family, then enticed into a grooming gang.
“Nobody wants to know about that because that doesn’t meet their narrative,” Archer said. “You’re told that you’re just not relevant, that it didn’t really happen to you anyway. You’re a liar. You’re a fake person.”
Archer said she no longer used social media after facing threats. “I’ve been called a paedophile myself, a paedophile enabler, a grooming gang supporter. They said they hope my daughter gets raped. It’s just constant.”
She also described being given a leaflet by the far-right Britain First political movement in Telford after her book was published in 2016. “They handed me leaflets that had quotes from my own book in them,” she said. “They didn’t know it was me, and they were telling me I was very pro what they were doing. It was insane.”
Archer and Jones, who both use pseudonyms and are not pictured to protect themselves and their families, both welcomed the recommendations made by Casey, particularly the involvement of the National Crime Agency (NCA), which will lead a national push to reopen historical group-based child sexual abuse cases.
The inquiry, as well as being victim-led, also had to establish a definition of child sexual exploitation, which could differ in different agencies and police forces, the women said.
The inquiry will involve five existing local inquiries into grooming gangs being coordinated by an independent commission with full statutory inquiry powers, which Archer said would provide much-needed accountability. “It is really important that the localised aspect is not lost,” she said.
In Telford, where a three-year independent inquiry into the scale of CSE concluded in 2022 that hundreds of children had been sexually exploited over decades, victims were consulted from the beginning, Jones said. Survivors, including the Holly Project, then helped the council to implement changes.
“At a national level, I don’t want them to lose the part where survivors are actually the people telling them what needs to be done,” she said.
The pair are both critical of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse led by Prof Alexis Jay, which Jones described as “absolutely pointless”.
“Years later, nothing has been done, none of the recommendations have been implemented,” she said. “The worry is that that is what will happen again.”
Above all, the pair want to see a shift in the national conversation so that children are always treated as victims, and not seen – as they were – as complicit in their own abuse.
“We need one statutory procedure that says if a child is suspected to be at risk of exploitation, we are going to wrap care around them and their family to make sure that they are safe,” Archer said. “We need survivors to feel safe enough just to live their life, be happy and know that they’re worth having that happiness.”
In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International.
