Grooming gang survivor calls on safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to resign

An abuse survivor who quit their role this week in a government inquiry into grooming gangs has called on safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to resign.

Fiona Goddard, alongside Ellie Reynolds and a third survivor who goes by the name Elizabeth, resigned from the inquiry’s survivors liaison panel over how the government had handled the process.

In a letter, Goddard hit out at the “secretive conduct and conditions imposed on survivors”, “condescending and controlling language used towards survivors” throughout the process, and was critical of having two chairs with a background in policing and as a social worker respectively – “the very two services that contributed most to the cover up of the national mass rape and trafficking of children”.

The survivors had also expressed fears that the inquiry was being “watered down” by broadening its scope to include other instances of child sexual abuse and exploitation – something which Jess Phillips said was “untrue”.

READ MORE: ‘Labour’s prison reforms must not put domestic abuse survivors at risk’

In an interview with Channel 4 News, Goddard said she had lost faith in Jess Phillips and called on her to resign from her post.

“At the end of the day, she’s the women and child safeguarding minister and she has publicly accused a victim of lying when she knows that I’m not.

“I think the government really needs to rethink things. I think the victim liaison safeguarding representative from the charity needs to be removed. I think Jess Phillips needs to be removed because I don’t think her conduct during this has been acceptable for the position that she holds.”

LabourList has approached Jess Phillips for comment.

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