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Conservative person Kemi Badenoch has met survivors of grooming gangs successful Oldham and Rotherham, describing the gathering arsenic "quite shocking".
Speaking to GB News, she said it was "extraordinary" proceeding victims picture going "to the authorities aggregate times... and successful 1 peculiar lawsuit the constabulary really handed her, a 12-year-old, into the hands of her abusers".
Badenoch has been demanding a nationalist enquiry into grooming gangs, but has faced disapproval aft reports she had truthful acold failed to conscionable immoderate victims.
On Monday, the Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, joined increasing calls for a afloat investigation, saying "nothing less... volition reconstruct religion successful our safeguarding systems".
Speaking to GB News connected Monday evening, Badenoch said she was "going to bash everything, and the Conservative Party is going to bash everything, to marque definite that you [survivors] get justice".
Pressed connected wherefore the erstwhile Conservative authorities had not commissioned an enquiry into grooming gangs, she said: "I deliberation we thought that the inquiries that we'd started would beryllium enough."
"I thought 'oh, there's an enquiry taking place, let's spot what it comes retired with,' and what we've seen is that we've had aggregate non-national inquiries. They are not enough. Let's bash more," she said.
Badenoch said she believed a caller nationalist enquiry should look astatine what she called a "systematic signifier of behaviour" among definite communities successful the country.
It is "people very, precise poor, benignant of peasant inheritance – very, precise rural, astir chopped disconnected from adjacent the location root countries that they mightiness person been in," she said. "They're not needfully archetypal generation," she added.
She said a "culture of silence" successful the authorities needed to beryllium addressed.
Between 1997 and 2013, respective areas of the state - including Oldham and Rotherham - were blighted by gangs of men, predominantly of Pakistani descent, who raped and trafficked children arsenic young arsenic 11.
An independent report, published by Prof Alexis Jay successful 2014, estimated 1,400 girls had been abused successful Rotherham.
She would aboriginal spell connected to pb the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which lasted 7 years and made 20 recommendations.
Prof Jay has antecedently said victims privation to spot enactment connected her recommendations, rejecting the calls for a caller probe.
There person besides been a bid of section reviews into kid enactment maltreatment successful Manchester, Rochdale and Oldham, which were published betwixt 2020 and 2024 and recovered authorities had failed to support children from intersexual exploitation by gangs of predominantly Asian men.
And successful caller weeks, the Conservatives and Reform UK person been calling for a caller nationalist enquiry into grooming gangs.
Earlier this period MPs voted against a Tory move to unit a caller nationalist investigation.
When asked whether the crushed that a nationalist enquiry had not been called was due to the fact that politicians could beryllium implicated successful a cover-up, and whether the Labour Party was resisting an investigation, Badenoch said that it was "certainly thing that we person to look at".
"I don't recognize why, erstwhile determination is truthful overmuch enactment adjacent from their ain MPs... much and much radical are coming retired connected the Labour side, and we cannot person a civilization of fear," she said.
"I americium not afraid, the Conservative Party is nether caller leadership. What we did earlier to tackle it is intelligibly not enough, we request to bash a batch more, and Labour needs to get connected committee with that. And if they don't I deliberation that they volition person precise superior questions to reply from the electorate erstwhile the clip comes."
Rochdale's Labour MP joined the telephone for a caller afloat enquiry connected Monday, saying kid intersexual maltreatment was "endemic" successful the UK and indispensable beryllium "a nationalist priority".
Champion, who has been campaigning connected kid extortion for implicit a decade, said: "I person agelong believed that we request to afloat recognize the quality of this transgression and the failures successful the effect of nationalist bodies if we are to genuinely support children."
She besides called for the recommendations of the IICSA study to beryllium implemented "in full, with a timetable and ring-fenced resources".
Two different Labour figures from places affected - Rochdale MP Paul Waugh and Greater Manchester politician Andy Burnham - person besides called for constricted caller inquiries.
But Downing Street has said its precedence is to instrumentality the recommendations of the IICSA report, published successful 2022.
Last week, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said 1 of the cardinal proposals from the study - mandatory reporting - would beryllium added to the Crime and Policing Bill.
Number 10 said connected Monday that determination would beryllium a "range of views" connected the contented of a caller inquiry, and the authorities would beryllium "guided and led by the victims and survivors".
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