Safeguarding Minister Natalie Fleet has issued a stark warning to predators targeting children, declaring: “We’re coming for you.” In her first major intervention since taking office, she vowed the Government would be relentless in bringing grooming gangs to justice and rooting out vile abusers wherever they operate—online, in schools, in sports clubs, and within families.
Minister's Personal Mission
Ms Fleet, who became pregnant at 15 after being groomed by an older man, spoke passionately about the need for change. “For years, vulnerable girls were groomed, drugged, beaten, raped and passed around by gangs of men,” she said. “Too often, they were not believed. In towns like Rotherham, Oldham and Rochdale, they were failed. By adults. By agencies. By police. By systems that should have protected them. That is a stain on our country.”
She added: “For years, I carried shame. People called me horrible names. Said I had asked for it. They didn’t believe me because of who I was and where I came from. When I say victims and survivors must be heard and protected, I mean it. When I say their abusers and rapists must face justice, I mean it. We must stop at nothing to protect children from these horrors. And we must deliver justice for victims and survivors who have been denied it for too long.”
Government Action and Inquiry
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood recently announced a £100 million drive to tackle the grooming gangs scandal, with extra funding for police to probe historic cases. Over 1,200 cases that were previously dropped have been referred to Operation Beaconport for review. The police investigation runs alongside a national public inquiry chaired by former children's commissioner Anne Longfield, which will examine failures by police, local authorities, health services, social care, and schools in protecting young girls.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially resisted calls for a full national inquiry but changed course after a harrowing review by Dame Louise Casey revealed decades of failures. Baroness Longfield’s inquiry will confront horrendous institutional failings, and an independent inquiry in Telford found over 1,000 children had been sexually exploited over decades.
“This is one of the biggest scandals in our country of our time,” Baroness Longfield told the Commons Home Affairs Committee. “It’s gone on for three decades. We all want the end of it. And anyone who can actually help that process has not only a legal duty but a moral duty to that.”
