'I don't trust Labour one bit': Grooming victim's father on new inquiry

0:02The Telegraph.

0:30Visit telegraph.co.uk slash newsletters today.

0:40Tim, we now know the full horror of the grooming gang scandal. We've poured through Baroness Casey's report. We've heard her speak to MPs this morning. And we've attended a very emotional press conference with Kemi Badenok and survivors and their families. After which I had a very heartfelt and raw conversation with a father of a victim who told me how the authorities tried to prevent him from protecting his own daughter and why he just doesn't trust the Labour Party. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me Camilla Tominy and me Tim Stanley.

1:25Tim, we're returning to this issue again today because by the time we recorded the podcast we knew some of the story we had some of the report in front of us and we could see Yvette Cooper announcing that there would be a national inquiry into the grooming gangs I must say, Maggie Oliver's reaction to the government announcing this was actually quite sad because she has totally lost all faith. She's a campaigner for the survivors. She was in the Greater Manchester Police at the very beginning to uncover the grooming in Rochdale and at every turn seems to have been blocked in her endeavours to bring justice for these survivors.

2:02So she was watching it with a degree of incredulity and we're sort of 24 hours on now analysing what's gone on and there's been a number of key events today. So you've been with Baroness Casey as she's been questioned by the Home Affairs Select Committee this morning. Let's just have a little listen to what she told those MPs. I don't think child abuse or indeed child sexual exploitation has gone away. And certainly from the evidence that we saw during the audit and the visits that we undertook to some police forces, it is clear that it is still happening. And later in the morning, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch held a press conference with survivors and the families of survivors nearby Parliament.

2:42What I want to do this morning is bring some light where there's been a lot of heat. What we haven't heard very much of is the survivors' views. Survivors and their families have gone through hell to get here, and I think that they've been ignored for far too long. So what this morning is about is not the politics, but giving them a platform to say what they want to see from a national inquiry. And I'll start by saying how much we welcome Baroness Casey's reports and the recommendation for a national inquiry. This is something that we've been very vocal on in the House of Commons. And we're really glad that we finally got to this place.

3:24And here is the shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, who was also at this press conference, explaining what the Conservatives would like to see happen. The first thing I think this inquiry must do is make sure the people who are responsible for covering this up, police officers, local council leaders and councillors, social services, even the Crown Prosecution Service in some cases, are held responsible. There's a criminal offence called misconduct in public office. In my view, many of these people that covered this up are guilty of that offence. They need to be prosecuted and frankly sent to prison.

3:55And that needs to happen, in my view, alongside the inquiry. It can't wait until afterwards. And, of course, at the same time, the many perpetrators, as Fiona said, who have escaped justice need to be sent to prison and prosecuted as well. I think, secondly, we need to make sure this inquiry covers all 50 towns affected, not just some of them, but all of them. We know some towns like Bradford have refused to cooperate with any inquiry at all, even to this day. So all those places must be covered. This must be done in a timely way. So two years is as long as it should take. We can't have this dragging on for years and years.

4:30The survivors and their families have been suffering for long enough. This needs to be done in a way that is genuinely independent. Councils like Bradford are still refusing to look at this. We can't trust those councils who have been covering this up actively for so many years to investigate themselves. It has to be independently led. The inquiry has to look at the role of ethnicity in the cover-up. Casey found that. And then finally, this needs to start soon. We need to see the terms of reference and a chair appointed by the summer recess, which is towards the end of July, about four or five weeks' time.

5:03And we need survivors to be at the heart of this. They need to be consulted the whole time about how this inquiry is conducted and kept regularly updated. So, Tim, you were at the Select Committee meeting and then you joined me later at the press conference. Let's deal with the report, first of all, because you also pored over it on the train this morning and whenever you could. It's 200 pages long. What were your sort of key takeaways from what you read? It's as if everything that you had discussed down the pub and you had said, I bet this is what happened. It turns out all of that was true. Yeah.

5:39And almost everything that the authorities said, don't say that, don't think that, that turned out to be false. Right. So there were four things that really jumped out at me from the report. One is the issue of ethnicity in relation to the perpetrators of grooming. Now, Baroness Casey is very keen to stress, it's not a question of the data shows that this is overwhelmingly an Asian problem and that's all we have to say. It's that rather the data has not been gathered. So she said to the Home Affairs Committee, and I quote, she's a very frankly spoken woman, she said, either collect the data or don't collect the data.

6:18For God's sakes, don't half collect it. That's a bloody disaster, frankly. And then within the report, she writes, quote,

6:39What does this mean in practice? It means that the data from different inquiries related to different case studies suggests that we are looking at the perpetrators being majority non-white. But sometimes that figure is itself then eclipsed by the proportion of perpetrators whose ethnicity was not registered. Now, I think we can reasonably extrapolate that a large number of those will be Asian. But her point is, you cannot go around definitively saying this either is an Asian problem or not an Asian problem because you've not been gathering the data. And failure to do that means that the government can't be trusted.

7:17It doesn't know what it's talking about and claims to the effect that, look, all different ethnicities abused, and this isn't specifically an Asian problem, have just been proven to be false. A second thing that jumps out of the report is the way in which our court system currently treats children as if they were adults. Yes. So sometimes children, we're talking girls or boys of 13 or 14 who go before court, the charge will be, quote, traded down in order to get a prosecution. So because the prosecution is concerned that there's something in the child's background that means the defence can put up a good case against a simple, straightforward charge of rape, they will trade down to a charge of sexual activity with a child that results in a lesser sentence.

8:04Why would there have been that bargaining just on a kind of legal basis to just see cases off? Because, and this is the critical thing, Casey argues that the court system itself often displays attitudes towards young girls who are accusing other people of grooming. It displays attitudes which are anti-diluvian. So to give an example, one audit team was told of a child sexual exploitation case in 2024

8:43So if a prosecution team is wired and that kind of thing is going to be used against them, they will trade down. And what Casey is saying is, no, let's treat children as children. Anyone under 16? Yes. It should be treated as any kind of sexual activity. Let's approach it as if it were rape. And this is also the child prostitute argument. Why did we even have the rather oxymoronic term, child prostitute? It's a Victorian idea, yes. And on the Daily Tea, we interviewed a survivor, Gaia Cooper, and she spoke to the fact that she felt treated, I mean, this was the phraseology that we discussed, as white trash, not just by her abusers, but by the authorities.

9:22It was a case of, well, you're in care. You've brought this on yourself. You're drinking and smoking heavily. You got into the car with these guys. Her response to that was, I was 13. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The third thing that jumped out at me, children are not being asked why they might access, regularly access birth control from clinics. So the Telford inquiry quoted one victim who said, she repeatedly visited the same GP practice for the morning after pill. No one ever asked any questions about her age or why she needed the morning after pill. The witness said it felt like no one really cared. She was 14 years old.

10:01And the fourth thing that comes out, and Baroness Casey said at the inquiry, quote, I'm fairly sure this is still happening today. And the interesting question is, so where, if it is still happening, and we must prove if it is and investigate it and prosecute if it is, who might be doing it? And this is where, and we heard this at the press conference as well, the issue of grooming becomes a border security issue. As the report says, while the future outcomes of these investigations remain unknown and the number of live open cases we had access to was limited, this audit noted that a significant proportion of these cases appear to involve suspects who are non-UK nationals and dash or who are claiming asylum in the UK.

10:44Now, an inquiry at Newcastle, quote, took an unusual step to try and understand what was going on as far as possible by interviewing one of the offenders who had claimed asylum in the UK. In the interview, the offender spoke in a derogatory way about a lack of morals in British girls and the ease with which he was able to access sex, drugs and alcohol. So this is going to become the other political hot potato, the new political hot potato, and the left, I'm sure, are going to start attacking righties who suggest that some of the people coming here illegally by boat across the channel may have criminal intent and may think it's acceptable to go and find young white girls and abuse them.

11:30Now, I'm saying that in a generalised way, but we know that somebody in the Labour government has already gaslit the British public when it comes to who is coming here by boats, because we had Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, suggest on Question Time that when he had observed the comings and goings down in Dover, most of the people in the boats were women, children and babies. He courted controversy for that. I asked him about it on my Sunday morning GB News show and he said, well, it's been taken out of context. But it's that kind of behaviour, this idea that, oh, we can't possibly talk about the idea of people coming here on boats, maybe raping children.

12:06That's going to be the new kind of... But isn't there an obvious parallel in the gaslighting of the two situations? With the Casey report, she's saying people were too quick to say this is not a predominantly Asian problem because you know what, we've got all this other data that shows white people committing sexual abuse. And now you've got people saying in relation to the boats, which let's be honest, contains a demographic which may well contain significant proportions of people who might be inclined to groom. And what is the left saying? They're gaslighting and saying, no, no, no. But actually those boats are full of women and children.

12:36Yeah. Or it just will never happen. What are you saying about the people arriving here? We're not saying all of the people who arrive here are of criminal intent. No. We're not even saying that all of them are, by the way, adult males. I think the government's own statistics suggest that they are 70 % adult males, just to clarify. What was interesting about the press conference, so moving on to the press conference that was held by Kemi Badenock and Chris Philp with, as you say, Tim, survivors and their families, is that Jason Groves of the Daily Mail asked about this issue and I thought that the answer was refreshingly clear.

13:08My answer to your first question is yes. I think this does go into borders beyond criminal justice. I'll let Chris briefly on that because he's been doing quite a lot of work on this. And then I'll bring survivors in on the second question. Yes, it is a border security issue. This year so far has been the worst in history for illegal immigration across the English Channel. The government has no idea who the people are coming in, what their previous records are. As we saw last week, we know the vast majority are young men. And the fact that Louise Casey in her report identifies that significant numbers, that's the word she used, significant numbers of perpetrators are asylum seekers who entered the country generally illegally or non-UK nationals does show that the lack of control at the border is fuelling the risk here.

13:55So this press conference, Tim, I mean, it was a bit different, wasn't it? Because there's a political angle, but there's also quite understandably an emotional angle. Yeah. Kemi Badenok is joined by Marlon West, whose daughter Scarlett was groomed from the age of 14 to 18. You spoke to him and we're going to feature that interview in the second half of this podcast. We then had Fiona Goddard. She's a survivor who is now speaking publicly. She's very bravely waived her right to anonymity so that she can raise awareness. And she is very much appealing to others to come forward, making the point that thousands and thousands of young women and boys, That was the other thing that came out of this press conference.

14:34This is an issue that has affected boys. And we haven't really focused on it enough. And we probably need to do that in a future Daily Tea. Speaking of which, we heard from a mother called Teresa, who is the mother to a boy who suffered abuse and has since died. He passed away in 2021 and she is seeking justice on his behalf. And we heard from Lucia Ray, who is an Oldham survivor advocate. So she is somebody who brings together victims and survivors and their families in a bid to take on the authorities, basically, and seek justice for them. I actually thought Kemi Bade not chaired it all with a great amount of sensitivity.

15:14What did you think? She did, because she's there saying we are not making a political argument out of this. but there's no escaping that by meeting with survivors and their families, some of whom say they don't trust the Labour Party, it's hard not to infer a political argument. And there were some questions from journalists saying, well, look, in Parliament yesterday, you were very happy to go after Labour MPs for having voted against the National Enquiry three times. How can you do that and then sit there with a straight face and say, now I'm not being political? I felt she deflected that quite well.

15:47One thing I like about Kimmy, she's quite straightforward about the technique of politics. She will just say, look, when I'm in the Commons, I'm doing politics. While I'm sitting here with these people, I am talking about how we move on and what we do to fix the system. Well, let's listen to how Kemi responded to some of that questioning. We as politicians have a job to do in making sure that the government is held to account and where it's government politicians that the job is done properly. But if every time we are pointing things out and doing our job, we're accused of politicising something that needs to be heard, it makes it a lot harder.

16:20And we'll do all we can to ensure that the survivors and their families who aren't political, no one here is political, are kept out of that. But we have a job to do. And it's really important that we do the job that we've been elected to do, because if we don't do our jobs, that's when these scandals get worse. And she also addressed the issue of jumping on a far right bandwagon, which is something Starmer has accused the Conservatives of. Oh, I do think that we should take the politics out of it. But who was it that said when we raised this issue that we were pandering to the far right? That's what brought the politics into it.

16:54Who was it that said that this was dog whistle politics? It was Keir Starmer and his ministers. So it is on the one hand extraordinary to hear those accusations. And then when we defend ourselves, are then accused of bringing the politics into it. And as leader of the opposition, it is my job to make sure that the government is held to account. They voted against the National Inquiry three times. And as they were voting against it, they were calling us names for doing what they have now accepted they have to do. And actually, when you hear from survivors and their families, they don't want this to be politicised either.

17:29We're going to hear from Fiona and then Lucia. There's been failings of successive governments from back from even before Tony Blair. This isn't a new issue. There has been failings from all different angles. But we are here, we are where we are today. And right now, this is an opportunity for MPs to start doing what is right, irrespective of the parties. Apologies, the come and the go. I want the truth now. I want people to stop telling me that I've done something wrong. I want to be backed, not just by my government, but by my communities and by the media and everyone to do what is right. And I want progress to come from this.

18:12We're in the here and now. And when you speak to survivors, they want to move forward. We can't keep regressing over who's not done what, pointing the fingers. And this has got to stop being used as a stick to beat each other over the head with. It's about moving forward. And it's about moving forward together because it should be one voice on this. because there is only one right answer to this issue. And everybody needs to be on the same page with it, no matter, you know, Rosette should be stripped away and everybody should be on the same page. And I guess some people might be thinking, are they comfortable about sitting with a politician?

18:47In the same way, are they comfortable about talking to journalists? I get the view that because their stories were suppressed for so long, they're happy for any platform. Yes. They're delighted when anyone listens and they will take advantage of any coverage because they've had to. I also wanted to find out, Tim, if there's any way of exonerating some of the survivors who ended up with criminal records themselves? Kemi and Chris, what have you got to say about those particular survivors whose lives and indeed career opportunities have been blighted by the fact they've been groomed, often by perpetrators who, by the way, weren't placed on any registers, weren't even arrested or charged.

19:30Vulnerable young girls who were caught up in this should not be criminalised at all. There was a terrible case, I think it was around about 2010, where the Crown Prosecution Service designated a victim as a so-called co-conspirator. In that case last week, where there were seven convictions, there was a report connected to that that said a social worker at the time, this I think was in Rochdale between 2001 and 2006, they branded a 10-year-old girl, a 10-year-old girl, as a prostitute. That is the kind of attitude that was prevalent. It's absolutely disgusting. The people who did that should be held to account.

20:07And if anyone, if any of those victims were convicted, then those convictions need to be looked at again, overturned. When I was 15, I was described as being the ringleader of the abuse when I was in a house with adults aged between 22 and 44. And I was 15-year-old. I was constantly referred to as stuff like that, and I was referred to as running a brothel at 16 and 17-year-old. The focus has constantly been on these victims and the stigma then attached with them has impacted lives. And where damage has been done, people now have a responsibility to fix that damage. I think what Fiona said there comes back to Baroness Casey's point about treating children as if they are children.

20:49You can't judge their actions the way you would an adult because they have been manipulated and they have been groomed. I also want to add, I found her a very impressive individual. Yes, I do. She's the kind of person you listen to and you think she could be editing this newspaper, right? Yes, she was extremely articulate. There but for the grace of God go I. This is a situation anyone through a horrible accident of birth or situation could find themselves in. Apparently afterwards she did go into the green room and just burst into tears. She was exhausted. Which shows her self-control. And she had said that when she was waiting for justice, so again, she's a survivor whose court case has taken an interminable amount of time.

21:25During that process, she actually lost her hair. She was so stressed out. She went bald. And just woman to woman, I looked at that and thought, God, if it wasn't bad enough, you then lose a degree of dignity. And by the way, she then has to go in court and relive all of this, possibly to see a perpetrator get away with, what, a couple of years? A suspended sentence? Yes. So this idea of justice delayed being denied, but also the short nature of some of the sentences for the reason you mentioned earlier, this scaling down of crimes from rape to something else, is something that needs to be addressed too.

21:58To be honest, Fiona wasn't the only person who was emotional on that panel. It did deeply affect the Tory leader, and I spoke to her afterwards. Kemi Badenock, just speaking as women and mothers here, politics aside, I mean, it was an extremely emotional press conference. We've dealt with sort of looking at the Casey report. There's a few things that just spring to mind immediately as being so abhorrent, it's hard to comprehend. The idea of a 10-year-old girl being criminalised as a so-called child prostitute during this entire scandal sort of does blow the mind. How did you find this today? This is the most difficult press conference I've ever had to do, Camilla.

22:39I found it quite tough. I found it tough because I'd spoken to some of the victims while we were indoors. But listening to the stories, it's just harrowing. And in fact, when we went back into the green room, Fiona burst into tears. She just found it very harrowing, very exhausting. And that's why she's so brave, because she has to relive this every time she's trying to get justice. And there's so much that needs to be looked at. You talked about the 10-year-old child. I have a child who's 11. I mean, it's absolutely disgusting. Yeah. Anyone. It's unfathomable. Yeah, that anyone could say that about children.

23:15You talked earlier, and Chris Philp also talked earlier, about the need for perhaps criminal prosecutions against those who actively covered this up. Where are the Tories in terms of being aligned with Maggie Oliver? She submitted her judicial review yesterday to Downing Street. It just was coincidence. She came on the podcast yesterday that it happened to be that day. Is this inquiry actually going to have the power to find people guilty of that act of misconduct in a public office? Or do you have to apply more legal pressure? How can that actually work? We haven't had the full details, but that's one of the tests we have set.

23:52So if it's not something that the government announces, we will put pressure because that absolutely has to be done. The cover up is what meant that this went on as long as it did. If many institutions, if many local authorities, social workers, police and so on had done their jobs, we could have been here a long time ago. So they should be investigated for misconduct in public office. That is an offence. And no stone should be left unturned. And it doesn't matter whether it's the lowest levels or the highest levels of government. Everybody should be looked at if there is evidence pointing to them covering things up.

24:26Downing Street spokesman yesterday doubled down on Keir Starmer's claim that some Tories had been, quote, jumping on a far right bandwagon. Tim Stanley and I yesterday were trying to work out which Tories he's referring to. Is he referring to you? Who is he referring to? I'm sure he's referring to me. And it's a disgraceful statement to make. He should be ashamed of himself. He should have been in the chamber this week talking about this issue. He's taking his time in Canada. He's not coming back to PMQs tomorrow because he doesn't want to be asked about this. I asked him many times for an inquiry.

24:58He dismissed it and said one wasn't needed. Now he's been dragged into this U-turn, just like he was on Winterfuel. This is a man who does not have moral courage. And Jess Phillips has not covered herself in glory either. She is not a good safeguarding minister. Survivors have said that they don't have faith in what she's doing, that she's let them down. And that's something that needs to be looked at as well. It's because she refused an inquiry to Oldham that kicked off this recent spate of us demanding a full-scale national inquiry. because she indicated that the government was not going to take this matter seriously.

25:30So they need to stop insulting everyone, calling us far right or dog whistling and just do their jobs. Do you regret now, though, that the Tories didn't stand up more to accusations of racism and bigotry and just get on with this national inquiry back when they were in power? Well, but we did. We had a national inquiry and it took seven years. So I remember asking about this and I was told if there's an inquiry, don't worry. You were referring to Alexis Jay? Yes, yes. And then the report came out and it wasn't enough. It had recommendations that wouldn't make a difference, like have a cabinet minister for children.

26:00So we launched a gangs task force after that, found 800 perpetrators, 4 ,000 victims. And that was just last year. So this is stuff that we were continuing. We hadn't stopped anything. We're continuing. We had amendments in the criminal justice bill looking at this very issue. And then the election was called. But we still want to see more done. And one of the things that I think is quite important is that we don't let this turn into not enough was done previously. More needs to be done. We will hold our hands up and say some of the inquiries didn't come out with the recommendations that we wanted.

26:31But you look at Sajid Javid, you look at Suela Brafman. They were the ones who were being attacked by all sorts of organisations, by the news, BBC, the NSPCC, all sorts of charities, criticising Suela's language, pointing out that ethnicity was an issue. Some Tories criticised Suela's language at the time. Yes, she was attacked by the left, But this was also a problem for the last Tory government, this idea of not standing up for your own principles and not protecting people who, when they said something about the ethnicity of these perpetrators, people pointed and said racist and bigot. Well, I don't know who did that, but I suspect they're not around anymore.

27:07This Conservative Party is now under my leadership. I have never run away from these sorts of issues. I remember three years ago when we had the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparity, people accused me of pandering to the far right. Dawn Butler, Labour MP, said I was the blackface of white supremacy. Labour are not serious on this issue. And yes, once in a while, there's some Conservatives who have done the wrong thing. But people can see that the Conservative Party has never dropped this issue. There's more to be done. And we're now in opposition going to continue campaigning to get justice.

27:36And on that, just on the timescale, what immediately do you want to see now that we have had this Casey report and indeed the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, addressing the House on the issue yesterday? day. What are you now going to be pressuring for over the coming weeks? Making sure that the inquiry covers all of the towns. There are 50 towns that we think should be covered. So they shouldn't just cherry pick a handful and leave it at that. That's really important. They need to make sure they look at government institutions that failed, whether it's local authorities, whether it's the CPS, the police, even if it goes all the way to Whitehall, all of that needs to be looked at.

28:10And it needs to be thorough, but quick as well. We can't have another seven-year inquiry like the Jay Report. I understand that it took that long because the scope was so broad, but this was a specific issue that needed looking at in depth. And I'm glad that finally we're getting an inquiry on it. Do you have any idea who you would like to chair it? Some people have suggested it should be Maggie Oliver. No, I don't know who should chair it. It needs to be somebody who is credible. Maggie Oliver is a good recommendation, but let's see where we get to with that. But it's got to be someone who is prepared to do the right thing, who's not scared, somebody who's not going to be worried about using the wrong language or the wrong tone.

28:45It has to be someone that gets to the bottom of this, that gets the truth. Kemi Badenot, thank you very much for joining me on The Daily Tea. Thank you, Camilla. I think Suella Braveman has been vindicated in all of this, and she should have had more support from within the Cabinet. Yes. Coming up, we haven't heard enough from survivors, but we also arguably haven't heard enough from the parents of survivors who did their level best to stop the abuse and actually found themselves blocked by the police and other authorities. You spoke to Marlon West, whose daughter Scarlett was abused as a teenager.

29:16That's coming next.

29:27I'm Dominic Nicholls. I'm Frances Dernley. We're hosts on Ukraine The Latest from The Telegraph, the world's most listened to podcast on the war in Ukraine, with more than 120 million downloads. Every weekday since the full-scale invasion began, we've brought you on-the-ground reporting, expert analysis and the biggest interviews. From weaponry and military strategy to the reality of life in Russia and Ukraine, we follow the conflict from every angle. Listen daily, wherever you get your podcasts.

30:05Welcome back. Sitting through the press conference, one person caught my eye and my attention, and that was Marlon West, who featured in the recent Channel 4 grooming documentary. He's sitting there in a suit and tie, just a regular guy, talking about his daughter Scarlett, who was groomed and trafficked, and the efforts he went to to try to save her from this life. I went up at the end of the press conference and had a few words with him. Marlon, your daughter Scarlett was groomed and abused and you tried to fight against it, but you were blocked by social workers and police, is that correct?

30:45Yeah, from the age of 14. So I'm a mental health nurse. I quickly picked up on the other one in science and went to social services because they had an expectation they'd help me. and I was surprised how much they didn't. Right. In what ways did they prevent you from acting? So one of the things was she was going missing and I believe this made the grooming actually worse. So she was going missing. So I asked social services to support me. Social services didn't come to me even though she was going missing and being reported to the police. And I was physically, a 14-year-old girl, trying to keep her in the house.

31:34It wasn't hurting her, but physically trying to keep her in the house, standing at the door when this is at 11 o 'clock at night on the school night. And social services came to me and said, no, you're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to even touch her, just leave her, which took away any kind of power from me or parenting. And then it increased then, going missing, because she was 14 and she would be blackmailing me, saying, I'll tell social services if you keep me in the house. Right. So as it got worse and worse and worse, she was having, you know, she had money on me. When she was 14, she wasn't working.

32:15She didn't have a part-time job. I could smell cannabis on her clothes. and then I'm going back with more and more evidence to social services telling them this and they still wouldn't believe me that it was grooming. Then I had a strategy meeting with social services and the police. So it was the missing from home police officers who started shouting at me in the meeting to stop reporting my daughter missing. She was 14-year-old. Right, right. and it just continues from that. Eventually she did go into care and that was me. I had to push that because I wasn't sleeping. I was driving around constantly at night worrying where she was and I was just waiting for the phone call that she was found dead somewhere.

33:06So obviously I'd rather go in care because I couldn't look after her. As hard as it sounds as a parent, I couldn't. And she did go into care and then when she came out, once she was 16, she came out of care straight back into my care and then the grooming was tenfold then. Right. But because she was 16, this is why I brought this up today, the 16 to 18, I wasn't interested. Because to be clear, the Casey report recommends treating everyone under 16 as a child. Yes. But you're concerned that it doesn't address the question of adolescence over 16. Exactly. And I don't want the case inquiry or the case report to give groomers the opportunity, well, we're just grooming between 16 and 18.

33:52I think that could create another problem with that. Right. You also raised a concern about a focus on local inquiries. Yes. What is your worry there when it comes to local bodies policing themselves? Yeah, exactly. So, and we don't know at this point. This is, you know, we need more detail on this. but locally led tells me it's going to be the local authority who, as far as I'm concerned, covered up my daughter's case. Not just civil servants, but also the councillors, the Labour councillors in my case. I have two Labour councillors who live facing me and they knew exactly what was going on and they sat on the scrutiny, one of them sat on the scrutiny panel and no support from them.

34:42if they're doing part of that investigation I think we already know what the end result's going to be Right, you said in the press conference that you don't trust Labour I do not trust Labour The whole party, not just locally? No, the whole party I've been to see Jess Phillips twice Right Doug Amarouchi was very nice but once I mentioned the public enquirer it was a no Right, the national enquiry which they refused to have until Casey recommended Yes, until yesterday. And why do you imagine that the party institutionally has dragged its feet over? I've said this before. I think it's votes over justice of children.

35:20Right. I believe a lot of this is about the areas, because the Labour-run councils, that it'll impact on their votes. I also do think it's about not being politically correct and offending certain communities, which I understand. but I think the majority of it is about votes. Right. This whole tragedy is obviously primarily about evil men doing evil things but it's made even worse by institutional failure and cleverness. How does it feel to be let down in that way? To not just suffer the injustice of what people have done but to also then be ignored and shouted down? And that's why I'm so angry.

36:03Yes. As far as agreements, I was giving them, and this is common, I'm not the only FOMLIN member who says this, I was giving them CCTV of vehicles pulling outside my house, collecting scarlet, where you can clearly see the red plates and you can see the ethnicity, and the police refused to take that information because I was a parent. and even to be fair on social services they try backing me up and giving them the information via social services but this is common practice, I spoke to a lot of families across the country it's nothing special on the same side it's across the country, they will not take evidence from parents forgive this question if it goes too far but is there a part of you that just wants to kill these people I say this as a man I read a lot in the last few days I will answer that I just, my blood is boiling whenever I think about it.

36:55So a lot of my friends have fell out of me, and a lot of my family, brothers, have fell out of me because what they're saying is, you need to go out there and kill them. Yeah. Right. I have a younger daughter, which I generally don't mention. So I have to protect her. Me being in prison isn't going to help her. And the other thing with grooming, once you experience it, you quickly realise that it's like drug dealers. As quick as one goes to prison, within hours the next person's in place, drug dealer. It's exactly the same because a lot of these groomers, it's organised crime. So, yeah, I could go out and kill one.

37:38Believe me, I've sat up at night making them plans. But it won't change anything. How do you and your daughter heal? I heal doing this yeah I don't particularly like the word survivor right because Scarlett isn't a survivor because she's still living with it every day so how can she be a survivor because the psychological damage what that has done on her when she's up all night crying because she's on reoccurring nightmares she's not a survivor and she possibly will never be a survivor and the other one what's interesting as a previous mental health nurse I was a therapist there is no therapy out there for these girls so the NHS will offer six sessions with six sessions you're just opening Pandora's box and then so you're re-traumatising them and then you're saying right sorry you've had your six sessions you're discharged there is no therapy out there and I've heard Cooper as she mentioned it yesterday and she mentioned it back in January about giving psychological, emotional support.

38:52I've been very interested in what that looks like from a professional point. Marlon, thank you very much. You're welcome. This is a completely understandable emotion, by the way. I'm not advocating violence, but, yeah, as a parent, you would want to kill them. Yeah. You and I work in Westminster, which is an unreal world where everyone's mining their P's and Q's all the time. And what always winds me up about it people don't express frank human emotions. But father or mother, when something's done to your child like that, most of us think I'd like to hurt the people who did it. And actually talking about it draws the sting out of it.

39:26You know, with any kind of therapy, you can't fix an emotional problem, a trauma, unless you first articulate it. So you ask someone, would you like to commit violence? They say, most people would say, yes, I would. And actually saying it then draws the string out of it because as you heard him say, you've then got to think about, well, if I did do that, what would the consequences of that be? And so you actually pull back from it. And I feel that in our society, we're not frank enough about those kinds of emotions. And that's one reason why you get public anger, conspiracy theories, riots, because people are bottling up and containing perfectly natural emotions, which they're always being told by the culture, do not express.

40:06I wish we would talk about them more openly, because I think when we we're open about them we're more likely to reason them through step back and do something more rational and productive with that anger which is what he has done through his campaigning i also like the way he talked about how complex his relationship with his daughter was and is in the sense that quite a lot of people looking at this scandal are asking legitimately where were the parents yeah he was there he couldn't connect with her he was blocked from her it was like the The groomers took her, but they also stole his fatherly bond with his own daughter, which is only now trying to repair.

40:45That's the other tragedy here, is that families have been broken apart by this. Yes, there were some children in care and maybe there is a case for saying their parents were completely absent from their lives and it made them even more vulnerable. But I don't think we've highlighted enough the efforts that have been made by mums and dads across the country, tearing their hair out, not able to rescue children from the life of drink and drugs they had been groomed into, let alone the sexual abuse. So I'm glad that he is shining a spotlight on that because I think it's really important. As you can imagine, we've had lots of readers' comments.

41:21One stands out from Jay Patrick, who says, Kemi is doing a good job giving these people a voice. The father who just has spoken, the poor man. As a father of two daughters myself, I just can't imagine how bad it must have been. These professionals need to be prosecuted. We'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.

41:5911,

42:04reached one of her