A woman who was abused by a grooming gang when she was 12 said she wanted the government to lead a “thorough” inquiry into child sex abuse in her town.
Oldham local authorities’ failures to help the woman were highlighted in a review published in 2022.
The town’s council is setting up its own investigation into historical child sex abuse cases after Labour ministers said they would not set up a public inquiry.
The woman, named in the review as Sophie to protect her identity, said a local inquiry would lead to “more recommendations, filed away for no-one to follow” rather than “the justice that we want”.
When Oldham Council leader Arooj Shah said her authority was told to hold its own inquiry by the government, a row broke out among political parties, leading to the Conservatives and Reform UK calling for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Prime Minister Kier Starmer was earlier accused by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch of fuelling accusations of a “cover up” by refusing to hold one.
‘Trauma’
In 2006, Sophie tried to report sexual abuse at Oldham police station, but was told to come back when she was “not drunk”.
Two men then picked her up in a car and raped her in a nearby street, before she was taken to two houses in the town and raped and sexually assaulted by multiple men.
Sophie said she had fought to get her voice heard by “politicians and people in power [who] do not want to listen”.
Local inquiries into the abuse in Oldham were limited and led to “recommendations that the majority of the time, they don’t really follow”, she said.
She added that survivors wanted a “thorough” government-led probe that would lead to prosecutions.
“We’ve all gone through trauma and we deserve our voices to be heard – people need to stop being scared of discussing it,” she added.
Oldham Council has started liaising with survivors of child sex abuse in preparation for the inquiry, Shah said.
Staff have also contacted Telford Council, whose own inquiry found evidence of child sex abuse in the Shropshire town was ignored for generations, and that more than 1,000 girls were abused.
Shah said survivors would have a “central role” in developing the inquiry, adding that terms of reference would be agreed in the coming months.
But Sophie said she felt Oldham Council did not have the finances to conduct a full review, and had concerns about the independence of any inquiry.
She also said she feared calls for a wider national inquiry would overshadow what happened in Oldham, and mean survivors “wouldn’t get the justice we want”.
