Former Metropolitan Police officer John Taylor has launched a scathing attack on the Labour government, accusing them of "ignoring victims" of grooming gangs across the country.Taylor has called for a public inquiry into what he describes as" decades of institutional failures that have allowed child sexual exploitation to continue in dozens of British cities."The criticism comes as the government faces mounting pressure over its response to grooming gangs, with Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips under fire in Parliament for failing to provide updates on promised local reviews into the issue.READ THE FULL STORY HERE
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00:00John, I assume you've worked with victims of grooming gangs and groomers in general.
00:08How do you expect they feel, knowing that the government has chosen to water down what already was a pretty watered down offer when it came to local inquiries?
00:17Although, yet again, the victims here will feel completely let down and very, very frustrated.
00:24It's one of these things, if you go back over the 25, 30 years and longer that these things have been going on, at what stage will a government, it has to be said government rather than a party, will one government actually stand up and say, right, let's be honest, let's actually look into all this.
00:44Let's look into why there's been 45, 50 cities, hundreds of victims of this type of child sexual exploitation, basically abduction and rape, gang rape of young girls.
00:57When are they going to stand up and say there has to be a public inquiry into this?
01:01Because there have been individuals, there have been people in authority, and that includes the police, social services, government, CPS and local authorities,
01:10who've let the victims down, because what have they done? They've ignored it. They've actually said it hasn't happened. Well, guess what? It has.
01:17Now, the government continually points to the Alexis J report, which looked at all areas of child sexual exploitation,
01:26from the Church of England to the Jimmy Savile affair and everything in between.
01:32What it didn't really focus on was this specific model that some have alleged is racially motivated.
01:39Pakistani Muslim gangs targeting in particular white girls, young white children who they see as perhaps less pure or more out to get it and target people based on their race.
01:59That's something that hasn't been explicitly explored.
02:02You're right, Tom. And the issue, the funny thing about this is that you know it, I know it, Emily, you know, we all know who the victims, how they're going to be targeted.
02:13We know where they were going to be targeted and we know by whom. We know that now.
02:17And yet still the people in authority won't do it. The Alexis J 20 recommendations, you know, I've got them written down here.
02:24They're sort of in my brain. I think, well, they've already been in place.
02:27I spent 20 years in child protection doing all the investigations. We had the training. We had the individuals.
02:35But as you're quite right, when it came down to specific, which is talking about, as we call it, grooming gangs, there's been no mention of this.
02:43When you have, when you, when you were a detective, what you look at is things like the, the offender methodology.
02:49You know, the MO, who, you know, what are they doing? How are they doing? How are they picking their victims?
02:53Who are the vulnerable victims? Why are they vulnerable? Right. We can prevent it there.
02:57And then you want to investigate. So you said, well, who's actually committed the crime?
03:01That can be intelligence led, but it also comes from victims reporting it.
03:05Well, these victims weren't believed. And why weren't they believed?
03:08Well, that's a lot to do with power and the people they were speaking.
03:10That includes the police, social services, local authorities who wanted to turn the blind eye, have a cover up.
03:16Why? Because in some ways they might be implicated themselves because of that cover up.
03:20Then they've got, now we've moved on. Social media has come into it.
03:24So now people are worried about being cancelled, having that race car pulled against them
03:28and actually finding themselves in the position, well, you're not going to be working here.