Following in the footsteps of the wonderful Fiona Goddard who secured a targeted grooming gangs inquiry in her locality of Bradford, we have petitioned Swansea Council to formally volunteer itself for a targeted grooming gangs inquiry by the National Inquiry.
Swansea Council ‘democracy department’ has received our petition but we’ve been told they’ll either approve it or not. We are currently awaiting their response which we are hopeful will be positive as they now claim to adhere to the principle of “SAFEGUARDING IS EVERYONE’S BUSINESS!”
This is our submitted petition:
We the undersigned petition Swansea Council to formally volunteer itself for a targeted grooming gangs inquiry as part of the upcoming National Inquiry.
The government has launched a national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, accepting Baroness Casey's landmark National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, and recommendation to set up a "national inquiry co-ordinating a series of targeted local investigations". We believe the Swansea locality should be part of these targeted local investigations.
We, the petitioners, join Louise Pugh, along with Emily Vaughn, who have published their stories of being survivors of child sexual exploitation groomed and trafficked from Swansea cross borders to Telford. If a thorough child investigation had been carried out in Louise Pugh’s case in June 1999, then it is likely that 10 years later Emily Vaughn would not have been groomed and trafficked to Telford where she was raped over 1500 times as a child.
We are calling on Swansea Council to volunteer itself for a targeted grooming gangs inquiry as part of the upcoming National Inquiry.
We are extremely concerned at Swansea Council's repeated downplaying of the scale of the problem of child abuse and grooming gangs. When survivors of CSA and grooming gangs in Swansea have bravely spoken to Swansea council officials such as attending meetings to investigate educational failings and the underlying issues, survivors of grooming gangs have been dismissed and ignored.
Instead perpetrators have been protected, while many child abuse survivors and whistleblowers have been retaliated against with police/social services investigations fabricating evidence against them to classify them as unreliable witnesses A rape victim in 1992 living in Sketty Park Swansea claimed that she was raped by a police officer AFTER she reported a rape crime. Despite this police officer’s semen being found on her carpet, he was protected while she was classed as an unreliable witness, with mental health problems. This policeman was protected and was allegedly later convicted for kerb crawling with strong associations to a high profile grooming gang cover up in Swansea June 1999.
Evidence was presented of CSE survivors being groomed and raped by men three times their age while they were children living within Swansea council residential children care homes. It is common practice for Swansea council to misuse police and social services resources to target and silence whistleblowers and child abuse victims. Again silencing strategies were utilised such as mislabelling whistleblowers and abuse victims as ‘mentally ill’ for raising these important safeguarding concerns.
Contextually, Swansea has exceptionally high numbers of children being removed into care (Justice in Wales, 2019). The numbers are much higher than the Welsh average. Wales’ numbers for children being removed into care is a lot higher than England and Ireland‘s figures combined (per 10,000). At the same time, inspection reports show that South Wales police did not keep accurate records of children missing in care (HMICFRS, 2023). Instead, Swansea child abuse victims were mislabelled as prostitutes on police paperwork (IISCA, 2022), resulting in missed opportunities.
It’s time for Welsh survivors and whistleblowers of grooming gangs in Swansea to be listened to without fear of systematic abusive repercussions and retaliation on their jobs, families and children.
We believe the scale of this grooming gang issue across the Swansea region is greater than in Rotherham, Rochdale or Telford. Those towns have had their moment of reckoning. Swansea has not.
We the undersigned request that Swansea Council formally volunteers itself for a targeted full grooming gangs inquiry as part of the upcoming National Inquiry.
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If anyone knows any genuine politicians locally to Swansea to support our petition please share this with them. (Not Labour as they’ve known about this problem for decades and turned away from victims’ pain, instead protecting perpetrators).