Bradford is the grooming ‘hotspot' of the UK, victim warns

Times

5 hours ago

Fiona Goddard was just 14 and living at a children's home when she was targeted by a grooming gang based in Bradford.
She was plied with drink and drugs, repeatedly raped and 'in effect used as a prostitute' before falling pregnant to one of her abusers, a court heard.
Nine Asian men were jailed for committing 22 offences against her in 2019, but six years on she believes predators continue to plague her home town.
PA
'It's definitely still going on,' Goddard, now 31, warned this week as she described Bradford as the overlooked hotspot of grooming in the UK.
She is among thousands of young people who may have been failed by authorities over the past 20 years, according to campaigners who claim the problem here could dwarf similar scandals in Rochdale and Rotherham.
A dossier compiled by a child abuse lawyer and a Bradford-based MP maintains that up to 8,000 children were at risk of sexual exploitation between 1996 and 2025.
Baroness Casey of Blackstock, whose audit of grooming cases this week prompted a national inquiry into the issue, said she would be 'surprised' if Bradford was not one of the first areas to be investigated.
With the spotlight finally falling on the city and its surrounding suburbs, The Times met survivors, campaigners and residents who fear child sex attackers have become emboldened by the nation's attention focused elsewhere.
Speaking as families enjoyed ice creams and water fights in the warm weather on Thursday, Goddard welcomed the new inquiry but stressed that the authorities must not view the issue as purely historical.
She revealed that within the last fortnight alone at least two incidents have left local parents seriously concerned for the safety of their children.
On June 10, West Yorkshire police arrested a 70-year-old man on allegations of sexual assault after a report that two children were inappropriately touched at a park in Allerton village, three miles from Bradford.
Footage of the arrest, seen by The Times, shows the suspect trying to escape by reversing his car down a residential road at high speed as officers chase after him on foot. The man was taken into custody and later bailed with conditions.
Five days later, on Sunday evening, officers were again called to a report of a suspicious vehicle in Wibsey village, south of Bradford, after residents claimed teenage girls were being supplied with 'alcohol and balloons' in the back seats.
Officers interviewed two men inside the car and searched the vehicle, before issuing them with out-of-court disposals for possession of class C drugs.
Another victim of a Bradford-based grooming gang who bravely waived her lifelong right to anonymity is Scarlett West, who is now 20.
Despite living in Tameside, about an hour away in Greater Manchester, she was routinely ferried to Bradbury by her abusers before finally breaking free from their influence two years ago.
Marlon West, her father, said the abuse is now 'worse than it's ever been' because perpetrators have exploited 'political correctness' to create a culture of silence in the UK.
Scarlett, who attended a private school, 'went off the rails' after being physically attacked by a gang of boys at a bus station.
Vulnerable, she was befriended by an older white woman who allegedly groomed her and introduced her to a group of predominantly British-Pakistani men.
'Scarlett was being trafficked around the country to a number of places, but Bradford, she was taken there hundreds of times,' her father said.
The area 'is on a different level', he added, because it 'has not had the limelight' like other areas and the criminals 'believe they can get away with it'.
Both Goddard and West, who do not know each other and suffered abuse a decade apart, said that snooker clubs in the city had been hubs of grooming activity. At least one has been closed down by police over allegations of child sex offences.
When The Times visited the site of another club identified this week, it had also shut after going out of business. It is now used as a youth club. Its new owner, who asked not to be identified, said he was saddened but not surprised to learn of the building's history given the area's reputation for grooming.
Goddard said she believes the 'dynamics' of grooming operations 'are changing' as the public becomes more vigilant to vehicles loitering on street corners.
'Rather than just pulling over in cars and seeing them on the street, they're [now] getting in touch with vulnerable people on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok,' she said.
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Officers at Greater Manchester Police who specialise in child exploitation agreed. Grooming is 'evolving' and has become a 'broader' issue than it was two decades ago, they said, driven by the ease with which predators can now contact vulnerable children on the internet.
Many traditional routes used by offenders — through care homes or schools, for example — have been 'closed' by better safeguarding, the force said, but the digital world was 'where the opportunity is'.
'Exploitation is still happening,' Detective Superintendent Alan Clitherow, head of the force's major child sexual exploitation investigations, said. 'It's still happening here, it's still happening nationally. We're constantly having to keep pace with how it's evolving.'
But he said the grooming gangs phenomenon does 'not look the same today' because law enforcement is better equipped to tackle it after learning 'a lot of lessons' from various reviews.
'You're therefore not going to have the same level of long-term bespoke offending, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening,' he added.
Detective Chief Inspector Dan Hadfield, who leads the force's online child abuse investigation team, said there were still 'definitely people working together in a certain town', but that offenders now often operate across borders thanks to the internet.
'It's not as focused as it once was,' he said.
In Greater Manchester, white men are overrepresented in online child abuse cases, accounting for 82 per cent of suspects — a higher proportion than the local white population of 76 per cent. However, Asian men are disproportionately represented in group-based child abuse cases — those involving multiple perpetrators or multiple victims — and make up more than half of such offenders.
Robbie Moore, the MP for Keighley and Ilkley who helped to compile the dossier about Bradford, accused the local council of obstructing independent insight into the scale and nature of sexual offending.
He said: 'It defies belief that over two decades ago since my predecessor Ann Cryer first bravely exposed the grooming gangs crisis right here in Keighley, the Bradford district has still never had a full independent inquiry.'
Susan Hinchcliffe, leader of Bradford Council, said: 'This is an appalling crime that blights victims' lives. In Bradford we take this extremely seriously, so I welcome the renewed focus on this nationally.
'We work hard with the police to identify historic victims of CSE [child sexual exploitation] to get them justice and provide support. So far this has resulted in 52 perpetrators receiving prison sentences totalling 570 years.
'Over the last ten years we have published over 70 reports, independently authored reviews and data, including ethnicity data, for open scrutiny on this subject. We have nothing to hide.'
Chief Superintendent Richard Padwell of Bradford District Police said tackling child sexual exploitation 'remains a top priority'.
He added: 'We are taking a proactive approach and have invested significant resources into tackling exploitation and abuse.
'The work we have undertaken has resulted in hundreds of perpetrators now serving lengthy prison sentences totalling thousands of years. Many investigations are still underway, with more suspects set to stand trial between now and 2027.'