Nigel Farage facing calls to apologise to female survivors of grooming gangs

Nigel Farage is facing calls to apologise to a group of women after he suggested they were not victims of grooming gangs.

The Reform UK leader suggested on Monday that they were victims of other types of child sexual abuse.

But in a statement to the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, the women hit back, saying it was “categorically untrue” for Farage to have said they were not victims of grooming gangs.

The five women – who are part of a panel advising the government on setting up its grooming inquiry – previously came out to give their support to Home Office minister Jess Phillips, who faced calls from another group of survivors to stand back from the fledgling investigation.

Their statement read: “Nigel Farage should apologise.

“What he said about us is categorically untrue, saying we shouldn’t be on the panel because we are watering it down and we are survivors of other abuse, not grooming gangs. We are survivors of grooming and grooming gangs.

“Farage’s lack of knowledge and assumptions about our experiences as victims and survivors of grooming gangs proves he should not have a platform to make decisions about us or our input.

“His ignorance and untrue statements about us, our experiences and the validity of our involvement, his lack of understanding or care to look into our lives to make sure what he was saying was true, has meant he has dismissed people who this inquiry is for.”

On Monday, Mr Farage appeared at a central London press conference alongside grooming gang survivor Ellie-Ann Reynolds, where he called for a Parliament-led commission into the scandal.

Ms Reynolds was among those who quit the victims panel unhappy with how it had been set up.

At the press conference she said she had withdrawn from the panel because she felt she had been manipulated by senior people in the Home Office.

The Reform UK leader meanwhile said: “Five of the grooming gang victims, those that feel insulted like Ellie have withdrawn from the inquiry, but you’ll be told there are five who insist that Jess Phillips stays in place and that the inquiry continues.

“But here’s the truth about the other five, just as I said at the start of this press conference, there are two very distinctly different groups of young people who were sexually abused and raped by adults.

“And what has happened with this inquiry is the Government have quite deliberately from the very start, widened the scope out from those who were victims of Pakistani grooming gangs and brought in other women.”

Mr Farage insisted he was “not demeaning or diminishing” how these other women had been treated, but said they were “survivors of a very different kind of sexual abuse”.

The five women who backed Ms Phillips also told the Guardian they thought limiting the focus of the inquiry to only street grooming would exclude those who had experience group-based exploitation which began online or via family members.