A woman who was sexually abused as a child by a group of men has said she feels “insulted” after her compensation claims were denied. Fiona Goddard, who was 14 and living in a children’s home in Bradford when the grooming and abuse began in the late 2000s, has spoken out about her ordeal and the authorities’ response.
Goddard, who has waived her right to anonymity, said it was “really insulting” to see “another level of dismissal” after she made a legal claim against West Yorkshire Police and Bradford Council. Nine men were jailed in 2019 for sexual offences against her, with the trial hearing that she was found by police at the home of a man in his 40s on more than one occasion when she was a child missing from local authority care.
A safeguarding review found that Goddard’s mother had expressed concerns about child sexual exploitation (CSE) in 2008, and there was evidence that Goddard was in contact with adult males, but “this was not acted upon by the police or children’s social care”. The report also stated that Goddard went missing “on an almost daily basis” and these episodes were graded as “unauthorised absence”, resulting in a downgraded police response compared to a grading of “missing”.
In a letter sent to Goddard’s solicitor, West Yorkshire Police said “the claims in negligence, misfeasance and conspiracy to injury are, with respect, entirely without merit”. Goddard told the BBC she felt this was an attempt to “gaslight” her, saying “Publicly to the media, they’re accepting they failed, they’re accepting that they did stuff wrong but in private they’re trying to gaslight me.”
Solicitor Amy Clowrey from Switalskis said the handling of survivors’ compensation claims by authorities could cause further distress and needed to change. “One of the big things that came out of the [Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse] is that survivors need genuine apologies,” she said. “It helps with the healing process and their recovery and we’re still not seeing that in the litigation arena, it’s still quite adversarial.”
Goddard and other abuse survivors had previously quit their roles in the government’s inquiry into grooming gangs, citing concerns about the suitability of the candidates shortlisted to chair the inquiry. They argued that the chairs should not have a background in policing or social work, as these services had “contributed most to the cover-up of the national mass rape and trafficking of children”.
