Joe Lear

Fiona Goddard was 16 when police returned her to the Pakistani-heritage grooming gang that raped her. Fiona Goddard was 16 in 2010 when West Yorkshire Police officers removed her from a Bradford property where seven men of Pakistani heritage had abused her. Officers knew she was logged as an under-age child sexual exploitation victim, yet returned her to the house. One said: “She says she’s over-age — enjoy your night, lads.” Daily Dazzling Dawn understands the remark, drawn from Goddard’s survivor testimony, has become a defining example of institutional failure in Britain’s grooming gang scandal. Goddard had run away from a children’s home in Bradford in 2008 at 14. What began with a request for a lighter became sustained grooming, rape and trafficking across Blackburn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Oldham. By the time officers found her in the Bradford property, she had been abused by at least 50 men, according to her account. Inside, some men were half-dressed and the lounge was strewn with empty bottles and drug paraphernalia. In the police car, intoxicated and disoriented, she mistakenly said she was 18. Officers had already checked the database and knew she was a child sexual exploitation victim. They drove her back regardless. By 15 she was pregnant by one of her rapists. She gave birth days after her 16th birthday and her daughter was taken for adoption. The abuse continued for another two years. Goddard has said police repeatedly blamed her, calling her a “child prostitute” and accusing her of running a brothel by 17. Analysis by anonymous researchers behind The Network Map indicates at least 60 police officers were implicated in grooming gang activity, either through active involvement or by ignoring sex crimes. The database draws on criminal trial transcripts, police and local authority records, survivor testimonies and media reports. It identifies more than 1,000 perpetrators and more than 3,000 connections between them. The project follows a review by Baroness Louise Casey, which found that Asian and Pakistani-heritage men were disproportionately represented among grooming gang perpetrators and criticised agencies for failing to record ethnicity properly. Casey also said local authorities had avoided acting over fears of being labelled racist. Nine men were convicted of 22 offences against Goddard and sentenced at Bradford Crown Court in February 2019 to a combined 132 years. Basharat Khaliq received 20 years. Saeed Akhtar was jailed for 20 years. Naveed Akhtar, Parvaze Ahmed and Mohammed Usman each received 17 years. Izar Hussain was sentenced to 16 years; Kieran Harris to 17 years; Fahim Iqbal to seven years; and Zeeshan Ali to 18 months. Goddard waived her lifelong anonymity, saying: “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Daily Dazzling Dawn learned that Goddard had repeatedly reported the case to police over five years before prosecution. She has said officers described her as streetwise, downgraded her missing-person reports and failed to treat her as a child in danger. Her case now sits at the centre of two unresolved questions: how many officers failed vulnerable girls, and what accountability remains when the perpetrators have been convicted but the institutions that enabled them remain largely unreformed. Should the officers who returned a known child sexual exploitation victim to her abusers face misconduct proceedings, or does the 2019 prosecution of nine men close the accountability question? Follow Daily Dazzling Dawn for verified news updates and in-depth analysis. #DailyDazzlingDawn #FionaGoddard #GroomingGangs #Bradford #ChildProtection