Fiona Goddard: “Sometimes I think, did I die and is this all a bit of a dream?”
The CSE survivor and campaigner on her past, her present, her future – and the national grooming gangs inquiry
The day I meet Fiona Goddard, she’s at home looking after three of her kids, having already done the school run. The youngest is in the living room with her, on a rocker, whiling away her carefree baby days, while her other half is waiting on the delivery of a new fridge freezer as he kindly leaves us to it.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Eden,” says Fiona. “It’s from the bible, the Garden of Eden.”
Are you religious, I ask? Her partner is, she responds, but for her personally, well, it’s a little more complicated.
“I question it because of what I’ve been through,” she says. “I don’t see how there can be something all-powerful that lets children go through that.”
What she’s referring to is the darkest period of her life, which, to this day, she is still struggling to process. Between the ages of 14 and 17, she was raped, sexually assaulted and beaten regularly by a grooming gang in Bradford.
She estimates that between 50 and 100 men took part in her abuse, which also saw her trafficked around the country along with other girls. She was failed by the authorities and her carers at the time (and since). Years later only nine men have ever been convicted of the horrifying crimes she experienced.
Fiona says all of this in a stoical, matter of fact way. She comes across as thoughtful, composed and grounded – strong even.
“I think it’s a bit of learned behaviour,” she explains. “When I’m doing things like this, being interviewed, I’m switched on and focused. But once you’re gone, it’ll hit me and I’ll feel tired.”
What we see and hear of Fiona on the news and social media is only one side of her life. That’s the public-facing Fiona, a vocal advocate for child sexual exploitation (CSE) victims and a campaigner standing up for a proper national inquiry into grooming gangs.
“I deal with my own stuff in private,” she says.
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Fiona was born in 1993 in Bradford to a young mother and a biological father she has never known. Her mum was very young when she had her – just 14.
She, too, missed out on her youth, her adolescence. Instead, Fiona’s mum was confronted with adulthood and the responsibility of being a single parent in her teens. And that wasn’t all. There was also sexual trauma and domestic violence and she found herself in a destructive cycle of trauma. This was the world that Fiona was brought up in.
“I couldn’t cope,” says Fiona. “So I ran away. It’s how I ended up in care.” What should have been a safe, nurturing space was anything but. The children’s home she found herself in, she explains, was out of its depth and ill-equipped to deal with all sorts of complex problems, challenges and experiences that its residents had. There was a decided lack of care, Fiona remembers.
The grooming gang in the area targeted the children’s home. They knew that the young girls housed there came from troubled backgrounds and that they were particularly vulnerable to being exploited. “They were always driving up and down the road,” she says. “They did it all the time.”
The men Fiona encountered, Asian men, came across as sympathetic, asking her to open up about her feelings. They lavished her with attention. They made her feel like she was being listened to. When she got upset, they gave her alcohol and drugs.
Like all grooming victims, unaware of what was happening, thinking nothing but the best of people, Fiona thought the men were coming from a good place. She trusted them. It was then that she was coerced into having sex with them. The next few years would be the worst of her life.
The abuse got worse. She was raped, prostituted, trafficked and beaten up again and again and again. And yet, no-one did a thing. Even when she came back to the children’s home bloody and bruised, she was let down, dismissed, shrugged off and labelled a troublemaker.
To cope with what felt like a hopeless situation – one that she didn’t understand or felt as if she could ever escape from – she ended up living a sort of double life, which tore her up in unimaginable ways.
“When I looked out the window and I looked at all the normal people, I didn’t ever think I’d get that,” she says. “I can’t even describe to you how alone I felt at that moment. I felt like I didn’t have a single person in the world that could help.
“So I put on an act in front of everyone and pretend I was happy and that everything was fine and nothing bothered me. But when I was alone, I’d be sitting in the shower, scrubbing my body, crying, feeling suicidal, trying to kill myself. The problem was that when I did open myself up, social services or the police didn’t take me seriously – they’d tell me that I was a drama queen, that I just had to deal with the consequences of my own actions.”
Something in her, back then, broke, seemingly irrevocably. To cope as best as she could, she bottled up her feelings and even “stopped feeling love for a long time”. It wasn’t until her 11-year-old son, a few years back, who has autism and rarely speaks, said to her, “I love you mum”, that this wall she had built up around herself began to crack.
“It was the first time I felt like an actual flutter in my heart in years,” she says. “And once I felt that, I don’t know, I just must have started opening myself back up a bit. I think it was a protection mechanism for a long time where my emotions just completely shut off altogether.”
Without any help from social services, the police force, the staff at her care home – in a guest post for The Ilkley Journal, she recalls how despite repeated disclosures of rape, despite coming back to the care home in bloody clothes, despite multiple instances of self harm, despite attempts by some staff to raise concerns, no meaningful action or investigations were taken – Fiona finally managed to escape from her abusers. She was 18 and the men had lost the ability to control her.
It wasn’t until 2014, seven or so years later, that she actually realised what she had actually gone through – that had been a victim of child sexual exploitation at the hands of a grooming gang.
It was the year the landmark and damning Jay report (an inquiry into CSE in Rotherham) came out. The report concluded that the “collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant”. Their failures meant that abuse was allowed to carry on, allowing it to increase in scale between 1997 and 2013 (the years covered.
“Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers,” the report stated. “At an operational level, the police gave no priority to CSE, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime.”
Fiona would have to wait half a decade before some of her more prolific and “senior” abusers were brought to justice. The injustice, the uncertainty, the snubs and the priority and momentum, not to mention the disdain that was levelled against her, meant that she couldn’t quite get on with her life. It was difficult for Fiona to find stability, to see even an end to what felt like one dark chapter after the next.
“I kept trying to rebuild my life, but it was like I was coming up against a brick wall every time,” she says. “It was so disheartening. I couldn’t make real progress.”
Even when there was some progress, like the arrest, trial and sentencing of nine of her abusers in 2019, her life still felt out of her control. She felt that way about living in Lincoln when she was under witness protection. Stuck in a strange place left her in a sort of limbo. And it had a huge impact on her mental health.
“It kept me in a victim mindset,” she says. “I didn’t like it. My mental health has been so much better since I’ve come back home.”
That was in 2021, two years after the trial and two years after she decided to waive her anonymity. “I wanted to show anyone who has gone through, or is going through, anything similar that there is nothing to be ashamed of,” she said at the time.
Since then she has become a notable advocate for fellow CSE victims, as well as a vocal campaigner calling for a proper, unfiltered, laser-focused national inquiry into grooming gangs. Today she now sits alongside political leaders.
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For years, any talk of a national inquiry into grooming gangs was largely rebuffed, downplayed or brushed under the carpet. And following the publication of the final report of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) in 2022, which was led by Alexis Jay (the very same Jay who oversaw the inquiry in Rotherham), it appeared that there was no longer any political appetite for further if not more specific inquiries. The report had made its recommendations, which were widely welcomed, and that was that.
The problem here was that following the report, progress on actioning the recommendations had stalled, much to the dismay of Jay. As she told the BBC back in 2023, the then Conservative government’s response had been “weak” and seemingly “disingenuous”. More time passed and still, nothing of note, no sense of urgency. A new Labour government was also slow to act and proper implementation of the recommendations remained outstanding.
All of this would change at the start of the year – and bizarrely, at the centre of it all was the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. Arguably, as a direct result of his intervention, which included falsehoods, distortions and vile personal attacks – “Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for 6 years”, “Jess Philips is a rape genocide apologist” – the conversation around grooming gangs changed. By June, Labour had made something of a u-turn. There would now be a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
“When Elon Musk spoke up – and it shouldn’t have been him, it should have been our own government – I just thought, you know what, I need to open my mouth again,” Fiona says.
“I’d been going through a lot of stuff in private with social services over the years and it had felt to me like they were trying to get me to take responsibility for what had happened to me and that they were also trying to keep me silent and locked up in a box. And I think that’s why I came out and exploded a bit.”
Fiona found herself speaking out far more than she had ever done, which was something of a revelation for her. But, in a strange way, it made sense – sometimes some things, whether you expect it or not, happen when they’re meant to happen.
Plus, she still has unfinished business. Though some of her abusers have been sent to prison, which has delivered some peace of mind, there is still so much that needs to be done before Fiona can somewhat confidently move on more decisively from her past. There are, for instance, plenty of people who still need to be held to account for failing to protect Fiona and the full extent of grooming gang activity across the Bradford District still needs to be properly investigated.
She also hopes that the increased attention on grooming gangs and the setting up of a national inquiry will lead to further convictions – and that some of the many men who abused her who have so far managed to escape punishment for what they did to her, will, with other girls in the Bradford District hopefully coming forward, finally end up behind bars.
“Because we were all linked together, these grooming networks,” she says. “They’re all intertwined. For instance, I know of three people from that time period of my abuse that have since ended up being convicted.”
Following the fallout from Musk’s tweets and the grooming gang inquiry u-turn, Fiona found herself back in the spotlight. The media was interested in what she had to say again, in her story, in her thoughts about an inquiry.
Politicians, too, wanted to be seen with her, to be seen to be on her side (Fiona doesn’t have much time for party politics, saying that “tackling grooming gangs should be cross-party”). Before long she found herself right at the heart of the conversation and liaising with decision makers and people of power and influence.
In turn, along with other survivors of CSE, Fiona was invited to join the government’s victims and survivors liaison panel for the inquiry. It felt like things were moving in the right direction – beyond all her expectations. However, in October of this year, it all fell apart and Fiona ended up resigning along with a number of other survivors. The system, again, had imposed its authority on Fiona, on other victims.
“The dynamics of this inquiry, including potential chairs and progress, should have been conducted openly and honestly by the government – and survivors should have had the choice to voice their opinions if they decided to,” she wrote in her resignation letter at the time.
“Instead, the secretive conduct and conditions imposed on survivors has led to a toxic, fearful environment, and there is a high risk of people feeling silenced all over again.”
It wasn’t the only reason for Fiona quitting. One of the other main reasons was the seeming dilution of the focus of the inquiry. From her perspective, the team behind the inquiry appeared to have lost sight of why this inquiry had been called for in the first place, with Fiona fearing that it would no longer exclusively be about grooming gangs.
“This inquiry needs to remain focused on this specific subsection of offending,” she continued in her letter. “Grooming gangs or ‘gang based sexual exploitation’ is a unique crime with its own markers. It also often differs from other areas of CSA (child sexual abuse) or CSE in that victims have experienced decades of failure from statutory services.
“Expanding the scope of this inquiry risks it being watered down and once again, failing to get to the truth. We have repeatedly faced suggestions from officials to expand this inquiry, and there is real fear from survivors, including myself, that it will turn into another IICSA, with grooming gang victims forgotten.”
(Since we spoke, draft terms of reference have been published with news that Ilkley local, Anna Longfield, formerly the children’s commissioner for England, has been appointed as chair of the inquiry, confirming that it will be focused on grooming gangs.)
Although Fiona now finds herself on the outside, unable to now influence more directly the inquiry at its still important and formative stages, she remains undeterred. Something in her has changed and she’s committed to doing everything she can to make sure the inquiry does what it needs to do, even if it is from the proverbial sidelines. I ask her what she hopes will be the eventual outcome.
“The inquiry needs to have accountability, so that people that failed should lose their jobs and pensions,” she responds. “People who actively made decisions that would constitute misconduct in public office, they need to be held to account and prosecuted where they’ve found to have committed any offences.
“There needs to be a big overhaul of training for social workers and police officers because something’s clearly going wrong and it needs to be looked at and corrected.
“I want the inquiry to look at patterns in perpetrators and in victims, so that it can be studied to come up with a framework can be developed and used to educate people and contribute to a reduction in this specific type of crime – because it is unique.
“Education, education, education, that’s also key. And not just in the public sector but in schools and the wider community too. It’s also got to have meaningful change afterwards and that any recommendations that come from it need to be implemented by whichever government’s in power at the time. And swiftly.”
Fiona pauses. She could go on and on, she explains – there’s so much more that needs to be done, so much more that the inquiry needs to look into, so many more positive outcomes that need to occur as a result. “This is why I’m arguing that it can’t be broadened out from the grooming gangs because it’s so complex and it encompasses so many different things.”
None of this is easy for Fiona – it’s emotionally draining and then there’s her own ongoing recovery from her abuse to factor in also – but she believes that in the end it’ll all be worthwhile. If she can turn something good from something bad, she says, then that’s a positive. It may even help her deal with her own trauma.
“I kind of feel like it’s my responsibility to use my voice for all the people who feel like they can’t,” she says. “I’d never stand here and say I represent every single survivor, because everyone is different, and I can’t get it right all of the time either, but I do try my best to make sure that no one’s forgotten and that everyone is included. I don’t want anyone getting left behind.”
…
Fiona’s life, as of late, is the most stable and balanced it has ever been. A big reason for this, other than having some closure in 2019, other than finding purpose with her CSE advocacy, is family life. Spending time with her kids and her partner is her happy place.
Her relationship with her partner, James is, by far, the healthiest and happiest one she’s ever had and they’ve both been instrumental in helping each other rebuild their lives. The one other serious relationship she had was when she was 18, not long after her abuse had ended, which was with the now absent father of two of her kids. It was a troubled relationship, but she didn’t know it at the time. Again, she would only realise how damaging it had been later.
With six kids under one roof, it’s a busy household. Two, as noted, come from her previous relationship, two from James’ and two they’ve had together. But she’s a mum to all of them just as much as he’s a dad to them all. “We’re the only mum and dad that they know,” she says. They plan on getting married one day.
Fiona also has an older daughter, her firstborn. She was pregnant with her when she was 15, having conceived her in the care home. “I went into labour on my sixteenth birthday,” she remembers. “And gave birth three days later.”
Her daughter would eventually be taken off her. The reason given was that where she was then living, in a mother and baby unit on the same street as the care home, the very same place her abusers could be found, wasn’t a safe environment for a child. But it was where she had been placed. Fiona feels like this was orchestrated from the get go so that she would lose custody of her kid.
“Having my eldest removed from me, I think that’s contributed to me having so many kids,” she says. “I constantly felt like something was missing and even though nothing will ever replace that void, I’ve got loads of children that I get to focus on, love, cherish and look after. And it does ease the pain a little bit.”
Her life is richer because of them. “ They literally give me purpose. If it wasn’t for my kids, I don’t think I’d have survived what I went through, I don’t think I’d have ever rebuilt my life or had any spark or fight in me. They’re literally the reason I do everything I do.”
Not that it’s an easy life. In addition to having a child with autism, she also has a daughter with special educational needs. This in itself is challenging enough but there are additional hurdles on top of it. For instance, Fiona explains, it limits the schools she can go to.
For her daughter, the schools need to be resource provision (RP) enabled – aka better equipped to deal with children who have special educational needs and disabilities. This is further compounded by where they happen to be, “in areas that I know have CSE issues” she says, “so I’m getting worried”.
“I am finding it difficult at the moment, trying not to panic over what’s gonna come next,” she continues. “I have done an age appropriate talk with her and my eldest son, explaining that there are bad men out there and that if someone tries to buy you nice things, if an adult tries to talk to you randomly on the street, if someone makes you feel uncomfortable, to always go and tell a teacher or me.”
As we come to the end of our interview, I ask her what her plans are for the future. With so much of life tied up with her abuse – as a grooming gang victim and now as a grooming gang survivor – it’s easy to forget that there’s so much more to Fiona than that life-changing experience.
“I’d like to one day maybe start branching out to other parts of me,” she says. “I don’t just want to be a grooming gang victim. I want to turn that into more of a success story. Does that make sense? So I don’t know where I’m hoping to go yet, but I know that there’s options out there that I’m willing to try and take.”
One of these is setting up a community interest company with Jamieleigh Jones, another CSE survivor. The concept? A survivor-led project that aims to “fill the support gap that leaves grooming survivors to face the challenges of rebuilding their lives alone”. They’ve got a name for it: Healing Hearts – Life After CSE.
Fiona’s also keen on finishing her education. “I missed out on doing this properly,” she says. “I was expected to get around 12 a stars but I ended up with like, four d’s. I’d like to redo more of them, like history. I’ve already redone my maths and English. And then, I was thinking about doing politics, economics, psychology – just seeing what fits and feels right.”
For Fiona, now 32, notwithstanding the fact that for now everyday remains a battle – dealing with and recovering from the trauma of being a victim of CSE is likely to always remain, in varying shades, a big part of her life – getting to this place in her life, in a healthy relationship, being a mother, being a voice for CSE survivors, talking with political leaders, being invited to have her say by the media, is nothing short of a miracle.
“I didn’t think I’d ever even be here,” she says. “My grandma had my funeral planned for me and everything. No one thought I’d make it past 18 – and I didn’t think I’d make it. Sometimes I think, did I die, and is this all a bit of a dream?”
She says this because having being made to feel worthless most of her life – told that she didn’t deserve happiness, that she would never amount to anything – there’s a sense of disbelief that she’s got all her kids under one roof and a public profile where people not only listen to what she has to say, but respect a lot of it, too.
I ask if she’s happy. It’s a word she struggles with, for all the obvious reasons. “I don’t know about that,” she says. “I’m simply grateful for what I’ve got. For every tiny little thing.”