EZRA LEVANT ｜ A heartbreaking and infuriating interview with a victim of child sexual exploitation in the United Kingdom
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Summary
Samantha Smith, a British conservative pundit, explains what happened to her, and her thoughts on how to make sure it never happens again, even though it is still happening again every day in the United Kingdom.
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. A very special feature interview today with Samantha Smith.
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She's a British conservative pundit. Very interesting thoughts on what's going on there.
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But she herself, I suppose, is part of the news. A very difficult conversation with the victim of
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child sexual exploitation in that country. I'll let her explain what happened to her and
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her thoughts on how to make sure it never happens again, even though it is still happening again
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every day. That's our show today. A very special interview with a survivor of Britain's rape
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gangs. But let me invite you to get the video version of these podcasts, too. Just go to
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rebelnewsplus.com and click subscribe. A heavy conversation, to be sure. Here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, a heartbreaking and infuriating interview with a victim of child sexual exploitation in the
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United Kingdom. It's September 13th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
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You're fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug!
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Well, you know our motto here at Rebel News, it's telling the other side of the story. Sometimes
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that means talking about a story that everybody's talking about, but just giving a different
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perspective. But sometimes it means telling a story that everyone else is afraid to even
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mention. Afraid for various reasons, because it's too difficult to talk about certain things. Or
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you might be accused of being a bigot. You might be accused of being a racist. That's something that
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happened in the United Kingdom over years. In fact, over decades, as a terrible phenomenon took root in
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that country. A phenomenon of what can only be called rape gangs. Groups of men who would sexually
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assault women, night after night after night, the same women, and actually to say women is inaccurate,
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they're girls, children. It's child sexual exploitation on a mass scale. It's tough to talk about it because
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in the main, the young girls are working class white girls. And as terrible as it sounds, the majority of
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the perpetrators are Pakistani Muslim men in the UK. It's very difficult to even say that unless perhaps
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you yourself are a Pakistani Muslim man in the UK, like Majid Nawaz. Listen to this clip from his radio
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show a few years ago. For too long in this country, uh, we, media, the establishment, society, the
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chattering classes, the liberal elite, whatever term you want to use, have ignored the issue of grooming
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gangs. Of young, vulnerable teenage girls who have been victimized, drugged, and raped, and abused.
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Whether it's the Rotherham case, or all the other cases that were replicated across the country,
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uh, it is both the conclusion of the prosecutor, uh, in the Rotherham case, British Pakistani Muslim
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Nazir Afzal, or indeed the official inquiry into why it took so long for these young, vulnerable,
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underage girls, uh, to get justice. Uh, both of those concluded that fears of racism prevented us from
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coming to the defense of vulnerable, underage girls. Fears of racism meaning, uh, that the state
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was scared that it would be accused of being racist if it rightly arrested and prosecuted British
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Pakistani largely, British Pakistani Muslim men, uh, in their abuse of underage white teenage girls.
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And so, from fear of appearing racist, there was a silence across the country, as multiple cases
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of grooming gangs emerged up and down the country, as evidenced now due to multiple, uh, uh, prosecutions,
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successful prosecutions, but sadly and unfortunately too late. If we hadn't all been silent, if we had
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all addressed this issue head on when it needed to be addressed, when it was time to address it,
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then the void would not have emerged for the populist agitators to fill that gap and become popular,
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actually, as a result of addressing what is a legitimate issue. They ended up hijacking what
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should have been the concern of every right-minded citizen in this country. And unfortunately,
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it takes a bit of courage to address something, uh, that people will hurl abuse at you for talking
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about. I know on this show, on this, on my own show on the weekends, um, I've tried to book, uh, certain
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MPs to come on and address the issue of grooming gangs, and on multiple times, they've had to back
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away from fear of the backlash. We recall Sarah Champion, who in the Labour Party attempted to address
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this and lost her position in the front bench as a result. There have been multiple cases now,
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and it's beyond any level of doubt that there's a disproportionate number of British
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Muslims involved in grooming gangs against underage white girls. And to say that is to report on the
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facts. It's not to be racist. And if we're backing away from this conversation, then all we're doing
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is leaving the ground far open in what is a legitimate issue that requires addressing. We're leaving the
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ground for the populist to hijack that legitimate issue and make it their own for their own nefarious
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purposes. And that's precisely what's been going on. And it's in that regard that what I'm saying here
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is I just wish, I wish that those young girls had seen justice served for them as fast as the judge
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served Tommy Robinson justice in this case. Because in this case, it's very easy for us to pick on the
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bogeyman. But actually, the truth is that our silence over decades in this country is the real
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bogeyman. And that's the real thing we should despise our own cowardice in the face of grooming
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of young girls up and down this country and our conspiracy of silence.
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Isn't that interesting? He can say those statistics because no one's going to call him a racist.
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He's not anti-Pakistani. That is who he himself is. He says that by not talking about it,
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other people fill the void. In that case, Tommy Robinson did. Can other people talk about this?
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Or is the fear of being called racist even greater than the fear of rape, the most
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atrocious crime imaginable? Well, we're going to have one of those difficult conversations today.
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I came across our next guest sort of by accident. I would follow her on Twitter for her conservative
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political commentary in the United Kingdom. I'm fascinated by that country and there's lessons
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we can learn from them and warnings we can take from them. But I saw her one day, not as a political
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pundit, but as a witness and I suppose a survivor herself of this grooming gang situation in the
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United Kingdom, I saw her talk about it on the UK network called GB News. And I was surprised to
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learn that she was here in Canada for a period of time. And I invited her by to have that same
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challenging conversation. Here's my feature interview with Samantha Smith.
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And joining me now is Samantha Smith. First of all, welcome. It's nice to
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spend some time with you and to talk with you. Thank you for having me on, Nesra. I really
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appreciate it. Well, I admire a lot of the places where you work. I love GB News. I think they're the
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great, I think they're the best English language news and commentary station in the world. I mean,
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I love Fox, of course, but GB News has some real characters. You're also on the BBC,
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Talk TV. Are you a pundit? Are you a politician? How would you describe yourself?
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I'd say I'm a bit of a jack of all trades. I do a lot of print journalism. That's my bread and butter.
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That's what I really love doing. I write a lot for the male and the spectator. Good old-fashioned
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bastions of free speech. They really are. I mean, they're great.
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They really are. And I say that my focus is on education, social mobility, and justice.
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You know, I follow you on Twitter very closely. It's very interesting. And there's a class
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angle to things that we in the new world don't know about. I mean, we're vaguely aware of class,
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but I think the idea of the American dream, you start at nothing and you move up and you admire
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someone. You don't look down on someone. The idea of judging someone by their accent, for example.
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I mean, I suppose people sometimes do that to the Southern accent. They think it's sort of hick,
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but that's actually still pretty hardwired in the British system. Definitely. I mean, I come from a
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very working class background. I would say my mother is a first generation immigrant. My father was
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adopted. He didn't get a great education. I was born in Surrey, but I grew up in Telford. I moved
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around quite a lot when I was younger. And the fact that I'm working class, that I am not privately
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educated, that I'm just a run of the mill ordinary citizen, it seems very at odds with my accent. I
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get a lot of comments on the flip side of things. People are often persecuted or prejudiced because of
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their accents if they have a Northern accent or a working class accent. I often get assumptions that
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I must be privileged upper class and that I must have some sort of fortunate background because of
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the way I speak. And so I often am told that what happened to me couldn't have happened because I'm
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living off of daddy's money and that I must come from a brilliant background. I must have gone to a
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private school, privately educated, very, very well off. And that I, so I agree in Britain, especially
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there is a massive, massive class divide and it's so, it's so complex and often people look surface
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level. They look at skin color, they look at ethnicity, they look at religion, but the class
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divide in the UK is so, is so apparent in the fact that for example, white working class boys are the least
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likely to progress to higher education. They have the lowest, yeah, they have the lowest, the lowest outcomes
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when it comes to careers, education, future prospects. And so I think it's very underrepresented,
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especially in politics and in the media, the plight of, of young working class individuals.
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And parliament itself. I mean, there are very few MPs, even for the Labour Party, that could truly be
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called working class. Keir Starmer, the head of Labour, he's not working class. He's pretty fancy.
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No, he, he caters to the metropolitan elite. That's what the late party is nowadays.
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It's sort of like the Democrats. They're more about woke university faculty than they are about
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the working man. I think that's why I identify with the conservative party. I'm, I'm a diehard
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conservative, true blue. And the reason that I am so passionate about conservativism in, in the UK
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is because they care about aspiration. They, like you said, they, they aspire to, to be greater than what
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they are. It's all about hand ups, not hand outs. And the fact, the idea that no matter your ethnicity,
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race, class background, you can achieve whatever you want to. I mean, that's evident in the fact
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that we've just selected our third prime minister. I was going to say, Liz Truss, she, she's not
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like the others. Tell us a little bit about Liz Truss. We're still trying to get to know who she is.
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That was, Forrest Johnson was thrown out the window. A big battle to succeed him. Some very
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interesting candidates. Final round Liz Truss versus Rishi Sunak. I mean, in his own way,
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a trailblazer too. Tell us a little bit about Liz Truss, the new Bridge PM.
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Well, Liz Truss is as about, as about as, as plain speaking as they come. She's, she's a remnant of
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the Thatcher era, although she wasn't lived down when she was younger, but we can all be forgiven for
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our sins. She is, you're right. Not like, not like the others. She comes from a working class background.
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Her parents were both working class. They, you know, were not manual laborers, but they were,
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they certainly weren't businessmen or millionaires. She grew up in a very ordinary town and very
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ordinary house. She lived a very ordinary life. And the, the idea that she has become our third female
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prime minister, that she is now the leader of the United Kingdom, one of the greatest powers in the
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world, speaks to the fact that the conservative, that the conservative party is all about aspiration.
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And the fact that we managed to achieve it without any all women shortlist or diversity quotas,
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says a lot about, about the reality of diversity and equality that you can't force it. It has to,
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has to happen naturally. And that individuals that are, you know, I'm, I'm mixed race. I'm
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working class. My mother, I'm a second generation immigrant. And I would perish the thought of being
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handed a job because white people had been told that, that it wasn't for them or that men had been
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told that it, that it wasn't for them. They need to step aside. I think that it only fosters a lack of
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aspiration in minority communities. And it suggests that, that we can't succeed off of our own merit,
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that we need to have handouts. We need to have all women shortlists. We need to be
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afforded special privilege, privileges in order to succeed. When in reality, women, ethnic minorities,
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people of, of different religions, they are just as capable of, of succeeding if given an equal
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playing field rather than elevating them beyond, beyond their peers.
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You made me think of a short exchange in the House of Commons. I think it was Theresa May who got it
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started talking about the fact that all three women PMs were towards you. Take a quick look at this.
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I congratulate my right hon. Friend and welcome her to her position as the third female Prime Minister
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in the United Kingdom. Can I ask my right hon. Friend, why does she think it is that all three
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Well, I thank my right hon. Friend for her fantastic question. I look forward to calling on
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her advice from her time in office as I start my work as Prime Minister. It is quite extraordinary,
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isn't it? That there doesn't seem to be the ability in the Labour Party to find
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a, a female leader or indeed a leader who doesn't come from North London.
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Yeah. I mean, I just, I don't know what it is. I don't, I don't know, I don't know what the issue is.
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Well, that's, that's a hoot and you're obviously a political commentator and it's a feast for political
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commentators between Boris being ousted, the new, I mean, it was quite some drama who would be the new
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PM who's going to be the cabinet. I mean, Britain is at a lot of crossroads. The shocking
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rise in the price of energy in part because, you know, how do you put sanctions on Russia,
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which is the one of the world's largest energy producers, one of the world's largest exporters
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to Europe. Like there's a real crisis in the UK about energy bills. Give us a little bit of
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the details. I don't think in Canada, like we complained recently with good reason about our
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gasoline being about two bucks a litre, which is atrocious by the way, but natural gas for home
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heating in the UK, I've seen some reports of it being 10 times normal. Give us some stats.
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So energy prices were set to rise by a minimum of 8%, if not 12, 16% in, in some cases across the UK.
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Energy bills were increasing by thousands, tens of thousands of pounds. Small businesses were
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facing having to shutter their doors. So it was more than just 16%. Like I saw some pubs saying
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last year, our energy bill was 2000 pounds. This year, they predicted to be 20,000. So it wasn't
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just 16%. It was like 1600%. How is that even possible? How does that work? Well, it's because
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with the rise in energy prices and the lack of infrastructure that we have domestically. So we don't
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have a lot of our own natural resources. Obviously there's Scottish oil, there's British gas,
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but a lot of our reliance did come from Russia and we have completely cut them off. We've
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completely shuttered those operations. And so right now we're facing a struggle to get enough gas and
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get enough oil and get enough natural resources to, to, to keep everyone's homes, homes heated and
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homes warm and, and on. And what something that I think is very good, first of all, is that the,
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is that the new Prime Minister Lewis Trust has pledged to scrap the national insurance tax rise. So it was
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planned to rise from 19% to 25%. That was a policy put in place by Rishi Sunak. She has said that's
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absolutely not going to happen. So that's going to put some immediate cash back into the pockets
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of those that need it most. The ban on fracking has been lifted. That's so important. That's
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incredible. I mean, when I think of the UK, I think of climate protesters, I think of extinction,
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rebellion, gluing your hands to the most way. Yeah, the dumbest stuff. And so to say, boom,
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we're getting rid of the ban on fracking. That's such an enormous change done really just with the wave
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of a wand. That's incredible. Yeah. Nuclear energy is another thing that is being seriously
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investigated by, by the conservative government at the moment, because, you know, it was Caroline
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Lucas, I believe that said back in 2010, she said it would take 10 years to get nuclear energy off,
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off the ground. And that was, and she said, she didn't, she didn't think there would be a need for
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it, that it wasn't, that the, the need for nuclear energy didn't outweigh the demand and, and the, the
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climate, the, the climate issues that come along with, with nuclear energy supposedly. But now it's 2022,
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and we're facing the, the worst energy crisis we've had in, in modern memory. You know, the,
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the idea of blackouts in, in winter in the 21st century is beyond comprehension. And so
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right now the immediate focus is, I'd say re-evaluating net zero and green energy
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policies, scrapping the green levy for now, which is used. So the green levy is used to
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invest in sustainable schemes. That's a tax on top of people's energy bills. Scrapping that needs to come
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first, in my opinion, lifting the, the ban on fracking is a brilliant first step towards
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incentivizing domestic production of, of oil, gas, natural resources. I think that also
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looking at some sort of energy, energy price cap, although it's, that's very dicey territory.
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Yeah. You don't want to get into price, you know, setting the price. It's a little Marxist.
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Exactly. You know, it's funny because Boris Johnson, what a character. And by the way, his,
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his eulogy to the queen in parliament was the best I've ever heard. Would you agree with me that one
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of the reasons he was given the heave-ho was because of the lockdowns, the cheating and the
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rule breaking. And is, is that an accurate, I mean, there were a number of reasons. He was sort of a
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mess in a number of ways, but was the, the straw that broke the camel's back, was it because he knew
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about parties that broke the rule? Was that, is that an accurate assessment of the final reason
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that gave him the boot? I wouldn't say that would be the final reason because we saw him continue on.
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We saw him carry on afterwards. There were massive, there was massive uproar both within the party and,
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and in the public eye, but we didn't see the wave of resignations come until the, the Chris
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Pinscher scandal broke. And that was very much along the same lines of sleaze in government and of, you
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know, impropriety, impropriety and cover ups, the cover up culture in Westminster. But I would say
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that the things that made Boris the most popular, the things that made him an election winner, the
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things that people loved about him, you know, that he didn't play by the rules, that he was a character,
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that he was a showman. It was, you know, no one can out Boris Boris. That was, that's what has always
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been said. It's true. The, the Borisisms that made him so popular are what were his undoing in the end,
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because in a time of national crisis, in a time of pandemic and energy crisis and imposing recession,
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impeding recession, we don't want a showman. We want someone that's, that's going to keep calm and
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carry on. That's going to, to put money back in the pockets of British people. We want a strong
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conservative leader. And I think that Boris ventured too far into the realms of populism. He changed his
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policies on, on a whim, you know, often, often at the, at the, the wishes of Carrie of his wife,
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Carrie Simmons, who was a very big climate, climate protester. Oh, really? Yeah. She, you know, she,
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granted a lot of the work she did was absolutely brilliant, but it was, it very much felt at times
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like Carrie was running the operation rather than Boris. And I would say that, that, that Liz Truss,
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moving forward, she is going to want to assert herself as the complete opposite of Boris. She's
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going to want to make a clean break and show the Conservative Party is merging into a different
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direction because the last thing that the British public want and the thing that will hurt us most
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in the election as a Conservative Party member and as a Conservative Party voter would be more of the same.
00:21:39.160
Hmm. There's so much interesting in the UK. I used to go there fairly often, but of course,
00:21:44.760
uh, I'm on Trudeau's no-fly list. That was for the longest time. Listen, I was glad to talk with
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you about the UK. I'm interested in it. A lot of our viewers are. We have two reporters there now,
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Louis Brackpool and Ed Crawford just joined us as a producer. Um, and you have a lot to say,
00:22:00.760
but I follow you on Twitter. I enjoy seeing what's up and you're pretty young. I mean, you're,
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you're a 20 year old student at law school in the University of Durham, which is interesting in the UK.
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I guess you can go straight into law school. You don't need your degree first, but you alluded to
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something very quickly in passing about your own background. And I want to come back to that because
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there's an extremely difficult subject in the United Kingdom to talk about. It's hard to talk
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about it because it's, it's always hard to talk about some horrific crimes, but if there's an element
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of race or class or there, there are extra reasons why this subject is so hard to talk about. Um, many
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of our viewers know about the story of Rotherham, a city of about a quarter million, where at least
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1400 girls, and I don't mean women. I mean, girls were systematically groomed and raped in a city of
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250,000. How could you not know that 1400 and the Rotherham inquiry showed that people did know,
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but they were more afraid of being called racist. In fact, that phrase appears again and again
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in the official Rotherham inquiry. Police, social workers, doctors were afraid of
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ringing the bell because it was typically white working class girls who were targeted.
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And I'm sorry to say it, it was typically Pakistani, Muslim, British rape gangs. And I know this,
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you have to be careful about that. You don't want to paint with a broad brush.
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In the end, they brought in a Pakistani Muslim prosecutor, which I think was a brilliant solution
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because no one could, would accuse him of racism. But imagine being so paralyzed by fear
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that you were more afraid of being called racist than to stop. And that's just one city. And there's
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Telford and there, there's Roschdale and there's so many. Tell me your story. And I'm afraid to talk about
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this. I'm afraid to ask about it. But you lived through this.
00:24:06.360
Yeah, so I was abused from the age of five to 14, roughly. I was abused for nearly a decade by
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successive men at different times throughout my life. I'm a victim of, I say survivor. I prefer
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the term survivor. I'm a survivor of grooming, of child sexual abuse. I'm not personally a victim of
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CSE in the way, you know, Pakistani grooming gangs. I was abused by some Pakistani men. I was abused by
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some white men. I was abused by, by different people throughout my life. But I grew up in Telford
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and the experience that, that I has, when it comes to police, social services, local council,
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those in positions of power is all too familiar to those that are, that have followed the cases in
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Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oldham, Halifax. You can name the, the list goes on and on. And
00:25:02.040
for me, I, you know, I've been on GB News quite a lot speaking about it. I've written a few articles as well.
00:25:07.320
My, my experience was that those in positions of power found it far easier to blame the children.
00:25:14.040
And let me get this clip, get this straight. These are children, not young women, not prostitutes,
00:25:19.320
not madams, not, you know, adults. They are children being raped and groomed and exploited,
00:25:25.560
and even murdered in some cases. You know, you look at, if you look at the case of Lucy Lowe in Telford,
00:25:29.560
she was, her and her family were burned to death in house fire by her rapist, by a Pakistani man
00:25:37.080
who had groomed her as part, as part of a, a grooming gang in Telford. And only her daughter
00:25:42.840
and her father survived, survived the house fire. And they, Tasnim, Lucy's daughter went on to
00:25:51.480
expose a lot of what her mother experienced. But many, many girls in areas like Telford,
00:25:57.480
many girls like me found that, that we were victimized, that we were blamed, that we were
00:26:02.440
criminalized rather than believed, because it's far easier to, to blame the victim than to prosecute
00:26:08.120
the perpetrators. I, I'd also say that over decades in the UK, in, in Telford especially, so for 30 years,
00:26:17.320
the Telford report that came out recently, it was shown that, that police had failed in their most basic
00:26:23.480
duty, quote unquote, to report and to investigate purported incidents of child sexual exploitation.
00:26:30.280
They would witness girls coming into the police station, claiming to have been raped, saying that
00:26:36.280
they were, their faces were pressed down to the gravel while they were raped by successive men.
00:26:41.560
This is a true story where a young girl, she was raped in a graveyard, her face pushed down to the gravel,
00:26:49.400
gravel forced down her throat when she tried to scream, and she reported her, her abuse and nothing
00:26:54.200
was done about it. There are countless other, over 1000 girls in Telford were, were victims of child
00:26:59.960
sexual exploitation for, over a period of, of around 30 years, for, under the purview of the Telford
00:27:06.520
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation. But wider than that, Telford is also the child sex crime
00:27:13.240
capital of the UK. More children in Telford are sexually abused per capita than anywhere else in
00:27:20.120
the UK. That beats Rotherham, Rochdale, Oldham, Greater Manchester. And that's not a list that you
00:27:25.080
want to be at the top of, but yet so few people have heard about my town, about my hometown, because
00:27:30.680
it's flown under the radar because those in positions of power have turned a blind eye for so long.
00:27:34.760
And girls who don't have access to, you know, well-off parents, who don't have those that are fighting
00:27:42.040
their corners, they have had nowhere to turn. They've tried to, to go down the traditional
00:27:47.240
routes for support. You know, they've gone to their GPs, they've gone to their school,
00:27:50.680
they've gone to sexual health clinics when they've shown up pregnant at 13, you know, week after week
00:27:54.360
asking for contraception, morning after pill, et cetera, et cetera. And those that were supposed to
00:27:59.480
help them, those that were tasked with, with protecting them and safeguarding them, turned a blind eye,
00:28:05.000
and in some cases, criminalised them, accused them of asking for it, said that they were
00:28:10.680
packy shaggers, white slags, child prostitutes. That was a big thing in Telford.
00:28:15.960
Girls were told that they were asking for it and that they had entered into that lifestyle.
00:28:20.280
I remember when I, when I went to the police to report my abuse, they asked whether I had consented
00:28:25.080
at any point, which I thought was laughable. The idea that a five-year-old can, can give consent to
00:28:30.360
sexual activity is, is beyond belief. I can't believe I have to say it, but children can't consent to sex.
00:28:36.120
Children can't be asking for it. Children can't be child prostitutes. Children cannot be at fault
00:28:42.520
in the case of sexual abuse. The adult men that perpetrate these crimes are always the ones at fault.
00:28:50.440
A few years ago, I was involved with the case of, uh, Chelsea Wright in the city of Sunderland.
00:28:56.600
She was a working class white woman and she needed a little bit of legal help in a situation similar,
00:29:04.760
not, not the same, but there was an accusation of a, of a gang rape. And we had, we were working
00:29:12.120
with a very prestigious London law firm. And when we asked for their help, just to do some legal
00:29:18.280
paperwork, they said yes. But the next day I got an email from the partner saying they had a man,
00:29:23.640
a partners meeting and they would not help Chelsea for quote reputational reasons. She was a rape
00:29:30.120
victim. She, she, she was a pure victim. She had no politics. She had, but because the accused rapists
00:29:38.120
were a politically sensitive group, this prestigious law firm refused to help. What were they afraid of?
00:29:46.920
Quite simply, they were afraid of being accused of racism. That's what we, that's what we see in the
00:29:51.800
Telford report and the Rotherham report and the Rochdale report. It's been stated over and over
00:29:57.000
and over again, you know, in, in successive investigations into what went wrong in areas
00:30:02.200
like my own. It was shown that those, those responsible organizations refrained from reporting
00:30:11.400
and investigating for fear of being called racist. That was put in, in quotation marks in the Telford
00:30:16.200
report that they failed to act due to fears of racism. That Pakistani men who are predominantly,
00:30:26.600
this is, this is not some sort of wild accusation, some unfounded suggestion. It's true that the, the,
00:30:34.280
the primary demography that is committing these crimes are British Pakistani Muslim men. And that the
00:30:41.560
victims are predominantly white working class girls. There are exceptions. There are girls who were
00:30:47.960
African, who were Indian, who are Pakistani, who were mixed race. But these two groups are the ones
00:30:55.080
that in this specific type of crime are, are most commonly involved. And in the case of police,
00:31:02.920
local council in Telford social services, they failed to act because they didn't want to be accused of
00:31:09.320
being racist against British Pakistani men. And in doing so, they neglected the plight and, and the justice
00:31:17.080
that, that young innocent girls, victims like, like Chelsea deserved.
00:31:26.840
I don't think people in North America understand this. It may be happening here. I don't know.
00:31:31.960
I don't know. But if it is happening, it doesn't feel like it has the same template as over there. I
00:31:39.640
could be wrong. Maybe I'm just not opening my eyes to it. Can you, uh, help us understand how this
00:31:49.880
grooming process, I mean, the word grooming doesn't sound as disastrous and violent as it is, but it's a
00:31:57.720
process of taking a normal child, a healthy child who maybe is afraid of strangers. How do you turn that
00:32:06.760
normal child into a rape victim? Can you tell us how that process happens? Like an example of it?
00:32:14.840
So you are right that it does follow a template. In many cases of child exploitation in the UK,
00:32:21.480
you can see the same pattern of behaviour and the same pattern of exploitation occurring with, with
00:32:27.800
girls up and down our nation. It usually starts with, with a vulnerable girl. These are predominantly
00:32:34.040
vulnerable girls. So those that are in the care system were often targeted. I was under social
00:32:37.560
services myself for, for a few years. And, and I can say with absolute certainty that
00:32:43.640
it was very easy for us to fall through the cracks and the systems like that, because
00:32:50.280
those in, those in charge simply didn't care. We were often seen as, as disasters waiting to happen,
00:32:55.000
as though we, we would never have any, any sort of positive contribution to society. So they were
00:33:00.600
biding their, biding their time before they could release us into the world and, and, and relinquish all
00:33:05.960
responsibility over us. So it would often be young, vulnerable girls, many of them white and working
00:33:10.360
class who were either in care, had absentee parents, didn't have a great education, came from an
00:33:15.320
impoverished area. So that's why many, many areas in the north, Rotherham, Rochdale, Oldham have seen
00:33:21.720
such, such massive scandals. Telford is another one, although we're, we're in the Midlands because there
00:33:27.720
are very, very large pockets of, of poverty in, in those towns. They would be kebab shop workers, taxi
00:33:35.560
drivers, takeaway owners that would pick up girls off the streets, that would ply them with alcohol,
00:33:41.560
money, food, gifts, rides. They would drive them around in their taxis, give them free kebabs,
00:33:47.400
give them vodka and cigarettes. You know, the, the traditional grooming process of, you know,
00:33:52.920
stranger danger, never, never accept gifts from a stranger. And this would slowly progress onto,
00:33:59.320
in some cases, relationships. These adult men, 30, 40, 50 year old men would convince young girls that
00:34:06.680
they were in relationships with them, that they were, that this, this adult man was your boyfriend,
00:34:11.160
that you were in a consensual relationship and therefore it was normal to have sex and to please
00:34:15.080
him and to, to do whatever he wanted. In some other cases, it would be straight up rape, sexual assault,
00:34:22.520
forced from the very beginning. But in, in many cases, girls were groomed into thinking that they
00:34:26.920
wanted it into thinking that they had asked for it, which is why it was so difficult for many girls
00:34:32.040
to come forward and report later on in life. I struggled with that myself. I, I, for many years,
00:34:36.840
felt like I was responsible for it somehow because in a, in a twisted and horrible way, I, I somehow
00:34:45.240
liked, not liked, but I, I got a positive feeling when I, when I had positive reinforcement from these men.
00:34:52.600
You know, I, it was the feeling of, oh, I'm loved, I'm wanted, I'm appreciated,
00:34:56.600
I'm valued. And that's what many of these girls were often missing in their lives. They didn't
00:35:00.840
have a family of positive role models that would support them and that would provide that positive
00:35:05.080
reassurance. And so when adult men came along, gave them gifts, gave them food, gave them money,
00:35:11.720
told them they were beautiful and they loved them and that they were, they were their boyfriends,
00:35:16.600
of course you're, it's only natural for a young girl to gravitate towards that. And then it would open
00:35:22.200
up into, oh, well, I want you to, to have sex with my brother. If you love me, you'll go and,
00:35:27.000
you'll go and have sex with my friend. You'll do this for me. You'll do this for me because you love me.
00:35:31.400
Or in, in, in the other, in the other predominant pathway, I suppose you could say,
00:35:38.200
with this sort of crime, they would be taken to, to parties with, with large groups of Pakistani men,
00:35:45.720
with grooming gangs, and they would be passed around like party favours. They would be brought
00:35:50.280
to a, to a kebab shop and in the back room, they'd be raped by six, seven, eight different men.
00:35:54.680
They would be ferried around in a taxi to, to have sex with different men for money. And they were,
00:36:00.120
they were essentially pimped out. Children were being pimped out on the streets of, of Telford,
00:36:04.840
Oldham, Rochdale, Rotherham, Halifax, across the UK. And police, social services, local councils turned a
00:36:11.720
blind eye. They knew that it was happening. As you said, they were entirely aware that this sort of,
00:36:17.080
this sort of crime was occurring, but they willfully ignored it because it was, it was far easier,
00:36:24.040
like I said, to blame the victims than to prosecute the perpetrators. Girls were literally picked up
00:36:30.200
from the doors of, of the police station by their abusers after reporting their rape. They were, they
00:36:36.360
went to the police station. They went to a supposed safe haven to report the abuse they had suffered,
00:36:40.840
were completely ignored and dismissed, and then were picked up by their rapist to continue with,
00:36:47.000
with the abuse cycle. Other girls would go to sexual health clinics week after week after week,
00:36:52.840
asking for the morning after pill, asking for, for contraception. And these were 11, 12, 13, 14 year
00:36:59.800
old girls, girls that had no business being in sexual health clinic every week, asking for the morning
00:37:05.480
after pill. And, and like I said, children can't consent. The age of consent in the UK is 16 years
00:37:11.560
old. Anything under that, whether or not it is quote unquote consensual is statutory rape. And yet,
00:37:18.040
those in positions of power were turning a blind eye because they simply didn't care. They didn't think
00:37:22.440
that these young working class girls were worthy of support and worthy of justice and worthy of
00:37:27.560
protecting. They saw them as troublemakers and as prostitutes and as white slags, packy shagas.
00:37:34.280
They viewed them as, as somehow beneath, beneath help and beneath saving and beneath support.
00:37:44.360
I read stories in newspapers about the entrapment, not just once a girl might be
00:37:51.640
pressured or persuaded or given alcohol and her guard is down and engages in some sexuality,
00:37:58.680
then there's a blackmail element too. You've done this. If you don't do more, I'll show,
00:38:05.000
I'll show your family, I'll tell your family what you do. So it's, it's the positive reinforcement.
00:38:09.880
It's the drugs and alcohol, but it's also the blackmail. Yeah. I, when I was being abused, I remember
00:38:17.080
being told that if I didn't do what I was told, then they would show up on my doorstep.
00:38:21.800
And, and either hurt me, hurt my family or expose everything that I've been doing that I had done.
00:38:29.000
Every, the responsibility is always placed on the girl, on the child, that this is your
00:38:33.960
responsibility. You put yourself in this position. And if you don't continue to do what we tell you,
00:38:38.920
we will expose your sins, your moral transgressions, your misbehaviour, your crimes,
00:38:47.080
whatever it is that, whatever it is that you have supposedly done, we will expose that because you
00:38:51.880
are the person that's in the wrong here. You brought this on yourself. You deserve this. And so
00:38:58.760
girls would often feel like it was their only option, like there was no escape.
00:39:02.760
And in the case of Lucy Lowe, for example, she tried to get out, she tried to escape,
00:39:07.880
and she faced threats for months and months and months that her abuser was going to burn her house
00:39:14.920
down, was going to murder her, was going to kill her, was going to bring harm to her family. And
00:39:19.720
eventually one day it happened. She was burned to death. She was pregnant with her second child,
00:39:23.720
by the way, by the same, by the same man. Her, her first child, Tasnim survived, was placed outside
00:39:31.560
on the, on the grass by her father, by, by the rapist and her, her grandfather, Tasnim's grandfather
00:39:37.640
managed to climb out of the window and also survived. But girls, and in many cases, Lucy's, Lucy's case,
00:39:45.960
her death, her passing, her murder, was used an example, as an example by other grooming gangs,
00:39:51.160
by other rapists that said, you're going to end up like Lucy if you don't comply.
00:39:58.040
I heard stories of a mother who might rescue her daughter, take her to the police,
00:40:04.200
and the police would say, look at you, an atrocious mother, if you don't shut up,
00:40:08.200
we'll charge you with endangering your child. Or look at your daughter, she's drunk right now,
00:40:13.480
you let that happen. Shut up or we'll prosecute you. I, I found that almost impossible to fathom,
00:40:21.560
but, but it sounds like that's true. Well, it's a culture of ignorance,
00:40:25.080
incompetence and victim blaming. And this is what I mean when I say that, that responsibility and, and,
00:40:32.440
and complicit, complicity goes right to the very top of, of these organizations in areas like Telford.
00:40:38.920
So the, the cabinet member for children and young people in Telford and Recon Council had to resign
00:40:44.680
over the CSE scandal, because it was found that he was complicit and that the services that he
00:40:49.800
oversaw were complicit in ignoring the systematic grooming, rape, exploitation, and abuse of found,
00:40:56.120
of hundreds, of over 1000 young girls, little girls, and parents, like I said, girls and families
00:41:04.280
who came from, from disadvantaged, impoverished backgrounds, who didn't have the education,
00:41:09.480
who didn't have the means to support themselves or defend themselves,
00:41:12.280
were made to feel responsible for the abuse that they or their children had suffered.
00:41:16.280
They were, they were in fear of, of having their children taken away from them if they
00:41:21.720
dared to speak out about the abuse that their children were suffering, because somehow it was
00:41:25.960
always twisted that, that this was the child's responsibility or the family's responsibility was
00:41:30.520
anybody but the perpetrator's fault. Were any of the politicians or the police
00:41:38.520
in on it as participants? Were any police or politicians, rapists as well?
00:41:43.000
In some areas, yes. I don't think it was, as far as I'm aware, it wasn't widespread in,
00:41:49.240
with regards to active participation. But there have been cases where, I believe it, I believe it was in
00:41:54.600
Rochdale, where a police officer, a police sergeant was convicted of, of being part of a grooming gang,
00:42:02.440
that he actually participated in the rape, exploitation and abuse of young girls. But I
00:42:07.800
don't believe that that in itself is, is a systemic problem. The problem in, in areas like Telford is that
00:42:14.840
those in positions of power may not have held the girls down and raped, raped them, or passed them
00:42:20.760
around to, to their friends or family. But the fact that they turned a blind eye for so long,
00:42:26.120
for decades, makes them just as complicit as, as the men, as the perpetrators themselves.
00:42:33.400
There was the inquiry in, rather than the inquiry in Telford, you're telling your story,
00:42:39.560
which must be very difficult to do. I can imagine most girls don't want to relive it, don't want to
00:42:46.760
talk about it, don't want to maybe be embarrassed by it. I don't know if that's a feeling that
00:42:51.000
some victims have. I don't know. Well, I, I would say that
00:42:55.480
reports like the Rotherham report, like the Telford report, like the Rochdale report,
00:42:58.920
wouldn't have come about without the bravery, determination and grit of survivors, victims
00:43:04.120
and their families. Without girls that stuck their head above the parapet and refused to be blamed for
00:43:10.360
the abuse they suffered, none of this would have ever come to light. And without the bravery of
00:43:14.440
whistleblowers, so Maggie Oliver is a fantastic champion of, of young survivors and victims of
00:43:21.320
CSE across the country. She was a Greater Manchester police officer. She blew the whistle on, on the
00:43:28.360
child sexual exploitation scandal that she was investigating and ended up losing her job. They,
00:43:34.200
her life was almost ruined because she dared to speak out about thousands of girls being
00:43:39.480
systematically raped and abused. And so I would say, while it is very difficult to speak out,
00:43:45.880
it is very difficult to relive one's experiences and to make yourself vulnerable. I mean, I, I still
00:43:52.520
struggle with it a lot. I have to do a lot of, a lot of mental preparation to be able to speak about
00:43:58.760
my experience and my abuse. But I would say that victims and survivors are nothing if not brave.
00:44:06.840
There, there is so much, so much bravery and so much determination and, and, and so much willingness
00:44:16.920
to continue fighting, even though they've been knocked down so many times. I would say it's,
00:44:21.720
it's an absolute testament to survivors that we are now able to have an open conversation about this.
00:44:27.080
And girls are now beginning to be believed about the abuse they suffered. Because without,
00:44:32.840
without those crusaders, those, those champions of, of the cause that, that fought the good fight
00:44:38.760
before anyone else was willing to, we wouldn't be in the position that we're in today.
00:44:45.000
Has anything changed? I mean, there's these reports, has there been,
00:44:50.040
has anything actually changed? I would say that there is a great deal more awareness.
00:44:56.600
You know, if 20 years ago, no one would be talking about this. The child, the term child sexual
00:45:00.680
exploitation didn't even exist at that point. The idea that group based grooming gangs could be
00:45:07.480
operating in towns and cities across the UK was beyond belief, beyond comprehension. You know,
00:45:12.360
it just wasn't something that was talked about. It was in many communities, an open secret, you know,
00:45:17.400
girls on the ground and families knew that it was happening. Police, social services, local councils also knew,
00:45:22.920
but it wasn't something that you would see broadcast in, in the national media or talked about or inquiries
00:45:30.120
held. But now there's tougher sentencing for, for serious sexual offenders. That's something that came
00:45:38.120
about after the successive CSE scandals were exposed. There is open debate in the House of Commons. You
00:45:44.680
know, there are MPs like Sarah Champion, Lucy Allen, my own MP, who are fighting for justice for victims and
00:45:51.720
their families who are leading, leading the way in when it comes to legislative change. There is.
00:45:58.520
But there's also those who say it's against social cohesion to talk about this. It's against community
00:46:07.240
cohesion. Even I've even seen members of parliament say that don't pull us apart by talking about this,
00:46:15.400
by talking about who's doing it and who it's being done to. You're pulling our community apart.
00:46:20.520
I've heard that even from MPs in the UK. I'd say that many, many organizations, MPs,
00:46:27.320
councils want to pretend like CSE is a crime of the past, as though mistakes were made and lessons
00:46:33.400
have been learned and this doesn't happen anymore. But the sad truth is that it is still happening in
00:46:39.160
towns and cities across the UK. In 2020 alone over, I think it was approximately 300 cases of, of potential
00:46:49.080
child sexual exploitation. So this is group based gang, raping, exploit, exploitation and abuse of
00:46:55.880
young girls was reported in England and Wales. So this is a crime that is still going on. It hasn't
00:47:01.400
stopped. And then there is massive progress to be made still in, in recognizing the abuse in, in
00:47:08.280
investigating crimes and in prosecuting the perpetrators. Because while thousands upon thousands of
00:47:14.280
girls have been abused across the UK, very few rapists are in prison. Very few people have been
00:47:19.880
brought to justice for the brutal exploitation and abuse of thousands of young girls.
00:47:26.520
You know, I, I follow the UK media enough that when there is a conviction of a rape gang,
00:47:32.120
let's say there's five people or 10 people or 20 people. Here's what I hate about the media coverage.
00:47:37.000
Rape gang or grooming gang sentenced to a hundred years. And you read it, it's 20 guys who got five
00:47:46.200
years each and they're probably out in three or two. I don't know what parole is like.
00:47:50.680
Hundred years prison. No, no, no. Yeah. Five years each. They're not each doing a hundred.
00:47:57.160
And it's, it's a lot. And these, this isn't even, I mean, for one rape, but often these are again and
00:48:03.000
again and again, dozens or hundreds of times. I don't even know if that can be called a serious
00:48:10.520
country with a serious justice system. And I think the media knows it because they're trying to
00:48:15.000
twist the headline a hundred years. No, no. It was 20 for five years each.
00:48:19.240
I think it's important to remember as well that only 1.3% of rape cases in the UK make it to court.
00:48:27.240
That's 98.7% of rape cases in the UK, never reaching a courtroom, never reaching trial.
00:48:34.680
And so the, for, as I said earlier, for the thousands of girls that were abused,
00:48:40.760
raped, exploited, even murdered, only a very tiny minority will ever have legal justice
00:48:47.320
for the abuse they suffered. And you are right that, that in many cases, the,
00:48:52.840
the crimes handed down to, to perpetrators, to those convicted are often overstated or blown up
00:49:01.880
to, to make it seem as though justice had been served to a greater extent than, than in reality.
00:49:06.760
But I would also say once again, that things aren't good, things aren't where they should be,
00:49:14.200
but things are also a lot better than they were 10, 15, 20 years ago.
00:49:18.520
You know, the, the early release of, of serious sexual offenders and violent offenders has been
00:49:24.120
scrapped. That was a, that was a white paper that was brought in. There's stricter sentencing
00:49:30.280
regulations for, for serious sexual and violent offenders. There is the end of early release
00:49:36.920
for, for convicted sex offenders. I think that there's a ways to go in ensuring effective prosecution
00:49:44.760
for rape, child sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation, grooming, et cetera. But it's
00:49:50.760
important to acknowledge the steps that have been taken and the, the improvements that have been made.
00:49:57.880
Well, I can't imagine how brave you are. And, uh, and you're on, you're on a positive,
00:50:04.680
exciting, ambitious path. I mean, 20 year old student in law school, University of Durham,
00:50:09.640
political commentator columnist. You're doing a lot of amazing things. Thank you.
00:50:14.920
But I understand that you recently were on GB news. That's my favorite broadcaster over there.
00:50:19.800
Talking about this subject is a very difficult subject to handle, to talk about. I can only imagine
00:50:27.080
how difficult it is to live it and then to talk about it. I understand that after one such courageous
00:50:32.360
TV presentation, you were contacted by police afterwards. Is that true? Yes. So I was on GB news.
00:50:41.160
I was on the Mark Stein show. Mark is absolutely brilliant when it comes to, to addressing and
00:50:45.720
bringing to light and shining a spotlight on child sexual exploitation in particular and grooming gangs.
00:50:51.080
He spent many years interviewing victims and survivors and their families. This is something
00:50:55.720
that GB news is very passionate about. And I'm always very, very grateful for their continued
00:51:00.920
pursuant of, of this, of this issue. I went on to speak about child sexual exploitation in Telford,
00:51:09.720
the recent, the upcoming release at that time of, of the independent inquiry into CSE in Telford.
00:51:17.720
The, the report that was due to be released in the coming weeks and the fact that child sexual
00:51:23.640
exploitation and child grooming were still going on in towns and cities like Telford up and down,
00:51:28.280
up and down the country. And the very next day, you know, bear in mind that, that I never faced legal
00:51:33.800
justice for the abuse that I suffered for the decades worth of, decade worth of abuse that I suffered.
00:51:38.360
But, and the police turned a blind eye, frankly. The, as soon as I went on national TV to speak about
00:51:46.360
my experience, the experience of girls like me and the, the Telford CSE scandal. The very next day,
00:51:54.200
police showed up on my door, two officers, two male officers banged on my door,
00:52:00.040
you know, as, as, as threatening and as, and as imposing as could be. And told me that when you go
00:52:05.960
on national TV, when you go on GB news to talk about CSE in Telford, it's our duty to follow up with you.
00:52:13.720
And let me, let me be clear. It wasn't their duty at all. It wasn't. What duty? What possible duty is that?
00:52:17.960
Exactly. They weren't. That's not your duty. You're a police officer, not a media sensor,
00:52:21.800
or maybe that is what police do these days. As far as I was concerned, the way that they came across
00:52:26.760
was very, was very intimidatory. They had very, they had very little to do with,
00:52:33.880
with the pursuit of justice and far more to do with the pursuit of intimidation and silencing.
00:52:38.920
Yeah. The fact that they came to your home is intimidating in itself. We know where you are
00:52:43.640
unannounced. Now, if you were to say, and by that they mean they asked me questions and then they
00:52:50.760
investigated who your abusers were. Okay. You had a duty to follow up. You heard of crimes that had
00:52:59.080
not been solved. Your duty was okay. Okay. So you're launching an investigation that I understand.
00:53:05.800
What did they say? Was it you that were investigating? It felt very much like that.
00:53:11.240
You know, there was, there was very little that, that they said that had any substance behind it.
00:53:16.440
It felt like they had very, very little reason and very few grounds on which to be, to be knocking
00:53:23.160
on my door at midday on a Tuesday while I had chicken in a pan in the kitchen. You know, I was in
00:53:28.600
the middle of cooking my lunch, which by the way, I burned and I was very upset about that. So then I wasted
00:53:32.600
probably good chicken talking, talking to them. But they tried to coerce me into going to the police
00:53:40.120
station to talk to them for a formal interview, which as someone that has been let down by the
00:53:45.400
police, I'm naturally wary of, of, of complying with those sorts of demands. They offered to take me in
00:53:50.760
their squad cards, take me to have a police escort to the station. They wouldn't leave me alone until I
00:53:56.200
agreed to a formal interview. It very much felt as though they were addressing me as some sort of
00:54:02.200
criminal or a perpetrator rather than a victim and a survivor. And the, you know, you're very
00:54:09.880
right. If it, if they had legitimate concerns or legitimate grounds on which to be, to be questioning
00:54:15.480
me, you know, as, as a potential help to them in investigating child sexual exploitation, then I
00:54:22.600
could understand it. But the way that it came across to me was as though they were trying to scare me into
00:54:28.840
silence. And I came away from that interaction, genuinely wondering, did I do something wrong?
00:54:33.240
Had I somehow provoked this? Had I invoked their, their questioning and their, their, you know,
00:54:39.720
descending upon my, upon my place of residence? But I, when I, when I spoke to friends and I spoke to
00:54:46.840
colleagues, they all said, absolutely not. You did nothing. They were overstepping their boundaries
00:54:53.240
by showing up on your doorstep and trying to scare you and trying to intimidate you in silence.
00:54:59.160
And it was very, very interesting to me that as, as I said, they, they showed up on my doorstep
00:55:06.920
unannounced, but they told me that they had just gone to that place of residence, that address. They
00:55:11.480
had gone around every single address that I had previously been registered at in person looking for
00:55:16.200
me. Bear in mind, they had my phone number. They had my email address. They had plenty of, of legitimate
00:55:21.320
ways to contact me that didn't involve going and knocking on every, on every potential place of
00:55:26.680
residence that I could be at. You know, under any normal circumstances, you would give someone a
00:55:32.040
phone call or a courtesy email and say, hi, we'd love to speak to you about, about your recent
00:55:36.520
interview. If there's any way you could help us, we would really appreciate it if you could, if we
00:55:40.440
could organize the time to speak. But they didn't do that. They came and banged on my door,
00:55:47.240
demanding that I, that I come in for questioning over. I don't know what, frankly, besides the fact
00:55:54.520
that I had gone on national TV and speak and spoken about the, the Telford CSE scandal.
00:56:02.840
Well, that tells me that things are not yet resolved in the United Kingdom. Well, listen,
00:56:07.000
Samantha Smith, pleasure to talk with you at such length. We'll continue to watch you on social media
00:56:13.800
and wish you good luck in your law studies. I think you'll be an excellent lawyer. Thank you very
00:56:18.040
much. And, um, I hope we can keep in touch. This slow motion disaster that has been going on,
00:56:25.640
as you say, for decades is a great shame on the United Kingdom. And then for all we know,
00:56:30.760
it may be happening in Canada too, though we don't know if it's happening in the same manner.
00:56:36.760
I think you're very brave and I appreciate you speaking so candidly today. Thank you very much for
00:56:40.600
having me as well. All right. It's my pleasure. Stay with us. My final thoughts are next.
00:56:52.280
Well, what do you think about that? It's a difficult conversation to have, but
00:56:55.880
listen, if it's difficult to talk about it, imagine the pain of enduring it and thousands,
00:57:01.160
tens of thousands, maybe even over a hundred thousand British girls have been raped that way.
00:57:06.920
It's atrocious and not talking about it. Averting your eyes, pretending to hear no evil,
00:57:11.800
see no evil is not the way. So we will at least talk about it. Let me know what you think. Send me
00:57:17.960
an email to Ezra at rebelnews.com. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here
00:57:24.280
at Rebel News Headquarters to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.