Rape gang victims 're-traumatised' by Government 'backtracking' on inquiries, survivor claims

Can I first get your take on the disappointing news yesterday

that the Labour Party was seeming to water down these five local inquiries

Yeah, it's just complete dismay with this, this kind of backtracking from the government

especially on something as serious as CSE. It's a profound betrayal to the survivors

They didn't take these political promises as... There was lifelines to the survivors

thinking they was going to get justice. And we now found ourselves in a situation

where we won't have the I'm all right, Jack attitude in Oldham

We wanted this for the nation. We know that there's a lot of areas need looking at

And the five wasn't enough. And to think that four of them have now been excluded

and only one town is going to receive what is due. And even that's not statutory, so that's still not good enough

It's just undermined what very little trust was there in the first place

The survivors don't have trusting authorities and they've made it even worse now

Lucia, may I ask you perhaps a difficult question? What do you think that the institution, the government, the police, the authorities and now specifically the Labour Party, what are they afraid of

Why don't they want a full, open statutory inquiry? That's the golden question, Martin

We you know we even this I think this audit has been delayed It was at Baroness Louise Casey was supposed to be looking into the data around that That you know it was supposed to come out this month i think that going to be delayed as well you think have they seen something in this data they can face it you know they making these

decisions we don't know what's changed who they've consulted to come to this conclusion

and then they just drop it like a bomb on these survivors again and make them re-traumatized and

they're not even offering any specialised support after this. So we don't know why they're doing this

and why they don't want to. And Lucia, as well as just years and years

of looking the other way, of there being no accountability, today there was the extra blow

that the seven-year historical window for claims has now been reduced to two

That means that, let's be frank about this, if somebody was raped two years and one day ago

They now have no way to open a case. And specifically, that seven-year window

was meant to help those who suffered historic abuse because they weren't listened to for so long

It's just this terrible, shocking news. And that's if the authorities can find the records

You know, we have survivors that, you know, authorities, their records seem to go into a black hole

and they're spending years of their life chasing this around. so to reduce it to even two it's just they can't keep doing this to survivors and their families

that they're living and breathing this day in day out and like i said it's just re-traumatizing all

the time for them