Emma GlasbeyYorkshire home and social affairs correspondent
BBC
Fiona Goddard was living in a children’s home in Bradford when grooming and sexual abuse began in the late 2000s
A woman who was sexually abused as a child by groups of men has said she feels insulted after her compensation claims were denied.
Fiona Goddard was 14 and living in a children’s home in Bradford when the grooming and abuse began during the late 2000s.
Goddard, who has waived her right to anonymity, said it was “really insulting” to see “another level of dismissal” after she made a legal claim against West Yorkshire Police and Bradford Council.
West Yorkshire Police and Bradford Council said they were not able to comment on an ongoing legal matter.
Nine men were jailed in February 2019 at Bradford Crown Court after being convicted of sexual offences against her.
The trial heard she was found by police at the home of a man in his 40s on more than one occasion when she was a child missing from local authority care.
A safeguarding review said her mother had expressed concerns about child sexual exploitation (CSE) in 2008 and there was evidence Goddard was in contact with adult males but “this was not acted upon by the police or children’s social care”.
West Yorkshire Police
(From top left, clockwise) Basharat Khaliq, Saeed Akhtar, Naveed Akhtar, Parvaze Ahmed, Zeeshan Ali, Fahim Iqbal, Izar Hussain, Mohammed Usman and Kieran Harris were all jailed at Bradford Crown Court in 2019
The report added that Goddard went missing “on an almost daily basis” and these episodes were graded as “unauthorised absences” which resulted in a downgraded police response compared to a grading of “missing”.
In a letter sent to her solicitor, West Yorkshire Police said: “The claims in negligence, misfeasance and conspiracy to injury are, with respect, entirely without merit.”
Goddard told the BBC she felt it was an attempt to put the blame on her.
“Publicly to the media, they’re accepting they failed, they’re accepting that they did stuff wrong but in private they’re trying to gaslight me,” she said.
“It’s not just West Yorkshire Police, Bradford Council have also denied liability but yet they’ve made public statements saying there were huge failings and they’ve apologised to me.”
Goddard said she had decided to speak to the BBC about her case because other victims were concerned about being criticised for seeking compensation.
“Many people don’t want to speak about the issue but I don’t care any more because I lost so much,” she explained.
“I was successful in school, I should have had a career but instead I spent a lot of years having to fight to prove I was abused and going through a five-year investigation.
“No matter how much compensation I get, I will never get enough to give back everything I lost so I’m quite happy to talk about it for those people that are still scared to.”
Solicitor Amy Clowrey said the handling of survivors’ compensation claims by authorities could cause further distress and needed to change.
Amy Clowrey from Switalski’s solicitors told the BBC she was surprised by the response from West Yorkshire Police.
“They’ve acknowledged that Fiona has suffered abuse but essentially have said that they aren’t responsible in any way for it,” she said.
“Publicly the authorities have apologised for their failures but then privately obviously they’ve taken a different approach.
“However, it is quite standard in these types of cases that the authorities don’t admit when they’ve done something wrong.”
Clowrey said the handling of survivors’ compensation claims by authorities could cause further distress and needed to change.
“One of the big things that came out of the [Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse] is that survivors need genuine apologies,” she said.
“It helps with the healing process and their recovery and we’re still not seeing that in the litigation arena, it’s still quite adversarial.
“I would like to see much more openness, transparency and apologies.”
Goddard and other abuse survivors quit their roles in the government’s inquiry into grooming gangs in October.
They had been due to sit on the inquiry’s victims and survivors liaison panel, but raised concerns about the suitability of the candidates shortlisted to chair the inquiry, arguing they should not have a background in policing or social work.
Goddard said at the time these services had “contributed most to the cover-up of the national mass rape and trafficking of children”.
Former children’s commissioner Baroness Anne Longfield was announced as chair in December.