I think some of the survivors who've spoken out such as Fiona should claim refugee status in other countries. Yes, maybe it'd give Trump or whoever political fodder but it would be worth it to get away from this.

The state apparatus in the UK is clearly never going to protect her or her children. Too many of them were involved in what happened to her and want her silenced. There is no other explanation for the abuse she is receiving from the state. There is no way on earth her abuser should be out of prison. There is no way on earth he's not an ongoing risk to her and her children.

Ah, the region that Tony Blair was keen to target apparently.

Apparently they make up 60-80% of Pakistani immigrants.

I wish I could understand why the government are doing this and why we are the bad guys for objecting.

As an aside from a thread on women’s rights, marital rape is still semi legal in Pakistan. There are some tentative and very recent developments to outlaw it but it’s very early days.

I wonder if any immigrants get given a crash course in UK law as there are some quite big differences between us and their country of origin.

Well they should realise. Everyone living anywhere near any of these gangs has been well aware of this for decades. I think the denial and obfuscation is entirely deliberate.

Mirpuris are known for this in Pakistan. This pattern of behaviour is essentially the flip side of honour violence

I think that pointing this out is one of the things Starmer is aiming to ‘accidentally’ outlaw, or at the very least strongly discourage.

funding cuts to witness protection

This beggars belief. Just wtaf? Do the funding cuts apply to all witness protection or just this particular case?

What they don't realise is that these men are the equivalent of the Mafia in the US. They are clan and family based with large family networks. The police need to consult with the FBI about how they got rid of the Mafia.

Fucking appalling 😡

Words cannot express my disgust at the people who gave the power to do something about this but choose not to.

I can’t help picturing the response we would see if it was a Muslim woman and her children being hunted down and persecuted over years by white racists? We’d have angry speeches from the PM (I don’t regard him as our PM), Jess Phillips would be highlighting it daily in Parliament and the press, so called ‘human rights’ lawyers would be all over it and suing to secure a brand new house and a large lump sum in compensation.

Sadly I think they have been too busy building cases to allow convicted criminals to stay here because their child doesn’t like Albanian chicken nuggets and will be VERY busy now defending the recently released Pakistani rapist from deportation.

Why are these men operating with apparent impunity? Why are the police not on their doorsteps arresting them, deporting them, and at least showing a deterrent to any other would be persecutors?

The PM and his ministers constantly frame much of the British public as the problem - he
labels us as ‘far right’ and thinks we are racist and xenophobic and need to be silenced because we want fair justice for all and foreign criminals to be removed, not protected by the state.

It is this government that seem to be the divisive racists. They make it clear that our safety and human rights are not a priority.

I asked Fiona could the police not put her and her children in witness protection and she said:

"They moved me to Lincoln in the lead up to the trial but during that they said there were funding cuts to witness protection meaning that the only support they could provide was a letter to present homeless to the council and a small van to take a few belongings. We then spent 6 months in temp housing and moved every few weeks. Kids were all over the place by the end of it. It was horrible and that happened 3 times all in all over the years x"

https://x.com/fionagoddarduk/status/2071235581921702152

It's a bloody disgrace when you think how many hundreds of thousands of pounds those bastards have cost in legal fees and yet there is not enough money to protect their victims from continued threats of violence, stalking and harassment!

🤬

Absolutely.

Exactly. Unfortunately the soon to be former PM thinks that the biggest problem currently facing our country is the ‘far right’.

Within that he is including the people calling out this disgusting situation. If he cared one tiny jot about these women he would listen to Farage and take decisive action to stop it.

He chooses instead to attack Farage and others raising this. He is pushing normal reasonable people to listen to what Farage is saying as he refuses to address this.

That is horrific!! The people that are enabling this and refusing to protect her and her family are unequivocally evil.

Yes, this is absolutely fodder for Farage. Labour’s problem with acknowledging that there is an impact of rapid immigration both for good and for bad, goes back to Gordon Brown getting caught on tape calling the older woman a racist and dismissing her and her views because of that label. Where these societal divisions go is anyone’s guess. But I’m not hopeful that Burnham has the answers.

And people wonder why many of these women are listening to the right/far right over this. I’m not saying they’d be any better but they are at least engaging with it.

I agree.

Sheesh, poor Fiona Goddard. It's beyond disgraceful what she and her children have been put through. Surely they could fund a witness protection programme for her? And put her harassers in prison?

Witness intimidation always used to be treated seriously and severely.

I cant believe that the government weren't aware of a controversial offender's release under a controversial early release scheme.

They have the power to veto it, but didn't. They have created this problem.

It's terrifying

That’s awful. Someone in the government needs to intervene to take men like this off the table. Think of the message it’s going to send to the country if some idiot approves the release of multiple grooming gang leaders! They can pass one off as a mistake, but it’s not going to play well.

June 27th 2026 - Fiona Goddard posted on X:

". . . with my abusers now being assessed for early release from prison, and Bradford being announced as one of the key locations in the grooming gang inquiry, the abuse, threats and danger have escalated at an alarming rate.

My family and I have already had to endure years of incidents, upheaval and loss as a consequence of getting my abusers convicted and fighting for accountability and the truth about what happened in the grooming gang scandal.

Just last year, there was an arson attempt on our home. After moving to another city, we suffered a break-in where I woke up to the sound of my kettle boiling and found my back door wide open, with concerns that the boiling water was intended to be poured over me.

We have also experienced multiple attempted break-ins. During one incident, I had to hide my children in a cupboard while I physically held a man back from entering our home until armed police arrived. That man was later found to have phone calls to family members of my abusers on his phone.

One of the men who had already been released from prison was, just last week, convicted for his part in a machete attack in which a young lad had his leg chopped off. Police had already informed me that my abusers had links to unsolved murders and gun crime.

They have also attempted to recruit girls to go to the housing office pretending to be me in an effort to gain access to my address.

I have faced constant death threats and abuse, much of it so vile that I cannot even repeat it here.

My family and I have had to move seven times in the last 14 years. Three of those times, we had to live for months in run-down, rat-infested homeless shelters. The other four times, my children lost everything they owned and we had to start again from scratch. This has caused enormous additional trauma for my children, and now even they live in a constant state of anxiety.

I have six children at home, and I now find myself sleeping on the sofa every night, staying on guard to make sure no one comes to harm them. We cannot carry on living like this. Our mental health has suffered massively, and we have taken every possible step to try and get these issues addressed.

There have been multiple reports made to the police by both myself and dozens of others. Despite this, nothing has been done beyond providing me with a security camera to place outside and a metal plate to stop petrol from being poured through our letterbox.

We have now come to the heartbreaking realisation that we have to move if we are ever going to have a chance of living a safe and peaceful life, where my children can grow up happy and carefree, as they deserve, instead of living in constant fear. I want this move to be different. I don't want it to become another traumatic chapter in our lives. I want it to be the start of something positive."

Please don't just read that extract - see full post here:
https://x.com/fionagoddarduk/status/2070932905170227318

There is a thread elsewhere about it but essentially it'll take some hefty sweetener to coax Pakistan to take custody of him (and they have considerable leverage as Trumps new interlocutors with Iran) and then there's the precedent it might set for rewriting past immigration legislation.

Even the guardian has deigned to cover it this time.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/jul/03/freed-rochdale-grooming-gang-leader-was-judged-high-risk-to-children-in-2023

They removed Shamima Begum's citizenship, so if they had a mind, they could boot him out.

And Starmer refusing to change the legislation that prevents Ahmed from being deported for his crimes.

Shabir Ahmed released from prison

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/02/deport-foreign-born-child-rapists-demand-labour-mps