TRIGGERnometry - Grooming Gangs Are Still a Problem - Samantha Smith

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Sponsored by: ATHLETIC GREENS. Get a free 1-year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com/triggernometry SPONSORED BY: easyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Samantha Smith is a journalist and commentator. She has written for the Spectator, Daily Mail and the Telegraph and has been a contributor on the BBC, GBNews, TimesRadio and others. She was Parliamentary Assistant for her local Conservative MP in 2020-2021 and is now studying Law at an undergraduate level. Find Samantha on Twitter: @SamanthaTaghoy Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I personally was groomed and abused for nearly a decade from the ages of five to about 14. I then went through the justice system, was sort of chewed up and spat back out as many young girls are. People find it a lot easier to ignore victims than they do to go after the perpetrators. It was due to nervousness about race that in many cases the police and local authorities refused to take these cases up. They were worried about being called racist. They were worried about being called right-wing or bigot. Childsaxial exploitation is still happening in towns and cities across the UK. This isn't a crime of the past.

And this is another thing that those in positions of authority like to say, that, you know, mistakes were made and lessons were learned, but this isn't happening anymore. Well, as recently as 2020, in England and Wales alone, there was hundreds, over 700 reports of of alleged child sexual exploitation. By refusing to let myself become all consumed and become prey to what was done to me, I can defy all of those expectations for me. I can, it's kind of like giving the middle finger and saying, you tried everything you could to break me and I still rose up.

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisham. And this is a show for you. If you want honest conversations, we're fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a journalist. And when I introduce her, I should make clear, she's not Sam Smith. She's Samantha Smith.

Samantha Smith, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. It's really good to have you on the show. We've got lots to talk about. Before we do, and in fact, help us set it up by telling us your story. Who are you? How are you where you are? What has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

Yeah, of course. I am 20 years old. I'm from, I was originally born in Surrey, but I moved to Telford in the West Midlands when I was very young. I sort of fell into this line of work when I was 17. I had always been interested in politics and current affairs, but when I was 17 in the general election 2019, I helped to run my local MPs election campaign,

and from that I continue to get involved in local politics. When schools closed in 2020, I was in March. 20, I was 17 and I come from a disadvantaged background so I'm legally estranged from my parent. I was homeless from the age of 16 legally. I was under social services, you know, sofa staff from for about 16 months, if I'm remembering rightly, you know, moving from sleeping bags to sofas every night, sitting in McDonald's and nursing a cup of coffee until 6 a.m. to get the school bus in the morning. but I've always been on Twitter

and I wrote a tweet in August 2020 about the cancellation of exams and the impact it would have on disadvantaged students the way that young people were being judged based on their postcode rather than their potential and that was picked up by a spectator journalist who asked if I'd be interested in writing a piece for the publication

and from there it sort of snowballed and now here I am here I am today well you've got an astonishing scene for someone who's 20 years old, so very impressive and kudos to you. And one of the things you didn't mention is one of the big things that I think also propelled your sort of role as a commentator was your commentary on the grooming gangs and all of that because it's something that you were personally affected by as well. Yes.

So as I said, I grew up in Telford in the West Midlands, which is some of your viewers I'm sure will be aware is one of the key towns, I suppose, in the national. child sexual exploitation scandal, over 1,000 girls fell victim to organize grooming gangs in Telford over a course of around 30 years. I personally was groomed and abused for nearly a decade from the ages of 5 to about 14. I didn't come forward to anyone with the abuse I experienced until I was 16. I then went through the justice system, was sort of chewed up and spat back out as many young girls are. I remember, I'll never forget being told by a social worker,

if you were physically abused, why were there no bruises? That's a comment that really stuck with me. And I think for a long time I wasn't aware that there were other girls in my position. There were other girls that had been sexually abused, that had been groomed, that had had such a horrendous experience. And so when everything began to come out, in 2018, 2019 on the grooming and scandal on the culture of exploitation, ignorance and and silence in towns like Telford, it struck home for me.

And I first spoke about my story and my experience in 2020. That's when I went public with it, I suppose. And I have worked my hardest to bring awareness to the issue. issue to amplify survivors' voices and to just really keep the conversation in the media attention because so many girls like me have been disenfranchised and marginalized and silenced by those in power. So without people, they're willing to speak up, whether it's anonymously or showing their faces I waived my right to anonymity, perpetrators, groomers, rapists, grooming gangs,

they're going to be able to continue to thrive and continue to groom, rape, abuse, exploit other little girls. So that's why I suppose I chose to speak out. Yeah. And we've had a survival of the grooming gangs on the show, Dr. Lillahill, I don't know if you're familiar with her, if you saw that interview, but she was anonymized. And so you're very close. courageous to talk about it in public the way that you do. And I'm curious because one of the things I've discovered after we published that interview, I contacted every journalist I could and I went, look, watch this interview. Why don't you write something about this? And they're just, they were not interested. Why do you think that is? It's the age old, the age old issue of cultural sensitivity,

I would say. People find it a lot easier to ignore victims than they do to. to go after the perpetrators. We saw it with local councils, with social services, with the police, with the Crown Prosecution Service, with mainstream media, with the government. The list goes on. Those in positions of power and authority don't want to have this conversation

because it exposes their own failings. It exposes the culture of ignorance and silence and victim blaming that was perpetrated over decades. You know, young girls have been trying to speak out. This isn't something new. This isn't a new occurrence of all of a sudden victims and survivors coming out of the woodworks and wanting to share their stories. No, they went to sexual health clinics. They went to the police.

They went to their teachers, their social workers, and they were ignored at every turn because they were viewed as second-class victims. And those in positions of authority were scared about the implications of accusing, in the case of grooming gangs, particularly predominantly Pakistani men of being rapists and of raping predominantly white working class girls. It's far easier to pivot the conversation away from victims and survivors because they are traditionally disenfranchised. They don't come from the sort of background that has, they don't have support, they don't have people that are going to fight for them, that are going to stand up for them. They aren't they aren't privileged or affluent in any sort of way. And so their only hope are, you know, the legal system and social services and social care.

And if they don't listen, how are the media going to be expected to pick it up? Because at the end, it comes down to them being treated as second-class victims, I think. And they were treated as second-class. I wouldn't even say second-class. I'd say eighth-class because some of the language used about these girls was disgusting. I think the term white slags was used as... Yes, that was used in Telford quite a lot. And the Crowther report, which was the independent inquiry

into child sexual exploitation in Telford, it was revealed that police and local authorities referred to the girls as Pachy Shaggers, as white slags as child prostitute. That was a big one, the idea that a child can prostitute themselves. And these are young girls. as young as 10 or 11 in the case of Telford being told that this is your fault, you brought this on yourself, you consented, it's because of your actions and your lifestyle that you're in the position you are today. I, again, I remember being told at one point that my actions had led me to where I was, and this was when I was 16 or 17, and it reinforces this idea, this internal, this internalized shame that a lot of victims and survivors have, that somehow they brought it on.

on themselves when realistically, and I'll say this, if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, children cannot consent to sex, children cannot be asking for it, children cannot be pachy shaggers or white slags or child prostitutes, children cannot consent. And those adults that are preying on vulnerable little girls are criminals, they're rapists and their predators. They are the ones in the wrong here, not the little girls who were abused. And you're saying that, and it makes complete sense. And of course, course, it's just a statement of fact, but the reality is that's not how these girls were perceived. And it was a failing right the way through, like you said, the court system.

Do you think the police are misogynistic, the police forces, that you, from your own experience, from seeing the way they've interacted with other victims? This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality. An elderly widow working at an aquarium, Tova forms an unlikely friendship with their cramudgeonly, Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery. Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remarkable mom's this Mother's Day weekend, only on Netflix May 8th.

I'd say that it goes far deeper than misogyny, because misogyny is an inherent hatred towards women, but this isn't just misogynistic, it's classist, it's, I would go so far to say it's racist to suggest that these, young white working class girls are white slags for being victimized and being abused. It's it's so much more than just a hatred of women and girls. It's a hatred of everything that these little, these young children were. It's attacking every part of their identity and suggesting that they are somehow responsible for, for the abuse they suffered due to their immutable characteristics. So I say, you know, and there's, there's a wider debate about the failings of the Crown Prosecution service to bring sexual assault and sexual misconduct cases to trial. I believe it's, I believe

it's 98.6% of rape cases never make it to court in the UK. That's just 1.4% of victims that are able to have their day in court, have their case even heard. So how many thousands upon thousands of victims are falling at the first hurdle, the second hurdle, or, or so on and so forth. Yes, there is absolutely a misogyny problem in the police, I would say. You know, the fact that violence against women and girls still isn't being taken seriously in 2023 is beyond imagination. But when it comes to child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation, this particular

type of crime goes far deeper than plain misogyny. And there's also, let's not ignore cowardice as well, because the fact that a large proportion of the men committing these crimes came from a Pakistani or Bangladeshi Muslim background, suddenly that meant that they, a lot of police and especially a lot of political commentators and a lot of politicians started to get cold feet when dealing with this. Absolutely. And this has been highlighted in the independent reports in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oldham, Telford that those in positions of power, and I quote the Telford report here,

failed to do their most basic duty in investigating reports of alleged child sexual exploitation. And it was also said in the Crowther report in Telford, that it was due to nervousness about race, that in many cases the police and local authorities refused to take these cases up. I'm a firm believer in the fact that those in position of authority were blinded by fear when it comes to grooming child sexual exploitation, child sexual abuse in general. They were worried about being called racist. They were worried about being called right-wing or bigots or radicals. They were worried about the consequences on their own careers if they spoke up.

And that's why there were so few whistleblowers. and the few that did speak out were absolutely slum. They had their careers ruin. Take Maggie Oliver, who is an absolutely brilliant woman, brave and awe-inspiring. I worked very closely with her on a few different things. And she was obviously the only police official to resign over the failings in Greater Manchester. She was the whistleblower in that case. And she, for years, had those in positions.

authority trying to destroy her reputation and her credibility, trying to suggest that she was a crackpot or a fool or that she was making this up or somehow sensationalizing the scale of the abuse when we now know that she was absolutely accurate and everything that she was saying. There were sexual health clinic workers, social workers, teachers who raised concerns and were discouraged from making reports due to an inherent belief that, oh, this couldn't be going on in towns cities like ours. This just isn't true. The girls are lying. They're making it up. They're twisting the truth. It's really astonishing how little accountability we've seen for the failings in across the UK. You know, how many police officers have lost their jobs. How many council officials

have faced any real consequences? We saw Dominic Beck recently was selected as a Labour candidate. He's now stood down of his own accord. I'm assuming he jumped before he was pushed, although I can't see it. Can you just go into that? Because there's a lot of people from overseas, Samantha, who wouldn't know who this council is. Just explain who he is and why he was pushed. Well, he jumped before he was pushed. So Dominic Beck was a cabinet member in Rotherham during the time of the child sexual exploitation scandal. He and the rest of the cabinet were forced to resign in shame over their mishandling of the of the crisis and this was in 2015 that his resignation occurred I believe and was it seven years later he was selected as a

Labour parliamentary candidate for Robber Valley the slap in the face that is to victims and survivors to suggest that a man who had to resign literally in disgrace over his his mishandling and his cabinet's mishandling of the the child sexual exploitation scandal in the area was then allowed to potentially run to represent these same survivors in Parliament. He didn't represent them then, so how on earth would he be fit for public office now? He eventually stood down after GV News. It was exposed this, this absolute injustice. And he, like I said, the Labour Party didn't push him out officially, but he resigned on his own accord, although I believe that he, you know, there's not a

no way he wasn't facing internal pressure. We've seen in Telford, again, the Labor leader of Telford and Rican Council, who is still the current Labour leader of the council, is running now to be the next MP for Telford, Labour MP for Telford, Councillor Sean Davis. He's also the Labour Government Association lead, and so he sits in the shadow cabinet unofficially. He wrote a letter in 2018 to the then Home Secretary calling for a potential inquiry into CSE and Telford to be shut down. He said there was no need for an inquiry and that the scale of the abuse wasn't being accurately reported, that he believed that a generalized inquiry into child sexual abuse, not child

sexual exploitation, a national inquiry that had been in the work since the, the mid-2010s would be adequate in addressing the transsexual exploitation scandal in Telford. That was along with nine other very important men that included the chief superintendent of West Marcia Police at the time, the cabinet member for children and young people, Councillor Paul Watling. He also signed his name on that letter. He's now, like I said, running to be Labour MP for Telford. And he hasn't faced any negative repercussions for that even as recently as in 2022, he released a statement saying he stated in a council meeting that he was three years old at the time that CSE was happening in Telford.

He continues to to shirk responsibility for his counsel's failings to address child sexual exploitation with shoddy apologies and vague platitudes. It seems that those that were the architects of the failings and in dealing with child exploitation are still allowed to continue their careers unscathed, despite the thousands of lives that they impacted negatively and the thousands of girls that they ignored for years. Hey, Constantine, do you like being healthy? Of course, in my country we judge men's health.

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That's athletic greens.com slash trigonometry. Check it out and become real men like me. Samantha, and, I mean, it's a difficult conversation. isn't it? Because punishing people for things that they've done is always going to, like, we all think it should happen, but it's always difficult to do because it just is. But I suppose from your perspective, would I be right in thinking that your primary concern now is making sure nothing like this ever happens to anyone again, right? And so I suppose the question for you is when we first talked to Earl Hill, which was I think 2018 or 2019, it would have been.

It was 2020. It was during the pandemic. It was just, I think it was before, mate. I think I think, I think, let's say, let's call it 2019. I mean, I'm terrible with dates. You're probably right. But let's say it was. I think since then in the last four years, this conversation, thankfully, is being increasingly had in public and people are actually talking about. As you said, there have been reports into it.

Are you confident that this is now something that wouldn't be repeated? Or is it still ongoing? Is it still not being properly dealt with? What is your sense of where we are now with this issue? child sexual exploitation is still happening in towns and cities across the UK. This isn't a crime of the past. And this is another thing that those in positions of authority like to say that, you know, mistakes were made and lessons will learn, but this isn't happening anymore.

Well, as recently as 2020, I believe in Telford alone, in Telford, in England and Wales alone, there was hundreds, over 700 reports of alleged child sexual sexual sexual, Of this kind, like grooming gas. Yes, grooming gas. How is this happening? How is this happening? I don't get it. Like, we've had all these reports.

There have been brave people like you that have come forward. The police and the councils and the social services and the politicians, some of them finally got the balls to start talking about this. How is it possible that 700 people can still be being abused in this way in one town? I think it's... Progress is happening. Don't get me wrong. It is. is a lot more open than it was, say, 10, 15 years ago.

But that doesn't mean that adequate change has been made. In Telford, I'll use the Telford example again. There was a specialist team in Telford that was set up to deal with child sexual exploitation cases and to investigate this in West Marcia Police. But it was discovered that as recently as 2020, 2021, that team had been scaled back to be virtually non-existent. I think that those in power are saying all the right things. They're showing a willingness, quote-unquote, to change and to learn from the mistakes of the past. But whether that's actually being implemented yet is another question entirely. And I also think that

that while the scale of abuse has now been exposed and the level of the failing, is being brought to national attention, there's still a long way to go in dealing with this type of crime. There's still a lot of fear. There's still a lot of ignorant and arrogant around this issue. And so long as those in power continue to try and minimise the failings and shirk responsibility,

then little girls will continue to be abused. So before we go any further, that we've used to term child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation. Could you just clarify the difference between those two terms? Yes. So child sexual exploitation is, in this context, is referring to group-based grooming. It's where a group of offenders of perpetrators will target a young victim, usually girls. They will groom them, whether they're a different tactic.

So there's the boyfriend tactic. There's wooing them with affection, with rides, with gift, with whatever means necessary to build a sense of trust with the victim. They then will exploit them sexually. So that's in the case of Telford, many of these girls were being abused by taxi drivers, by takeaway owners. and they were being brought to sex parties or passed around between men, often prostituted for money, but it's group-based sexual exploitation and in grooming. Child sexual abuse refers to the broad umbrella of sexual abuse of children, so that can include abuse within the family.

It does include child sexual exploitation, so child sexual exploitation is a form of child sexual abuse, but it falls under the umbrella. And child sexual abuse is, you know, the broader definition. Grooming can also fall in either category. It can, grooming can be online, it can be in person, it can be via social media, whatever means grooming takes place, and child sexual exploitation, again, is grooming forms a part of that. And I've always clarified, so I was a victim of child sexual abuse and grooming.

in Telford. I was abused and and groomed for nearly a decade by successive men. I myself wasn't a victim of the particular type of child sexual exploitation that many of that many fellow survivors were, but my experience of the failings of the police and local authorities and those in positions of power to address exploitation and grooming and to bring justice in my case was identical to many of my fellow survivors. And so that's, I suppose, that's why, and my experience of the failings in Telford to give little girls justice and protect little girls from abuse was what inspired me to come forward, I suppose.

Yeah. And Samantha, one of the things I find so incredible about everything you've been able to do with your life is you've overcome these awful experiences. And it's something we always think about is like everyone experiences some form of adversity and trauma and whatever. In your case, obviously, at a much worse and extensive level. And yet, here you are. You're 20 years old. You've run an MP's campaign at the age of 17. You're on TV. You're writing columns. How have you been able to overcome all this? How have you been able to deal with the challenges that you faced? Don't get me wrong. I'm I wasn't like I am now when I was 16, 17 years old.

I wasn't like you are now. I wasn't like you are 16, 17, 17, and I didn't go through child sexual abuse. I, um, you see, I, I had a lot of anger. I had a lot of fear, a lot of resentment, a lot of shame. And I, when I was younger, when I first came forward about the abuse that I suffered, I was a scared little girl who was terrified of speaking out because I felt like I had somehow brought on myself, like I was responsible for the abuse. And much of this rhetoric was instilled in me by those in positions of authority.

It took me a long time to overcome a lot of that anger and that guilt and that shame. And I still struggle with those feelings on a daily basis. But the way that I suppose I was able to come out the other side and now speak about my story as I do is I, and it sounds very strange. I compartmentalize it in the way of what I experienced was awful. It will stay with me for the rest of my life. But if by speaking out about it and by using my pain and my, trauma and and airing it out and exposing these injustices, if I can use my experience to enforce change and to help even just one little girl see that you can get through it and that

you can survive, you can become stronger, you can be successful, then it will make it all worth it. Everything that I have done since speaking out about my experiences is, in spite of what was done to me. I think that the best kind of revenge is success. And by not allowing my experience to define me, by not allowing, and I hate the term victim, I don't like to think of myself as a victim, even though I was victimized,

I think that by refusing to let myself become all-consume, and become prey to what was done to me, I can, I can defy all of those expectations for me. I can, it's kind of like giving the middle finger and saying, you tried everything you could to break me, and I still rose up again. It's very impressive. Did you ever, did you ever get any justice for what happened to you?

Was anyone ever convicted? No. No. No. And were you offered any kind of therapy or anything of that? kind. Yes, it's a very, very complicated system, I would say, the justice system in the UK, in England and Wales specifically. So when I first went to the police about what I experienced, I was assigned an ISVA, which is an independent sexual violence advisor. And I was referred

for sexual abuse therapy through an independent charity that worked with the police. I was also, because I was 16, I was shipped to a child psychologist and a child psychiatrist to see if there anything underlying in my own psychological makeup, I suppose, that would, and it was phrased to me as so that they knew how to support me best, but I came to realize that it was partly an interrogation and a means of finding out if there was anything underlying mentally that would make it more difficult for me to be believed in court. And we've seen this in Rotherham-Rochdale-Telford of victims and survivors who had underlying mental health difficulties or who had behavioral difficulties or whatever it was,

vulnerabilities that they were told that they wouldn't be a suitable suitable witnessing court and that it wasn't a good idea to proceed with the case because they don't know how they would play in front of a jury. So I had all of these different services around me. Am I right in thinking? It doesn't sound like they were massively helpful at this point. point based on what you described? So my independent sexual violence advice, my ISFA, I will say, was absolutely brilliant. She was, it genuinely felt as though she was on my side. But another,

and this is something about the, this is something internal about the justice system that people might not know. When it comes to sexual abuse therapy, one of the big things when you're, when you have a case that's ongoing is any therapy that you receive, you're not actually allowed to talk about what happened to you in specific detail. So you can't talk about the abuse. can't talk about any particulars. You can't name any names. You can't, really, you can't address the actual abuse itself at all. Because if you do, then the, and it did come to court, then your private notes, your,

your therapy sessions could be called upon as evidence in court. And so basically your medical privacy would be compromised if you discussed the particulars of your case during therapy. while the case was ongoing. And as many, many survivors will know, it's a very long process to get to court. I mean, mine was, my case was dropped. No further action because the CPS believes

that there wasn't a realistic prospect of conviction due to it being a historic case. The process took nearly two years for me to not even reach court. So that was two years where I was receiving some sort of support, but I wasn't actually able to address any of the trauma and the abuse that I experienced. It was sort of the way that it was described was keeping you ticking along until you can actually access the full package of therapy, which was, so there were two types of therapy.

There was the pre-trial therapy, and then there was the post-police involvement therapy, which was the full Monty where you could discuss everything and really get the help that many victims and survivors need. as I needed. So for two years, I was in this sort of purgatory where I was receiving support to essentially stop myself from spiraling into a depressive episode or having a full on mental breakdown during this very tumultuous period of police investigations and evidence gathering and,

you know, going back and forth to the CPS and my, the police sergeant that was in charge of my case, but I wasn't able to really address any of the deep-rooted issues. And so that's something that many people don't know. While this very long, laborious court proceeding is taking place, victims and survivors aren't actually able to get the support they need and the way they need it in many cases. Sam, listening to your story, the one thing that, I mean, there are many things that I find very upsetting. Someone who used to teach, used to teach vulnerable kids because they used to teach in very, very deprived areas. I know for a fact that gangs, that these types of individuals, they target the vulnerable.

They target the girls or the boys who don't come from stable family backgrounds, the ones who struggle at school, the ones who are, for whatever reason, vulnerable or labeled as difficult. And the fact that these victims won't get their day in court because they will, won't, in inverted commas, play well in front of a jury. I find utterly disgusting. Absolutely. And this is what I, this is the point that I was getting to earlier where victims and survivors have every possible immutable characteristic,

exploited and turned against them when they try and seek justice for the abuse they suffered. Many, as you said, many victims of this particular type of crime and it isn't just sexual exploitation, it's criminal exploitation of children as well, come from disadvantaged backgrounds, whether they, you know, in the case of child sexual exploitation, many of the victims in Telford, not all of them, because any child can be abused, any child can be exploited, anyone can fall victim to this sort of, this sort of crime. And I don't want to denigrate the experiences of any survivors, but many survivors were already known to social services. They were already in care. They had difficult family backgrounds. Their parents were, you,

you know, alcoholics or addicted drugs or absent or whatever it is, many of the survivors and victims in cases like in towns and cities like Telford were from a disadvantaged or vulnerable background. And so it begs the question, with all of these services that are supposed to be around supporting children, supporting these kinds of children, how did everyone seem to fail to see the signs or fail to take action to protect them? in the case of social services there was as I said in Telford for example a massive failure to not notice the size but to act on them because it was you know there were children

that were going to sexual health clinics for the morning after pill every single week there were children as young as 13 or 14 that were having abortions who told the work their social workers oh I've got a boyfriend who's 27 or whatever oh this is happening this is happening to me this is what I was doing this is where I was And yet no further action was taken. I think that it really speaks to, and the point that I was making, I there as well,

about the justice system being more than misogynistic. It isn't just that many of these victims were little girls. It's that they were from backgrounds that were less than ideal. They didn't fit the cocky cutter profile of the perfect victim. They weren't going to be able to, and this is something that I always get, I get a lot of people on Twitter that especially that say it's always Twitter isn't it? The armchair experts themselves that say, oh, you don't sound like someone that would have been a victim of grooming or sexual abuse.

Oh, you don't look like someone that would have been a victim. And it just creates this paradox where any child who isn't the perfect victim who doesn't speak well, come from an affluent family, play well in front of a jury, who doesn't tick the boxes of what the Crown Prosecution Service is looking for in someone that will play well in court. It suggests that they are somehow less deserving of justice

and less deserving of support. And if they, as in my case, you do have a posh accent that I've been told, or you went to a good school, you don't fit the typical victim profile on the other side of things, people somehow believe that,

oh, you couldn't possibly have experienced this. and are you sure that this happened? It's damned if you do, damned if you don't. Damned if you're disadvantaged and damned if you're not. But in the case of child sexual exploitation in particular, you're right that the majority of these girls were white working class, disadvantaged from vulnerable backgrounds and predators, those that took advantage of them,

preyed on their vulnerability and were able to exploit them, groom them, abuse them, rape them, because there was no one around them that was willing to protect them. And Samantha, coming back to, you mentioned after the case and investigation and the case doesn't go to court, you get this full Monty therapy. Was that useful? Did that help you in your recovery from everything? I think it was a mixture.

I'll be 100% honest and say that. So I, by the time my case was. dropped. I had just aged out of the system, so I was no longer able to access. So my social worker closed me, closed my case. I was shoved off and told you're an adult now, go away, leave us alone. Just simply like that? Pretty much. There's no, there's no, there was no continuation of support for me from child services. And during the, obviously during the pandemic, this was exacerbated in the fact that, you know, you weren't able to really see, see your workers face to face and so on. I received a certain amount of support and therapeutic intervention,

a little bit of the form of Monty, but I'll be fully honest and say that at the time that I was receiving this therapy, I wasn't ready to engage. I wasn't at the point where I was ready. And after, I think part of it was because I had spent two years in this limbo of living through this experience every day, but not being able to talk about it, not being able to address it. And so by the time that I was able to access this full service, I suppose, of therapy, I was scared.

I was angry. I was angry that my case has been dropped. I was afraid. I still felt this massive shame and an inability to process it. And I, yeah, I wasn't ready to go through it. I'm now in a far better place and I am engaging with therapy. Well, this is what I'm kind of trying to get out, Samantha. What I'm trying to get out of you is how come you're so well put together.

It's like you've obviously moved on and you've moved past it and you're now living your life and you're very accomplished and very successful and you've got a bright future and you're at university studying law and everything's brilliant, right? And the thing that's, well, not everything, nothing is ever brilliant. I was just going to say, I know it's not very, it's not very trendy to say, but medication. Medication really helped me. I'm on and this is getting a little bit vulnerable, I suppose. but I I'm on antidepressants I'm on anti-anxiety medication I'm on sleeping tablets I take sleeping

tablets most nights to to keep myself going I have brilliant wonderful support systems now that I didn't have when I was younger you know my and I'll always say I'm although everything that happened to me was was awful and horrible I was very very lucky to go to a wonderful school I went to a to a little grammar school in the middle of the Shropshire countryside that took to, that took over two hours to get to in the mornings. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, but I, you know, when I was homeless, when I was sofa surfing, my head of year, who I will always regard as someone that saved my life and someone I'm, she's my, she's my phone background, actually, she's on my lock screen, a photo of me and her. She did my laundry for me. She let me keep my

bags, keep my clothes in her office when I, when I didn't, you know, I wasn't able to carry them around with me every night. She made sure that I could shower at school and I didn't have access to a shower. She ensured that I had at least one hot meal a day every day, bought me toilet trees and a towel and things like that. Now at the stage that I'm at in my life at the moment, my MP, my local MP, the MP for Telford, Lucy Allen, she helped me like absolutely no one else. And you always hear that age-old stereotype of Tories don't care about anyone but themselves. And I'd say that she, in my opinion, defies that stereotype. She took a chance on a 17-year-old with no experience and a very difficult background, gave me a shot during the 2019

campaign. She took me under her wing. I ended up working for her for nearly two years before I went to university. She is one of the, my biggest supporters and an absolutely amazing mentor that I'm privileged to have. There are other other amazing people that I have in my life who I can go to for advice for support for a shoulder to cry on or someone to lean on when I'm having a tough day because not every day is like this. I spend there are days that I, and again, getting a bit vulnerable, but there are days that I spend just curled up in bed watching Netflix and not able to do anything because it's, it's, and this is something about. the process that isn't off that isn't always talked about you know you see polished products on

on tv with hair done and and makeup on and a nice jumper i'm very sorry we're wearing more makeup than her what are you talking about once you get into your 40s yeah you go yeah this is the best it's going to be yeah this is it's a journey i would say and i'm not i'm by no means perfect i'm by no means healed but yeah I'd say that's how I get through it on a day to day basis I've got amazing support systems now that I that I'm very grateful to have and I didn't have when I was younger I am very well medicated and I just take every day as as it comes and how have your experiences shaped how you think about you know you mentioned working for a conservative MP how have your experience shaped how you think about the world because you mentioned not wanting to be a

a victim. And of all the people in the world who could be a victim if they wanted to and who could cash in on it and capitalize on it, someone in your position is like perfectly placed to do that. And it's the trendy thing nowadays to be a victim. And you get people who, you know, had two parents, went to a nice school, went to a good university, and because of the color of their skin or because they're a woman or because of this, they're on TV talking about how oppressed they are. And here you are saying, I don't want to be a victim. It's the monopoly of victimhood, isn't it? I think as cliché as it sounds, I've learned to realize what the big things are, what the big issues are.

And I guess that's partly because of what I experienced. But I've come to realize that bad hair days in the end of the world. And, you know, this idea that everyone has to be a victim that your horrible experiences or your, your inherent immutable characteristics somehow make you more or less deserving of of special treatment or support or the victimhood badge. I just don't buy into any of it. And that's part of the reason why I'm a conservative. I always get asked why are you conservative. Surely you'd be a labor supporter. Surely you'd be left wing if you have gone through all of this. You know, you were a victim of the system, how are you not left wing? How do you not want to change it? And I always respond

in that I do want to change it. But I don't think that you can enforce change and impact change by perpetuating that victimhood. I think that there's something deeply anti-aspirational about this whole identity politics, critical race theory, you know, identitarian victimhood, victimhood, I don't know, story. Yeah, culture. Sorry. No, no, don't know. Yeah, I just think that there's something so deeply anti-aspirational about it.

The idea that if you have gone through a terrible time or you were born with a different colour skin, that you are always going to be behind and that nothing is ever going to go your way that you need to have special treatment, you need to have the white man step aside, for you to be successful. It suggests that people aren't capable of succeeding off their own merit. And I think that with the right support, and don't get me wrong,

especially for those that have experienced child sexual exploitation or grooming or child sexual abuse, it is very, very hard. It isn't easy to pick yourself up and to get out of that. But with the right sort of support, anyone is capable of achieving. And I think that the conservative messaging in Moshe

is far more akin to aspiration and hand-ups, not hand-outs, than the left-wing rhetoric. I think that there's just, there's nothing that I see that is fruitful or progressive or positive about telling people that you're a victim, you should feel angry at the world, you should hate everyone around you for making life so tough for you.

No, it should be, the messaging should be, yes, life can be, life can be bad, life can be really, really, really sucky, but you are capable of achieving, you're capable of doing something better, you're capable of lifting yourself out of that situation, and these are the things that we want to do to support you with that.

This is a question that I didn't think I was going to ask, but you're such a remarkable person that I'm going to ask it. What do you think about the way that we talk about exploitation, rape, abuse in the media now, and particularly with things like Me Too, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think we discuss it in an honest way? Do you disagree with the way that we discuss it? I think that the one thing I would say is, while, again, the conversation is more open than it used to be,

people still aren't being candid about the nature of this type of crime. What are we not saying? I mean, in my own experience, I've been asked going on shows before, can you not mention the word rape or can you not mention the word Pakistan? Yeah. That is me down to a tea. Is that something I'll put my foot right in it. It's essentially a gagging clause that you're allowed to discuss this.

When you're doing TV or radio, that type of thing. They're asking you not to say the word rape. or not to mention the race of this. Because somehow it is too much for the modern ears. It's unpalatable to talk about it in such frank detail. And I think that that's what I would say needs to be improved upon. Because realistically, if the police were allowed to say that white working class girls, victims of child sex exploitation were white slags and pachishaggers,

why can I not repeat it on national TV and expose exactly what it is that they said? Why is there this double standard in the media and in television and radio that somehow the girls that were abused, raped, exploited, groomed by predominantly Pakistani Muslim men were forced to go through this, but we as a society can't bear repeating it in open and honest detail. I think that the conversation is far from frank and open and honest and that there needs to be a lot more done to unwrap the cotton wool around the mainstream media and say that as long as we have these sensitivities and these no-go areas around the topic of rape and exploitation, then little girls are going to continue to be abused because it just furthers this culture of ignorance and victim-blaming and silence and shame.

silence only serves to protect the perpetrators of this crime and cultural sensitivity, political correctness only serves to protect the predators. Samantha, do you think one of the reasons why with the Me Too movement Harvey Weinstein was such a huge figure is that, and pushback if you disagree on this, is because he very neatly encapsulated what we want a villain to be. You know, he's a rich white guy who's powerful,

And people felt that they couldn't, you know, they couldn't challenge him. And he obviously acted. It was just him. And then everybody else kind of obeyed him. And also his victims are very high status women usually, right? Yeah. Yeah. I did a piece for the male on this issue, exactly, the Harvey Weinstein and the Harvey Weinstein issue

and the Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell case. The reason why these celebrity cases, the same with Prince Andrew, were such a national scandal why the paper was doing double-page spreads on Galane Maxwell's court outfit and covering it war to war for weeks and weeks was because it appeals, it appeals to our societal intrigue

and interest with the idea of celebrity. These were, this was a lifestyle that the ordinary person couldn't even dream of, you know, private jets and Epstein Island and celebrities and millions of dollars being traded for sexual favors, it was very much glamorized and mystified and played into the, into the myth of Hollywood, I would say.

And it was far more glamorous to talk about billionaires on private boats and islands than, you know, a working class white girl from Telford being raped around the back of a kebab shop. It's, in my opinion, it was so, it was so highly covered because the victims and the perpetrators and to some extent the victims were celebrities. They were part of this jet-setting lifestyle that many of us can only dream of, whereas once again, it isn't, it isn't glamorous or cool or fashionable to talk about little girls in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oldham, Banbury, Telford, etc. being groomed and exploited by predominantly Pakistani men. And do you think that was one element, or there's lots of elements of the whole Me Too movement, that ignored these types of crimes?

I think that the Me Too movement is a difficult one because it was very much, it existed in a time and place, in Hollywood specifically, I would say, It was the idea that it was demystifying the Hollywood myth and showing that sexual abuse and exploitation and harassment was very much alive and well in Hollywood and showing it and lifting the lid on this culture of misogyny and and grooming and victim blaming within Hollywood. I think that child sexual exploitation and abuse is completely removed from that. It's an entirely different kettle of fish because and this isn't me saying, that it shouldn't be, that people shouldn't raise the sort of awareness of child sexual exploitation that they did at the Me Too movement.

But I think that, again, it all comes down to the class of the victims and the perpetrators. The Me Too movement was specifically focused on this celebrity, the celebrity lifestyle. And it did snowball to some extent. And there were ordinary women, quote, and quote, that were speaking out about the abuse experience, but it was very much to do with Hollywood and the celebrity world and the sexual harassment that was going on there. Whereas what is happening in towns like Telford, rather than in Rochdale, etc., is a lot closer to home. It's a grooming crisis in our own backyard. And that is very, very different from the Me Too movement. Samantha, there's one other question that I wanted

to ask you, because of all the people that we've interviewed pretty much, other than Ella, you have more reason than anyone, I think, to hate men. And we do live in a society where increasingly that narrative from certain quarters at least seems to me like it is being advanced and it is being pushed and toxic masculinity this and men of that and the patriarchy and this and of that. And like I say, I mean, if you were to sit in that chair and go, you know what, I think men are trash, I'd be like, you know what, I generally don't agree, but I think you've got a reason to. You've got to pass. You've got to, you can say that. What do you make of the way we have the kind of, conversations around these issues, men and women, men's roles, women's roles in society, etc.

I think there's a very big difference between hating men and wanting to change the culture around masculinity and the way that women are treated in society. I don't hate men. I think that many men are perfectly decent and upstanding human beings. I'm not, I'm definitely not putting on my tinfoil hat and raising my pitchfork and my stake and calling for all of them to be burned in the town square. But I think that the way that the conversation needs to be had, and this is the problem with some radical feminist movements,

I would call myself a feminist, but I wouldn't say that I'm a new wave or a current feminist in the way that it seems to have spiraled now where people say, the future is female and F all men, and that we should eat. eat all men that are awful, horrible, nasty criminals and that they should all be, you know, dispelled from society.

The conversation really needs to be around how can we deconstruct these ideas of toxic masculinity and misogyny in society because misogyny is still a very, very big problem, especially in the major institutions of this country and across the world. world, the police, the government, the way that women are treated in all areas of society still needs to be improved. And it would be remiss to, obviously, women can be perpetrators of sexual abuse as well. That does happen. But in the majority of cases, men are the perpetrators and women are the victims, or little girls or little boys are the victims, women and children. So it's about having an honest and open conversation, but also not villainising everybody.

There's, I think that we seem to have lost nuance in modern political debate. There's no ability for people to say that this, and it's the same with Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs. You aren't able to say that not all Pakistani people are bad, not all Muslims are bad, but there is a significant problem within this community that is unique for the most part, to this community, this is going on and we need to figure out how we can address it. It's the same with men. People say, oh, it's not all men that do this. You know, women can be rapist too, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yes, that's true. I'm not denying that. I don't think that anyone is denying that it's not all men that are perpetrators of sexual abuse, but there are too many women that are victims. There was a, I think it was an NSPC study that came out that found that, I think it's like 96% of girls had experienced some sort of sexual harassment before the age of 16. That's a staggering figure. So yes, it isn't all men, but it's too many women, in my opinion.

So we can have this conversation and say that there is a problem with a lot of men abusing women and children, but that doesn't mean that it's all men that are bad and evil and horrible. And this is where maybe I would add even a little bit more news. The fact that there are a lot of female victims, there's not. mean that there are a lot of male perpetrators necessarily right it could be that a small minority of people commit a lot of those offenses or do a lot of those things over time and i think that's maybe where part of the nuance is getting lost because i actually happen to think and you know

this is just my opinion that one of the solutions to some of these problems is for men who are not like that to have more of a role in protecting women right and i think that's where my concern is sometimes when we start to tar people with the same brush, you're actually pushing good men away from being involved and being active in looking after people because that is, you know, it's not a fashionable thing to say, but that is part of men's jobs is to protect others, you know, protect children, protect women, protect partners, etc. And I think we're losing that a little bit as well. I think that you're absolutely right in the fact that men can do a lot more to help protect women

and children. I think that it's the discussion that's had the topic of what can we be doing to raise our sons and our young men to be better than previous generations that came before them. It starts at a very young age, these toxic ideology and this idea that women are somehow beneath men or that they are only to be used for sexual gratification or pleasure that that somehow women are inferior needs to be tackled and addressed. In the same way when it comes to racism, it needs to,

you know, people aren't born racist, people aren't born sexual predators. This behaviour is learned. There was a case in Telford, and it's an ongoing case, so I won't comment on it too much, but there was an ongoing case in Telford of a boy, a 13-year-old boy

who has been arrested for, I believe it's nine counts of rape and several other sexual assaults of women aged, of women and girls age 16 to 34. This is a 13-year-old boy that has been accused of these crimes. He wasn't born that way. This behaviour is learned, whether he learned it from his father or his schoolmates or his uncle or his brothers or whoever it is,

someone taught this little boy that it was okay to sexually assault women. And so tackling that at a very young age and dispelling this sort of ideology and teaching young boys how to be good men, how to be good upstanding, law-abiding, respectful citizens is the key, I think, to making a difference. But let's not get it twisted. People will always, there will always be bad people in the world.

People will always rape, abuse, exploit. People will always be horrible. but I think that so long as we continue to put up these barriers to open an honest conversation and part of them and one of those barriers is this this lack of nuance and the rhetoric that all men are bad and that all men should be it should be exiled and whatever well like I say you'd be forgiven you'd be forgiven for saying that if you wanted to but I guess my point would be with that 13 year old boy you actually think you I think you put your finger on it which is if that boy had a father in the home who taught him how to treat women properly, that never would have happened,

right? And I think that's part of the answer as well, is for men to be better. I think that's really important. Samantha, anyway, it's been a real pleasure speaking with you, although obviously it's a difficult conversation, but an important one. And I'm really glad we've been able to have you on to keep reminding people that these things aren't over. It's still going on. There's still work to do. And we thank you for sharing your story with us and for coming on. You've got a bright future head of you. So we wish you all the best. Before we let you go, we've got our final question and some questions from our supporters that they've already submitted. Our final question, as always, is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think

really should be? I'm going to go a little bit left field here. And we've obviously talked a lot about child sex exploitation grooming. And I would say that would be the obvious answer for what we need to be talking about more in society. So I'm going to keep it light here and say opera. opera is the thing that we need to be talking about more and I don't think my Twitter followers I tweeted about it earlier and I don't think that it was a bit too niche for them but I believe that opera is the best genre of music

out there I believe that it should be mainstream that everyone should be taking their children to see La Traviata or Carmen or Kossi Fantuti I think that opera needs to be spoken about and revered more than it is in society spoken like a real conservative What can I say? You know, my grandfather, here's a story for you,

my grandfather was a working-class joiner brought up in Wiggin in the north of England and he volunteered to join the army during the Second World War and he went and part of where he fought was in Italy and he fell in love with opera. He fell in love with opera, he fell in love with Italy. So he came back and he was working in the railways with all these big other working class men.

And they all thought he was a bit odd because he would be there working whilst listening to La Traviata. I love that. I think that, you know, opera is, and this is turning into a conversation about accessibility in opera, but opera is far more accessible than it used to be. And there's a joy to be found in appreciating a good musical score. Forget what, forget Lizzo and Sam Smith and Harry Styles

and all of this modern filth that's getting put out. I wouldn't. You are so. Inservative. It's modern filth. I always like to think of myself as an 85-year-old woman trapped in it. You've got her opinions.

Yeah, trapped in a new one person's body. You know, all I want is to sit at home with a glass of wine. And I do this sometimes. Sit at home with a glass of wine and a, you know, a camembert and listen to Kossi Fanuti or Laboham on the radio. It's something that I think we need to get, reject, and an embrace tradition. That's my message for all of your lovely followers. We're going to call this episode ban this modern filthy.

Samantha, where can people find you online if they want to follow your work and follow along with your career? I'm on Twitter at Samantha Tagg-H-O-Y. That's T-A-G-H-O-Y, spelled as it sounds. I'm not really active on anything else. I think that Twitter is my poison of choice. But If people are interested in reading my print journalism, I'm a columnist for The Spectator and the Daily Mail. If you search Samantha Smith Spectator or Samantha Smith Daily Mail, you might find a 1970s peace activist first, but I'll be the second one that shows up. So, yeah, that's the way that people can find me. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure to meet you.

And thank you for watching and listening. We'll see you on locals for the bonus questions. Take care and see you soon. If I could ask the government to enact one policy right now, it would be to...