Rotherham Survivor Pushes for Inquiry

0:00It's March 31st, from breaking headlines to political updates, this is Europe News Today, powered by AI. A survivor from the Rotherham abuse scandal is pushing hard for the new UK grooming gangs inquiry to check every council and police force nationwide. She's Sammy Woodhouse, calling for the probe to dig back way before 1996 since these issues span decades. The 65 million-pound inquiry targets how gangs operated in how police, councils, health services, social care, and schools handled it with local reviews starting in places like Oldham. Now the inquiry chair, Baroness Anne Longfield, got the green light from home secretary Shabana Mahmoud to widen the scope. That means explicitly looking at how ethnicity, religion, and culture played into the crimes by perpetrators and shaped weak responses from institutions. Survivors and whistleblowers want their voices heard loud, including parents and even kids born from these rapes.

1:01Political reactions split. Conservative leader Kimi Batanak calls the term strengthened, while reform UK's Nigro Farage has zero faith it'll deliver. Justice without real powers to force testimony from those who lived away. The setup includes public hearings that will stream live online, with transcripts out right after and findings dropping step by step, not all at once. It's capped at three years, wrapping no later than March 2029. This push keeps the heat on for real answers, making sure no stone stays unturned across the country to finally support those victims long ignored.