Latest / The Epstein Chronicles / The UK Inquiry Into Grooming Gangs: Whitney, Fiona And Michelle Tell Their Stories (6/22/26)

Transcript

The UK Inquiry Into Grooming Gangs: Whitney, Fiona And Michelle Tell Their Stories (6/22/26) · The Epstein Chronicles

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up everyone, and welcome back to the program. In
• 0:03
  this episode, we're going to pick up where we left
• 0:05
  off with the inquiry from the UK about the grooming
• 0:09
  gangs Fiona. Fiona grew up in a highly abusive household,
• 0:16
  marked by domestic violence, severe emotional abuse, and repeated suicide
• 0:21
  attempts by her mother, which Fiona witnessed. Despite exceptional academic ability,
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  she developed serious mental health difficulties, self harm behaviors, and
• 0:31
  suicidal ideation from a young age. After escalating abuse and
• 0:36
  fell disclosures, Fiona entered the care at the age of thirteen.
• 0:41
  She was placed in a children's home that had already
• 0:43
  been identified as high risk for sexual exploitation in a
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  television documentary prior to her arrival. Inadequate supervision meant she
• 0:53
  went missing repeatedly. At thirteen, she was groomed by adult
• 0:56
  Pakistani men whom she estimates were aged between twenty four
• 1:01
  and forty five. The grooming began with affection and alcohol,
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  quickly progressing to rape, drug dependency threats, and trafficking. Care
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  staff negligence was extreme. Abusers would sit in cars outside
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  waiting for the girls, openly converse with the staff, and
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  even phone the home to inquire about them. One care
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  worker told Fiona's mother that her boss had described recording
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  the men's car registration plates as above her pay grade,
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  warning that she would lose her job if she did so.
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  Fiona believes the staff were aware of what was happening,
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  but felt powerless to stop it, rather than being actively complicit. Nevertheless,
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  the children's home received five thousand pounds per week to
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  care for her and failed miserably. Fiona suspects the management
• 1:51
  avoided proper investigation for fear of being labeled racist. Only
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  the police took the formal action, issuing harboring no to
• 2:00
  the men official warnings stating that they had no permission
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  to associate with, contact, or house a vulnerable child. However,
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  no further action followed. When Fiona's mother called the police
• 2:13
  to report her daughter missing and mentioned the history of
• 2:15
  abuse by Asian men, the call handler told her, you
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  can't describe them as Asian men because that's racist. You
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  should just be glad your child is being taught a
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  different culture. On one occasion, a police officer returned Fiona
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  to the house where the abuse was occurring and told
• 2:32
  the men to have fun with her. On another occasion,
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  police instructed the abusers that if they could persuade Fiona
• 2:39
  to sign herself out of care, the police would stop
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  bothering them. The gang then tried to convince her to
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  do so, intending to traffick her to Kashmir. She was
• 2:50
  only prevented from leaving the country because she did not
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  have a passport. Between two thousand and eight and twenty twelve,
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  Fiona was repeatedly raped by multiple men connected to organize
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  grooming networks. She was often kept in a house known
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  as a party house, where between ten and twenty men
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  would attend at one time. On one occasion, she was
• 3:11
  encouraged to bring her friends because the owner had relatives
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  visiting from Birmingham to celebrate ID and expected girls to
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  be there. Within the house, the girls were routinely referred
• 3:22
  to as white slags, while the men wanted Pakistani girls
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  kept pure for marriage. The gang's reportedly discussed fears that
• 3:32
  the English Defense League would arrive armed, so they kept
• 3:36
  baseball bats for protection. They also allegedly spoke of attending
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  EDL demonstrations with weapons. Fiona was not only trafficked and
• 3:45
  raped across multiple cities in the UK, but was also
• 3:48
  forced two traffic drugs. Drugs, intimidation, and violence were used
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  to control her. She was made to clean up the
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  knives from the scene of two fatal stabbings. She was
• 4:00
  present during a shootout. Her abusers bragged to her that
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  they had hidden dead bodies in certain locations. A few
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  days later, Fiona recalls the news reporting on a body
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  being recovered from the same location that the abusers had
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  disclosed to her. As a result, threats of violence carried
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  an enormous weight. At fourteen, Fiona was abused by a
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  man known as Rambo. He had entered England illegally in
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  the back of a lory previously castrated in Pakistan as
• 4:30
  punishment for child abuse. He had then fled to the Philippines,
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  where he allegedly attacked multiple women and children with a
• 4:37
  large knife, the origin of his nickname. Rambo was locked
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  in a room with two girls and subjected them to
• 4:44
  extreme sexual torture. The case illustrated that in some instances,
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  the sexual abuse of children was driven more by humiliation
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  and control than sexual gratification. At fifteen, Fiona became pregnant
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  while in a mixed care home. Her son was later
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  removed and adopted due to the ongoing exploitation risk. Yet
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  Fiona herself was left in the same dangerous environment. The
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  abuse continued into her adulthood. It only stopped when she
• 5:13
  turned eighteen, leaving her with profound physical and psychological trauma,
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  including PTSD, substance dependency, and long term health damage. Fiona
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  states that the greatest harm came not only from the abusers,
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  but from the institutional disbelief, neglect, and punishment that actively
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  enabled the ongoing exploitation. In total, she estimates that she
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  was abused by fifty and one hundred men. Of those,
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  only two were not Pakistani. Michelle Michelle was physically abused
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  in childhood by both her mother and stepfather. Her mother
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  had multiple partners throughout Michelle's childhood, many of whom also
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  abused her, some sexually. She believes this early experience created
• 6:01
  an association between abuse and love, leaving her particularly vulnerable.
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  From the age of thirteen, she was groomed by three
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  adult Pakistani brothers who supplied her with alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs.
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  She was raped while intoxicated, including one occasion when she
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  was taken upstairs while her sister tried to intervene because
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  of her upbringing, she thought this was normal, that they
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  were her boyfriends and that they loved her. She'd go
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  missing for extended periods and was subjected to repeated daily
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  sexual abuse. The perpetrators would collect her from school, her home,
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  and public places, using threats of violence to course and
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  control her. At age fourteen, she was gang raped and
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  beaten by three men who had locked her in her house.
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  She was left covered in cuts and bruises, which alerted
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  a friend. The friend told her own mother, who then
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  contacted Michelle's mother. The police were called, but they claimed
• 6:57
  there was little they could do without more evidence. One
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  of the gang members later forced Michelle to go to
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  the police station with him to retract her statement. The
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  police accepted him as her appropriate adult, a role normally
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  reserved for a parent, close family member, social worker, or
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  train professional. The investigation was subsequently dropped. One of Michelle's friends,
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  who lived in a care home, would be collected directly
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  outside by the same gang. Care staff would call the police,
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  but officers reportedly referred to the girls as prostitutes despite
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  them being children. Both social services and police, Michelle says,
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  failed to understand the situation and believe the girls were
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  engaging in the activity by choice. As a result, little
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  was done to intervene. When she was abducted and went missing,
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  no one came looking for A social worker once told
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  her that, at age fourteen, she would be allowed to
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  live with her thirty year old boyfriend as long as
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  they didn't share a room. Michelle was raped in bin sheds,
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  threatened with a knife, and forced into sex with multiple
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  men waiting in cars. She was drugged, beaten, burned with cigarettes,
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  locked in rooms, and passed between men. An amusement arcade
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  was used as a front for drug dealing and the
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  sexual exploitation of children. She became pregnant four times as
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  a child as a result of rape, leading to miscarriages,
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  one abortion, and one surviving child. Of her abusers, she
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  states ninety eight percent of them were a Pakistani Muslim.
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  If not, they were Iraqi Muslim or a Kurdish. Michelle
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  believes that these gangs have remained untouchable because authorities feared
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  being labeled as racist. She describes extensive networks of abusers
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  operating across the entire country, calling it industrial in scale.
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  It functions as a large central network with smaller connected
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  groups in specific localities. Michelle claims she was raped by
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  between six and seven hundred different men over the course
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  of three years. She now lives with severe PTSD and
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  lifelong trauma, describing both her childhood and her future as destroyed.
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  Whitney Whitney grew up in a vulnerable household. Her mother
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  suffered from severe mental health issues, and her father was
• 9:16
  absent from her life. She was first groomed and sexually
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  abused at the age of fifteen by two adult Pakistani brothers.
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  One of the brothers, Whitney recalls, acted as a boyfriend figure.
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  Both brothers would regularly take her to a flat in Birmingham,
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  supplier with alcohol, and, in her words, she would have
• 9:34
  sex with them. Their interactions with Whitney soon turned violent.
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  They began beating her and on one occasion, held a
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  hot iron to her face. Whitney recalls that the brothers
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  stopped contacting her after they arrived at her house to
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  collect her and found all of her uncles sitting on
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  the wall outside. After that incident, they never came back.
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  She cannot remember exactly how or why her uncles were there,
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  but she believed her mother had asked them to intervene.
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  Many years later, Whitney's daughter began self harming at age
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  eleven and even attempted suicide. Her phone contained sexually explicit messages.
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  Whitney's daughter told her there was a sex room at
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  school run by the older boys. Deeply concerned for her daughter,
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  Whitney contacted Social Services. They offered little support beyond talking
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  through the problems. In one instant, Social Services accidentally sent
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  her six other children's case files instead of her daughters,
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  which left her deeply distrustful of their ability to help.
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  Whitney's daughter was coerced in descending sexual image, which was
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  then circulated across multiple schools, the local community, and eventually
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  the Internet. This led to her receiving unwanted attention from
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  adult men of various ethnicities and from multiple countries. From
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  that point on, Whitney's daughter began going missing regularly. These
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  disappearances were directly linked to sexual demands and exploitation by
• 11:00
  older boys and adult men. She was threatened with violence
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  if she contacted the police, and sometimes returned home with
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  items of clothing missing. Whitney repeatedly reported her concerns to
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  the police and social services, clearly stating that she believed
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  her daughter was being sexually exploited. Police responses were often delayed,
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  statements were not taken, and investigations were closed without further action.
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  Social Services refused to relocate the family, downgraded the risk level,
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  and eventually closed the case despite ongoing exploitation. Whitney herself
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  was blamed and her own pass was used to undermine
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  her credibility as a parent. Her family received repeated threats,
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  including warnings that their house would be burned down, faces
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  would be slashed, and machetes would be used. Later, Whitney
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  discovered that her daughter had been placed on the National
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  Referral Mechanism as a trafficking victim without her being informed.
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  The NRM is the UK's official framework for identifying, referring
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  and supporting victims of human trafficking and modern slavery, and
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  serves as a recognition by a designated professional that an
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  individual is a potential victim of human trafficking or modern slavery.
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  All right, folks, we're gonna wrap up right there, and
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  in the next episode dealing with the topic, we're gonna
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  pick up with the testimony of Sally. All the information
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  that goes with this episode can be found in the
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  description box.