A charity boss has urged for victims to be put first as the fallout around the government’s grooming gangs inquiry continues.

Last month, four survivors – one of whom was from Rotherham – resigned from the consultation panel.

The women had raised concerns with the chair selection process and that it is being used as a ‘cover-up’.

Aneeta Prem MBE, founder and president of the charity Freedom, said the scope of the inquiry needs to be made very clear due to the various different types of grooming gangs.

“That has to be agreed with the survivors and victims that have gone through this.

“Widening it too far will no doubt dilute it.

“So, it’s really important that what the inquiry supposed to look at has to be set out now to regain trust.”

Freedom supports victims of forced marriages and related sexual violence, and has been involved in helping the victims of grooming gangs for over 10 years.

In Rotherham alone, an estimated 1,400 young girls were victims of sexual exploitation at the hands of grooming gangs between the late 1980s and 2013.

In 2016 and 2017, nineteen men and two women were convicted of sexual offences in the town.

Rings were discovered to be operating across the country, including in Bradford and Rochdale.

On Monday, 19 men were arrested by West Yorkshire Police as part of investigations into historic child grooming.

The inquiry will be tasked with looking into the role played by the ethnic background of offenders, after an audit by Baroness Casey earlier this year found that the ethnicity of gangs had been “shied away from”.

It will also examine the failings by local authorities to prevent the abuse.

But Ms Prem said it was irrelevant whether those responsible were from any particular ethnic background.

“These grooming gangs had to be investigated, and it wasn’t helping anybody to shy away from that – certainly not the victims and potential future victims.

“I’ve been explicitly clear that culture and religion and background should be no barrier to finding out who these people are and prosecuting them.”

A seven-year national inquiry led by Professor Alexis Jay released in 2022 found there had been institutional failings across the country regarding the grooming gangs scandal.

After Professor Jay’s report into the Rotherham gang in 2014, several senior officials resigned from their posts.

These included the council’s chief executive and South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner.

Ms Prem added: “I think this has been mishandled by almost every statutory body.

“Looking to appoint people from professions which have completely let down these women, certainly when they were young girls, makes it very, very difficult for that to be tenable.

“A number of them have walked away from the inquiry because they believe it will come from a bias.

“And I would support if there was a judge available that was agreed by everybody on the panel and people would come back.

“I think that would only be a positive.”

The government initially ruled out an investigation in the wake of Baroness Casey’s review, but Sir Keir Starmer later announced a national inquiry after pressure from opposition groups.