A retired senior police officer who discovered a grooming gang network targeting a children’s home in Bradford was told by a charity representative that ‘this is just what goes on.’
After a 3 month surveillance investigation into child sex abuse in the city led by an anti-trafficking charity, John Piekos - a retired detective chief inspector - recorded multiple men waiting in cars for young girls.
Mr Piekos started working for the charity in 2008 after leaving Greater Manchester Police, where he had dealt with exploitation in Oldham.
In an exclusive interview with the people’s channel, he said that he staked out a children’s home with a colleague in Bradford for three months, where he found multiple incidents of grooming and children going missing.
“Sometimes these girls would just be gone for a few hours, but quite often they didn't come back that night or even the next morning,” he said.
GB news has spoken to his work partner from this period who reaffirmed Mr Piekos’s testimony.
Mr Piekos said that his church-funded charity reached out to contacts in the area, including the Bishop of Bradford, to organise a meeting with other charities and police officers where they could share their findings.
The Diocese of Leeds said it was unable to find out more details from anyone who worked for the then-bishop at the time.
He said that at the meeting, senior charity leaders told him that “everybody knows about this.”
Mr Piekos said he hit back: “I said, ‘I beg your pardon, what do you mean ‘everybody knows this?’”
He went on to explain: “I gave a presentation about what we discovered. And there wasn't any immediate response. A representative from one of the children's charities said, ‘everybody knows this is what goes on in children's homes. It goes on across the country’.”
Mr Piekos continued: “How can this be going on all over the country? And we're not doing anything about it?”
He added that the charity rep explained ‘reports’ had been undertaken to which he questioned: “Who's coordinating all this, bringing all this information together, defining exactly what the threats are to these children.”
Mr Piekos said he later received a call from a former colleague who he served with and was now a senior member of West Yorkshire Police.
He claims that the officer said to him: “‘Don't you realise how much work our officers have put into stabilising this community?’
“‘What you’re doing is likely to create a massive right-wing backlash that will burn parts of our town. Don’t you see what you’re doing?’”
Mr Piekos told GB News: “I didn’t really because even though I thought maybe some of these individuals might be Pakistani … it never occurred to me that this was an issue of race. It was an issue of child abuse.”
When asked if he felt it was a losing battle, Mr Piekos added: “We couldn't do it on our own. We weren't ready for a battle with the establishment.
“We'd lost the battle already. You know, the social services, the police, the children's charities. Gosh, even the church, you know. There wasn't the support there for tearing this down.”
John Piekos’s bombshell interview comes amid a fierce political debate over the grooming abuse gangs scandal in Westminster.
On Tuesday, Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips told the Commons hours before Easter recess the £5 million fund promised for locally-led inquiries into grooming gangs would now be for “locally-led work.”
She made the update “following feedback” from local authorities, which could include further inquiries but also therapeutic support and victims’ panels.
Yesterday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper insisted that local inquiries into grooming gangs in five towns would be going ahead, with Home Office sources telling GB News that there could be more than five.
Ms Cooper said that “party political misinformation” were behind claims that she had watered down her commitment to the inquiries in January, which she rejected.
Jess Phillips, Safeguarding Minister said: “This Labour Government is providing record-levels of investment to tackle Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and to pursue truth and justice for victims of these most heinous crimes.
“As I said to Parliament yesterday, the government is drawing up a new local inquiries framework, based on the experience of Telford, Rotherham and other areas, which will set out how areas can be put forward for local inquiries. Decisions will be then taken drawing on the evidence from Louise Casey’s audit.
“There is far too much party political misinformation about the action that is being taken when everyone should be trying to support victims and survivors.
“We are funding new police investigations to re-open historic cases, providing national support for locally led inquiries and action, and Louise Casey - who conducted the no-holds barred inquiry in Rotherham - is currently reviewing the nature, scale and ethnicity of grooming gangs offending across the country.
“But we will not hesitate to go further, unlike the previous Government, who showed no interest in this issue over 14 years and did nothing to progress the recommendations from the seven year National Inquiry when they had the chance.
“We will leave no stone unturned in pursuit of justice for victims and will be unrelenting in our crackdown on sick predators and perpetrators who prey on vulnerable children.”
Bradford Council was contacted for comment.
