Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe used a Westminster Hall debate on Monday to confront MPs with harrowing testimony from White girls and women who were raped, tortured, trafficked, and degraded by migrant grooming gangs, and abandoned by the very authorities that should have protected them.
The debate was secured after 260,974 Brits signed a petition calling for Parliament to address the rape gang scandal. Lowe opened by thanking the signatories and welcoming survivors who were sitting in the hall, saying the debate was not about politics, but about them.
“I want the world to hear what we heard during the two weeks of our independent rape gang inquiry hearings, an inquiry that should never have needed to happen,” Lowe said.
He then read out a series of graphic testimonies that exposed the scale of the abuse suffered by almost exclusively White girls.
One survivor said she was only “about 12, nearly 13” when a man raped her before forcing an empty Jack Daniel’s bottle inside her and breaking the glass. Another described being held down by groups of men as they took turns to rape her, before beating her and threatening to kill her and harm her loved ones if she ever spoke out.
Lowe told MPs that the evidence heard by his inquiry included repeated allegations that White British girls were deliberately targeted.
One survivor said abusers made constant references to “White girls” and “Christian girls,” claiming they had “fewer morals or lower values,” while Muslim girls were described as having “dignity and higher moral standing.”
Another alleged victim said race “did play a part” in the selection of victims, adding that the girls she encountered during her exploitation were “almost exclusively White.”
The testimony also included claims that children in care were effectively handed over to abusers. One survivor said men would sound a car horn outside a children’s home before a staff member brought a child to the front door. Another said, “It was all of the White girls in every home that I went to.”
In one of the most disturbing accounts read to MPs, a survivor recalled seeing the back of a van opened to reveal “15, 20 girls locked in dog cages.” Another said dogs were brought in during an attack while men stood around filming, laughing, and betting on what would happen. She said she had nowhere to move and was raped by a dog while a man held her face and stared into her eyes because “he wanted to see me break.”
Lowe also read testimony from a survivor who said she was raped by “probably about six or seven hundred different men” over three years after the abuse began when she was 13. Another said abuse escalated around Eid and holidays, when parties became “bigger, worse, and “more violent,” with more men and more girls involved.
The Restore Britain leader claimed that institutions had repeatedly failed victims. One girl said she went to hospital at 15, bleeding, swollen, and unable to sit down after an assault, but was given tablets and discharged after telling staff her drink had been spiked because she was too frightened to say what had really happened. “They did not ask any questions,” she said.
Another survivor alleged that she was raped by multiple police officers in different parts of the country. A further testimony claimed a man put a cigarette out on a baby’s face.
Lowe said the abuse was also used to attack the faith and identity of victims. One Christian survivor said her cross was used as a way to break her down, with abusers asking, “Where is your God now? Has your God forsaken you?”
The politician said he could have continued reading testimony “for hours and hours,” warning that Parliament no longer had any excuse for inaction.
“All of us in this building have a responsibility to finally act. Not to talk, but to act,” he said. “Our Rape Gang Inquiry report will be released in the coming days. It will change Britain for good.”
Lowe launched his own independent inquiry before the U.K. government announced a statutory national investigation into grooming gangs, a probe that identified evidence of child sexual exploitation across dozens of local authority areas.