Deadly silence
The formidable Baroness Casey has been called in by the Government to help get the grooming gangs inquiry up and running.
Four abuse survivors have resigned from the victims’ liaison panel and called for safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to resign - although other victims have since said they will only remain involved if she stays. Meanwhile two candidates identified to chair the inquiry have pulled out.
It’s fair to say it’s a bit of a mess. Baroness Casey, who was in Newcastle this week on adult social care business, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that she was “personally committed” to making sure the inquiry is set up.
Eyes & Ears has spoken to Debra Cowey, author, trainer, and consultant in sexual exploitation, whose extensive experience means she is qualified to challenge the failures that silence survivors — and the politics that bury truth.
“I didn’t set out to write a book,” she says. “I set out to make the silence impossible to ignore.” Her compelling column is at the end of this edition.
First, here are some Eyes & Ears Extras and a link to Friday’s edition which contained surprising good, under-the-radar, news about the amount of ‘levelling up’ funding the North East is getting from the Labour government.
And there was the lad from Wallsend (he’s not a lad anymore) who is at the heart of Nike’s commitment to put the swoosh back into their sales with innovations such as motor-powered running and walking shoes, self-inflating coats, and skin-cooling T-shirts. That’s him in the picture below.
Bridget loses
Sunderland MP Bridget Phillipson has lost the vote to become deputy leader of the Labour Party. Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell’s victory was expected, but the winning margin of 54% to 46% was not overwhelming - on a low turnout - suggesting Labour members have not entirely rejected Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.
How times change
It wasn’t that long ago that right-minded people in the northern half of the old One North East territory used to look at what was happening in the southern half of the region and wish for the same unity, harmony and commonality of purpose.
How times have changed.
Private Eye has published an eight-page special report into the goings on in the Tees Valley and the redevelopment of the former steelworks at Redcar.
It is a superb piece of investigative journalism, and I’m pleased to say that I can’t provide you with a link to read the article. Clickbait is free, but quality journalism is provided by quality journalists - and they need to be paid.
The screenshot above says: “The redevelopment of the former steelworks became little more than an unlawful, taxpayer-funded scheme to promote the political career of a Tory golden boy and vastly enrich a couple of local businessmen and their families, all hidden in a web of deception.
“In the process, it is financially imperilling a major regional redevelopment body and squandering the chance to revive one of the country’s most deprived but industrially promising areas.”
Private Eye costs £2.99 and is available in all good newsagents.
£2m and counting
Ten years ago John and Irene Hays set up the Hays Travel Foundation to support young people in arts, education, health, and sport. Today it has donated more than £2m to help more than 44,000 children and young people. Dame Irene Hays, chair of the foundation’s trustees, said: “Our mission is far from over. The message is to keep going and do what we have always done – support the communities where we operate. That is in our DNA.”
A lesson in love
A Motor Neurone Disease awareness day has been held across six Teesside schools as part of a campaign inspired by headteacher Claire Park who has been diagnosed with the same devastating illness that claimed the lives of rugby stars Doddie Weir and Rob Burrow.
As well as raising vital funds for national MND charities, there’s an appeal by the Friends of Hartburn Primary near Stockton to raise £50,000 to create a play area at the school that will be known as ‘Mrs Park’s Park’. Click here to read a touching story by Peter Barron.
Women die - while lessons fail to be learned
By Debra Cowey
I worked for the charity Changing Lives for over a decade, strategically coordinating the support for victims and survivors of Operation Sanctuary and other high-profile cases across the North East and beyond.
In this work, organised crime is sadly our day-to-day — often the same networks, labelled as ‘grooming gangs,’ exploiting individuals and trafficking women into the sex industry.
Until you do this work, you can never truly grasp the scale of it.
Working nationally, I’ve identified many barriers. One is painfully simple: nobody is collecting and coordinating the data of sexual exploitation in the same way. This was picked up in the National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in June 2025 - in some cases no data was being recorded.
If you don’t count it, you can’t be held accountable for it, so the problem doesn’t exist.
I started writing On the Other Side of Sexual Violence out of anger and exhaustion — the exhaustion of seeing “lessons learned” echoed in report after report while women continued to die while waiting for someone to take responsibility.
Every inquiry, every “review,” every soundbite about lessons learned rings hollow when the same women and girls, the same families, and the same frontline workers are left standing in the same turmoil.
Poetry was my way of breaking through the polished language of policy, to name the chaos for what it is: a crisis.
My professional work and my writing share the same purpose as the current inquiry into sexual exploitation: to expose systemic failure and demand accountability.
The grooming gang inquiry is meant to bring truth, justice, and a long-overdue reckoning for those who were silenced and forgotten; to hold institutions and individuals to account.
Instead, within days, its purpose was buried under political spin. The panel of survivors and others who fought for years for justice now find themselves caught in the crossfire of politics, yet another failure dressed as reform.
We’ve been here before. The goalposts move, the urgency fades, the spotlight shifts, and survivors are left behind navigating the aftermath, while systems congratulate themselves on “lessons learned.”
I also think about the fact that not everyone is still here to tell their story. That truth reverberates across the On the Other Side of Sexual Violence series — women who survived the violence but not the neglect that followed. They weren’t lost to chance; they were lost to a system that failed to protect, support, and believe them at every stage of their lives.
These aren’t historical tragedies — they are current casualties of failure, political distraction, institutional indifference, and a justice system still afraid to confront this abuse head-on.
Survivors deserve answers and justice, not another performance on a political stage that exposes, yet again, society’s failure to get it right.
There was a debate about whether to include all forms of sexual exploitation within the inquiry. I would reject that approach. It is simply too broad.
Sexual exploitation takes many forms and bears no boundaries to age. Keeping this review focused on grooming gangs is essential — that’s not to say that further inquiries into other forms of sexual exploitation shouldn’t happen, because they absolutely must be.
The grooming gang inquiry should have been designed to safeguard those on the panel — not expose them to political point-scoring and institutional confusion.
Postponing the inquiry is devastating for many, but if this delay allows it to be rebuilt properly, then it must be used wisely.
The survivor panel must be empowered to define and shape the inquiry before any government involvement. They must be supported, not politicised.
I hold great respect for the independent charity involved, NWG, whose integrity and experience make them ideally placed to facilitate and protect that survivor-led approach. Only once that foundation of trust is established, and there is clear agreement on the direction survivors want the inquiry to take, should government engagement follow.
The trilogy
The On the Other Side of Sexual Violence series was born from my experiences — from witnessing injustice, systemic failure, and the premature deaths of women who suffered at the hands of others.
Volume One is a poetry collection. You can see and buy it here. It’s the emotional blueprint for an entire series dedicated to exposing and challenging the realities of sexual exploitation.
It’s written from the inside — from someone who witnessed a failing system first-hand, who witnessed the inequality and injustice, labelling survivors and victims as “too complex,” and how accountability is always ‘their problem or tomorrow’s problem.’
Volumes two and three are in their final editing stages.
Volume Two, Grey Zone, Danger Zone: Sexual Exploitation, Blind Spots, and Systemic Failure is born of the quiet failures that rarely make headlines. Written for professionals, students, policymakers, commissioners and anyone willing to confront the sexual exploitation of women and girls, it names the blind spots, challenges the excuses, and honours the women we’ve lost.
Volume Three, The Systemic Erasing of Sexual Exploitation: The Inequality the Government Doesn’t Want You to See, is written out of urgency and absence. Urgency, because sexual exploitation continues while systems still look away. Absence, because despite decades of evidence, the failures persist. This volume traces how erasure happens, administratively, culturally, and politically, and demands accountability.
The now
After leaving Changing Lives, I became the founder and director of Coloured Hearts CIC and B-Equipt Ltd.
Coloured Hearts uses creative literature to validate lived experience and support reflective practice for people in frontline roles — those who carry the weight of multiple disclosures, often daily.
For me, writing became the only way to hold what I was witnessing: the injustice, the failures, and the women who never made it through. Now, I provide a space for others to do the same — to find language for what systems too often leave unspoken.
B-Equipt is an accredited centre that offers more than consultancy and training – we look to problem-solve and tackle this crisis. We are huge on prevention. We provide solutions to tackle this growing crisis of sexual exploitation to prevent, identify and safeguard women and girls exposed or at risk of sexual exploitation.
B-Equipt offers the UK’s first 10-module accredited Adult Sexual Exploitation Advisor accredited training course. We believe this aligns with other essential roles, such as Independent Sexual Violence Advisers (ISVA) and Independent Domestic Violence Advisers (IDVA).
debra@colouredhearts.com
Thanks for celebrating Private Eye's remarkable role over so many years as a champion of brave in-depth reporting. It spots stories early and, crucially, sticks with them for the long haul - the Post Office miscarriages of justice and cover-ups are another example. We share your encouragement to others to subscribe; it's worth adding that the satire and cartoons are a much-needed treat!