In this Critic Show special, Adam Wren discusses the Open Justice Project, which works with survivors who want their stories told, and the public inquiry into one of the most serious institutional failures in modern Britain: the grooming gangs scandal. The conversation centres on a system that too often appears underfunded, diffused and structurally incapable of taking responsibility. It’s a story of the failure of multicultural Britain, and the legacy of the Blairite optimism that assumed institutions would simply function due the inherent competence of the British state.

They also discuss the personal cost of working so closely with trauma, as well as the practical barriers Open Justice has faced, much the same as those that allowed abuse to happen in the first place, from the secrecy afforded to offenders to the way exploitation of the infrastructure of the small towns that make up England’s former industrial heartlands

Yet, in spite of the horrific legacy of these crimes, the pressure created by survivor-led initiatives is beginning to force institutions to listen, raising the central question of the inquiry: how Britain’s institutions, which failed to protect vulnerable young women, can be forced to do better.

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