Grooming gang victim Ellie Reynolds speaks to GMB

“Local enquiries are great but what needs to be taken into consideration is that these men don’t just operate in one area…”

Today on Good Morning Britain, grooming gang victim Ellie Reynolds shared details of her harrowing experience.

Bravely waving her right to anonymity, Ellie was joined by her father Ian Reynolds, to speak to hosts Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley in the studio, as part of her campaign to get her case reviewed – as well as backing the government’s new plan for five local enquiries on grooming gangs.

Susanna asked: “This (Ellie’s case) was investigated but never went to trial, you haven’t got justice in your case but tell us what happened when you were just thirteen.”

Opening up about her traumatic ordeal, Ellie explained: “I started being involved with a group of men, I was taken off the streets, I was exploited, I was trafficked around Barrow-in-Furness, I was repeatedly gang raped and drugged.”

Richard went on to ask Ellie’s father Ian, “Can I talk to you father to father on this, we said in that report there that she started to disappear, sometimes for days at a time, you’d go to the police, you’d report it and then she would come home. What did she tell you, what did you think had happened to her?”

Ian explained: “She wouldn’t tell us what was going on, we knew something wasn’t right, we begged everyone for help, schools, everyone, because we knew something wasn’t right. We’d constantly report Ellie missing.”

Ellie Reynolds shared details of her harrowing experience alongside her father Ian Reynolds on Good Morning Britain / ITV1

Ian reflected on being made aware that Ellie was the victim of grooming gangs by the police and said:

“They knocked on the door and said they had serious concerns that Ellie was being groomed. Me and my wife said, ‘You watch it on [television] and you think it’s not going to happen to us’ and then your world just falls apart. It really does because it’s your own child, I still to this day don’t know half of what Ellie went through and I don’t want to know because it would just kill me as her dad.”

On being accused of blackmail by the police, after reporting her abusers, Ellie said: “I think it was a silence factor if you want my honesty because within 24-hours you’re being arrested for something that never happened. It was discontinued.”

Susanna asked: “You would have heard the home secretary and government announce new local enquiries into what’s happened, there is a call for a huge new national enquiry. Why do you think a national enquiry is the only way to get to the bottom of what’s happened with the grooming gangs scandal?”

Ellie replied: “Local enquiries are great but what needs to be taken into consideration is that these men don’t just operate in one area. They can operate in multiple areas and if there was a national enquiry it would pop up a lot more so what it’s essentially doing is saving the hassle of one local place, put it all together and see how big it really is.”

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