A survivor of a Pakistani grooming gang has shared her harrowing experience of being trafficked from northern England to Scotland as a teenager, where she was sexually assaulted by multiple men.

Fiona Goddard, who successfully sought justice against the West Yorkshire gang that began abusing her at the age of 13, has criticized First Minister John Swinney for dismissing the occurrence of grooming in Scotland. She described his stance as “insane” and urged him to adopt a more logical approach to safeguarding young women in similar situations.

Her comments follow a plea from a Scottish woman, who recounted her own grooming ordeal by a gang in Glasgow during her teenage years. She has reached out to John Swinney, urging him to initiate an inquiry into the issue.

Fiona, now 32 and residing in Bradford, emphasized, “This issue is widespread across the UK and happens on a massive scale. It’s absurd for anyone to think that such activities halt at the border.”

She added, “If you approach this matter logically, you would see the value in investigating further, especially when survivors are courageously speaking out. I personally experienced this in Scotland and witnessed Scottish girls in those environments as well.”

“He mentioned the need for more evidence, but how much more evidence does he truly require?” Fiona questioned.

Grooming gang survivor Fiona Goddard spoke to the Scottish Daily Mail about how she was trafficked to Scotland and abused

Fiona, aged 15 and pictured at home in Bradford, was in a children’s home when she was targeted by groomers

Speaking for the first time about her ordeal, Fiona, who was in a children’s home when the grooming started, explained that she was first taken to Glasgow, and then Edinburgh, in 2010 at the age of 16, to deliver hard drugs for her gang of abusers.

She had been had been abused for two years already by a group of Pakistani men who would ply her with alcohol and drugs, sexually assault and rape her.

One day they told her they wanted her to go to Scotland in a taxi and bring a shipment of cocaine with her. After two years being groomed by the group, she said she was ‘desensitised’ to criminality and also terrified they would kill her if she refused.

Fiona said: ‘Some family members of some of my abusers got released from prison and they had been placed in Scotland. One of them said it was his nephew who was there and that’s who I was to be in contact with.

‘I never went anywhere where sex didn’t happen. It was an expectation on me.

‘By the age of 16 I had started trying to fight back a bit, but they would show me videos of them beating people up on the streets, beating people to death.

‘Basically saying if I didn’t do what they said this would happen to me. They had also beaten me by this point as well. I was terrified.’

‘The group had started establishing drug rounds in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

‘The guys in Bradford used to pick the drugs up from Liverpool docks, then cut the drug to make more of it out of what was there, then transport it up to places like Edinburgh and Glasgow.

‘They would use a taxi driver and a young girl like me in the passenger seat as they thought we were less likely to be stopped by the police.

‘If you were stopped, at that time it was only female officers who could search a female and they were quite few and far between so we were less likely to be caught. It was me who was carrying the drugs.’

Fiona was brought to Glasgow in a taxi at least four times, although the precise number, she said, is hard to remember due to residual trauma and the amount of substances she was being given at the time by her abusers.

She remembers at least one occasion in Glasgow where she met other girls who were being groomed and used for drug transportation – all of them Scottish.

She said: ‘I was heavily drugged a lot of the time so I don’t remember 100 per cent of everything.

‘They used me to transport drugs up and we went to this terraced house in Glasgow that had been transformed into a house of multiple occupancy.

‘It was on a street full of terraced houses. It looked like the area might have been nice once, but it had become run down, there was rubbish in the streets and the houses hadn’t been cared for at all.

‘There were other men in there, and there were already loads of girls there when I got there.

‘The girls were from Glasgow. They got sent out to different parts, I don’t know if it was in Glasgow or elsewhere in Scotland, with drugs to take to other people. At the house we’d stay for a few hours and the men there would give us drink and drugs, get us out of our heads and abuse us. Then we’d come back down to Bradford.’

Fiona said she wasn’t the only girl from England being brought to Scotland and she witnessed Scottish girls being abused in the same property she was taken to.

She faced similar abuse in Edinburgh, and a myriad of cities across England where she was brought to as a child by her abusers.

She said: ‘I remember being sat drinking in that house in Glasgow and I remember the girls going out with drugs. I remember this weird old guy coming and trying to touch me.’

Fiona’s social work case notes contain details of her trips to Scotland – citing both Glasgow and Edinburgh as places she visited.

She also told West Yorkshire police she had been trafficked to Scotland when she went to them in 2014 and started the long process of prosecuting her abusers.

She eventually succeeded in getting convictions against nine of the men who abused her, but has never once been contacted by Police Scotland to ask about her time here.

Fiona said: ‘My case went to trial in 2019 and nine men got 132 years for what happened.

‘The police in Yorkshire had access to my care records which mentioned Scotland, and there was a full investigation and serious case review.

‘Both the serious case review and the police would have fully known about Scotland, and I’m sure they had conversations about it because they asked me what cities I had been trafficked to during my video evidence. I gave a big list of cities, and both Glasgow and Edinburgh were on there.

‘The police were well aware that I’d been taken to Scotland. I’ve never been contacted by any police in Scotland to discuss my case, but to be fair I’ve not been contacted by other forces in England either. It’s as if they don’t want to widen this out.

‘The gangs are coordinated and joined up, they know what they are doing and have a network all over the country. But the police don’t seem to be taking the same approach and actually working together. They need to realise this is a national problem and not just happening in one area.’

Fiona has been campaigning since 2014 to have authorities and the UK Government take the issue of grooming gangs seriously and believes the Scottish Government must now follow suit.

She has recently resigned from the Prime Minister’s national grooming gang inquiry citing political interference but remains hopeful that she will finally see justice.

She said: ‘After all these years of trying, it’s finally opened in England and it’s on the verge of opening in Scotland. The government needs to realise this is happening on a wide scale, it didn’t just stop at the border.’

Labour MP Joani Reid has been leading on calls for a Scottish inquiry, and said: ‘This is the latest example showing that children and vulnerable women are being abused by organised groups of men in Scotland, just as they are in England.

‘This case also exposes the complacency and at the top of the Scottish Government

‘First Minister John Swinney and Justice Minister Angela Constance have gone out of their way to pretend that organised sexual abuse and exploitation of girls and young women are a problem in England but not Scotland.

‘But the hard truth is clear. We do have a problem of serious organised child sexual abuse in Scotland, and we have a political establishment that is wilfully blind to it. They are determined to downplay each and every report of abuse and resist any and all steps towards an inquiry or to even having an independent review of case files.

‘Mr Swinney and the rest of the SNP must immediately act to ensure we have a fully independent review of the problem of organised child sexual abuse in Scotland.’

The Scottish Government has been contacted for comment.