Special Investigations Editor at the Daily Mail Sue Reid has warned that grooming gangs are "still operating" today, following the announcement of a national inquiry by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Reid, who reported on grooming gangs 15 years ago, told GB News that a young woman in Rotherham "pointed out" an operating gang to her.
Speaking to Good Afternoon Britain hosts Tom Harwood and Emily Carver, Reid explained: "I know it's still going on. In fact, I've been told in the last fortnight it's still going on.
"And since I wrote about it in Rotherham, I broke it in Rotherham and went back to the same girl who was by then in her 20s, and she took me into the centre of Rotherham, at night, and pointed out the gangs milling around girls near the bus stop."
Sue Reid hit out at Keir Starmer's national inquiry into grooming gangs, claiming that it is 'still happening today'
GB News
Noting that the areas where the gangs are operating have become "grim", Reid added: "I wasn't going into the top floor flats behind takeaways and that kind of place where it was obviously physically going on, but you could see that there were men milling around.
"There were girls still out at night, in grim areas that have become very edgy, and she said, it is definitely still going on."
Criticising the role of schools in areas where the grooming gangs operate, Reid called on teachers to also be "held accountable" in the upcoming inquiry, stating often girls would be targeted "at the school gates".
Reid said: "They are schoolgirls. And what happens? They pick them up, the really the big place they picked them up is at the school gates, and I believe the schools are culpable. I think the schools should be brought in on this.
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Sir Keir Starmer has ordered a full-scale national inquiry into the rape gangs scandalPA"Why didn't they warn the kids? Why didn't they have classes saying, look, there are predators out there on the internet, they're very dangerous, don't go and meet one, don't go into a chat room."
She continued: "But also at the school gate, there's a handsome guy in an open top BMW who says 'I'll take you home for a pizza', it's equally dangerous. And when you said it to the schools and the agencies and the charities there, they told you you were racist to even suggest this, and this is the truth. I remember screaming at them."
Pressed by host Emily Carver on how the conversation escalated, Reid revealed that she was "blanked" by those she'd try to warn about the gangs.
Reid said: "They just completely blanked me. They said we do not discriminate by race, or physical descriptions of men who are raping children, that's what I was told."
Reid told GB News that she was told by authorities they 'do not discriminate', and was 'blanked'
GB News
Recalling an interview with a grooming gang victim, Reid told GB News that the young girl didn't disclose that the men were Pakistani through fear of "being accused of being racist".
Reid said: "Only at the very end of a four hour interview did they call me back and say 'you never asked who the men were. They were all Pakistani, but we don't want to be accused of being racist'.
"So I hadn't asked, because I didn't want to be accused, and they didn't hadn't told me because they didn't want to be accused, so it was permeating right across the board. Not only the officials, the council, the police, but into the families, the victim's families, and me, I was affected in Fleet Street. It was incredible."
In a statement, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "The vulnerable young girls who suffered unimaginable abuse at the hands of groups of adult men have now grown into brave women, who are rightly demanding justice for what they went through when they were just children.
"Not enough people listened to them then, that was wrong and unforgivable. We are changing that now."
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