I've seen every trick in the book to silence grooming gang survivors. This moment belongs to them - Charlie Peters

I joined GB News to cover this crisis because it is the worst scandal in our national history since the Second World War, but few people seemed to want to investigate it.

When I gathered brand new testimony and evidence, I tried to pitch my findings to media bosses. I received a depressing response.

One editor said they didn't want a white man making a documentary on the scandal. Only the People’s Channel wanted to hear more.

Over a year-long investigation, we found over 50 different towns and cities affected by this scourge. Rather than this crisis being isolated to a few northern towns such as Rotherham and Rochdale, we uncovered trafficking and abuse links that stretched the length and breadth of the country.

Our investigation was the first to join the dots and demonstrate that this pattern of exploitation was still going on today.

We found a lack of accountability, with officials who failed being promoted into new roles. In one shocking case, we revealed that a councillor forced to resign over allegations that he used racism concerns to stifle investigations later found work as a diversity and inclusion manager. You could not make it up.

We found new survivors who wanted to speak out about a system that either ignored them or actively failed them.

And we eviscerated the cover-ups that stretched all the way to Whitehall, taking aim at government reports that obfuscated difficult data about ethnicity and pushed racial myths that were used to silence investigations.

But with Baroness Casey’s review, finally, there is vindication: for survivors, their families, campaigners, and journalists who pushed this story when people in power used every trick in the book to try to make us shut up.

She has pulled no punches and dodged no difficult questions. A lot of people who used dodgy data or false representations about this scandal have spent much of their week deleting old posts about the scandal, having been schooled by Casey.

As the fallout sparked by the damning report settles, we now need to do whatever it takes to ensure this national inquiry is a success.

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That means people coming together and pushing for comprehensive terms of reference. This inquiry needs to have the power to go to every area that claims grooming gangs are not operating in their area.

It needs to be able to drag people in front of investigators and demand the truth. It needs to be given powers so strong that everyone who covered up abuse has sleepless nights, fearing that knock on their front door.

But how do we get there?

Baroness Casey has warned politicians against political point scoring over the issue, telling me on the day her report came out that it risked pushing survivors away from engaging with the national review.

But this is also a political problem, and we need politicians to hold each other to account when they let down the people who need to be championed in this crisis.

Baroness Casey controversially chose to single out the Conservatives when she warned against politicking, but there has been plenty of grandstanding from all sides.

This was lamented by Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, in the Commons today, dishing out a gentle dig at her own party.

Tories accused the Labour benches of failing to launch an inquiry in January, while Labour figures have fired back that the Conservatives “did nothing” while they were in power.

The problem with this line of attack is that Labour ministers often praise the accelerating efforts of the CSE Taskforce, which has made over 1,000 arrests. But who launched the taskforce in 2023? That was the Conservatives, with then Home Secretary Suella Braverman is forcing it through following our investigation.

Two days on from the report's release, the tone has started to change, and steadily the seeds of political unity are growing.

But for this to continue, both parties need to extend an olive branch.

To push past the political attacks and recognise failures of the entire system, both frontbenches need to do what politicians hate more than anything: they need to recognise they were wrong and they need to apologise.

The Conservatives need to accept that they lost sight of this crisis. They need to come clean and confirm that when GB News revealed that over 50 different towns and cities were affected by this scandal, they declined to launch the national inquiry that was necessary. They need to own up to the fact that just a handful of advisors in government were fighting for it in 2023 against heavy opposition.

The Conservative demands from January for a national inquiry came after they were shown the evidence that exposed how widespread this crisis was.

And I should know: I was invited to Downing Street and showed it to them first hand in several meetings before we broadcast our bombshell documentary in 2023. I know that our findings went right to the very top.

And when Suella Braverman launched the Grooming Gangs Taskforce, the establishment called her racist and the frit Tories failed to back her up. Ms Braverman can also feel a great sense of vindication today.

And Labour ministers need to apologise as well. They need to accept that many of their arguments against a national inquiry just did not add up.

First, they claimed that we had already had an inquiry into grooming gangs. But the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, published in 2022, did not focus sufficiently on grooming gangs.

It was a strand of a sub-report that gathered evidence for a couple of weeks. It looked at just six areas — when we have found 50 — and none of those six had experienced the pattern of abuse typically associated with this crime.

That was not a grooming gangs inquiry. For Labour ministers to resist a proper investigation with that as their defence was misleading.

They also argued that they could not do an inquiry because the government needed to act on the IICSA recommendations.

But there was nothing stopping ministers from acting and investigating. The two go hand in hand. You cannot effectively prosecute a target without a proper investigation.

Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips also argued that local inquiries were more effective than a national effort, pointing to the review in Telford. She argued that it led to “real change”. But did it? No one lost their jobs because of the review. No one was arrested. No one was held to account. And GB News has heard from survivors in Telford as recently as two weeks ago who are still being let down.

“Real change”? Don’t waste my time.

And most importantly of all, Sir Keir Starmer needs to come clean and apologise for saying that politicians calling for a national inquiry were jumping on a “far-right bandwagon”.

Speaking to our political editor Christopher Hope in Canada, Sir Keir defended his line: “I said expressly politicians and I mean politicians. And I was expressly calling out politicians who had been in office and done nothing.”

But survivors and their families didn’t hear it that way. Chucking around the “far-right” charge was always a terrible mistake in this debate, especially after decades of abuse being covered up due to fears of people being accused of racism for acting.

It was deeply insensitive language. It inflamed an already precarious debate. It pushed people away. It’s no surprise that Mr

Starmer’s communications team has endured a bit of a shake-up since then.

Marlon West, the father of grooming victim Scarlett, told me that the intervention was dangerous for those who were fighting for justice.

“After that statement, campaigners weren’t seen as serious, and some news channels backed off. I was trolled, and I also believe it affected my career.”

Elizabeth, a survivor from Rotherham, also felt pained by the jibe. “We weren’t far-right, we were just kids who were being abused,” she told me soon after the inquiry was announced.

If both of the main parties can own up to these errors and deliver a unified apology to survivors — as they have done in the past on abuse scandals — then hopefully more survivors will have the confidence to engage with a system that has failed them so many times in the past.

This time, they finally have an inquiry that looks like it will deliver the truth, accountability and justice that they desperately deserve.