Content warning: this article contains discussion of child sexual abuse, exploitation, and the silencing of victims.
On 16 June, Rupert Lowe – leader of the extreme-right Restore Britain announced the publication of his ‘Rape Gang Inquiry Report’. Today, we amplify the account of survivors whose voices were excluded from the report to serve its racist, Islamophobic ends.
Lowe’s report: ‘vulnerable, young white women’
As the Canary previously explained, Lowe’s report wholly lacked the methodological rigour necessary for such a study. Instead, it deployed Islamophobic conjecture to arrive at a foregone conclusion that group-based child sexual exploitation is:
perpetrated by chiefly Pakistani Muslim men against vulnerable young white women and girls in communities up and down our country.
Occasionally, that statement morphs into “overwhelmingly White British” or similar phrasings that just barely acknowledge non-white victims. However, even this is undone by the statement:
at the very least, 250,000 young white girls have been subjected to repeated rape
As commentators like IslamophobiaUK have laid out, that figure is an utter fabrication. Likewise, the same can also be said of the quantitative portions of the report that don’t directly utilise official figures.
However, the selection criteria of the quantitive sections – the personal accounts of the survivors and whistleblowers who came forward – also reportedly casts a shadow over the testimonies of those brave individuals.
Not, that is, because it casts doubt on their truthfulness, but because it reportedly omits the stories of all victims. On the publication of Lowe’s report, one survivor – Femi Mohammed – reiterated her account of her handling by Lowe’s team:
I am speaking out in the public interest, not only as a survivor myself, but for all women and girls of colour, Black and Muslim, whose voices have been systematically erased from the narrative of justice and accountability.
‘Within two days, everything changed’
At first, Femi was encouraged to participate in the inquiry by Sammy Woodhouse. Woodhouse is a survivor of the Rotherham grooming gangs, who went on to lead the inquiry team. Femi even began to submit evidence and signed the consent forms for her inclusion. Then:
On the 23rd January 2026, Sammy Woodhouse personally messaged me to invite me to attend the inquiry hearings on the 4th February 2026, between 2–3 pm. I accepted the invitation on the 24th January 2026, and Sammy booked my train tickets, emailing them to me on the 26th January 2026.
The images attached to Femi’s social media post provide evidence for her claims here. However, she suddenly found her testimony unwelcome from the inquiry:
Within two days, everything changed, and I was removed from attending the hearings. On the 28th January 2026, I received a text message from Sammy Woodhouse asking me to call her; having spoken to her on numerous occasions, she did not seem her usual self and failed to provide a reason for my exclusion. Sammy Woodhouse is someone I had a lot of respect for, and it became apparent to me that the decision had come from someone at the top of the Inquiry. I felt betrayed and violated and was left in a state of shock, confusion, and despair.
‘A broader pattern of discrimination’
Whilst sharing her own story, Femi also highlighted the broader, deliberate pattern of silencing at play:
My removal is not an isolated incident; it is part of a broader pattern of discrimination, racial profiling, and the silencing of women of colour, especially female Muslim victims, within the victim and survivor movement. Despite my efforts to bring these issues to light by reaching out to other survivors, I have faced a deliberate attempt to suppress my voice and experience. This reflects a disturbing trend where the narrative of sexual exploitation and violence is often confined to a narrow group of victims, driven by those who financially and publicly benefit from our trauma. In this system, it has become big business, where division is created and profit is made from the perpetual suffering of victims and survivors.
In reply to Femi’s story, another survivor – Correne, a dual heritage woman – came forward with her story. Correne described her mental health deteriorating severely in August 2025. At that time, she was dropped from the inquiry “following a personal fallout“, again with Sammy Woodhouse. She added that:
Being suddenly “kicked off” the inquiry felt like a profound rejection and silencing all over again, echoing the original failures of police, social services, and other authorities who dismissed or ignored us as children. As a mixed-race woman — half white and half Indian — this silencing hit even harder: in my lowest moments I wondered whether my being “brown” had played a part in the decision to exclude me, adding a layer of suspected racial rejection on top of everything else and deepening old insecurities about not being seen as a “credible” victim.
Correne asked Lowe, repeatedly and publicly, to be allowed to give evidence after she was dropped. However, by her own account, she received no reply.
The hypocrisy of Rupert Lowe
In a second post, Femi continued on to highlight Lowe’s hypocrisy in particular:
This CrowdFunded inquiry, intended to seek justice for survivors, has instead shown how easily women of colour are excluded not only from the process but from the very conversation about justice.
MP Rupert Lowe has criticised the government for failing to take white rape gang victims seriously and accused it of anti-white racism, yet the inquiry he chairs has reflected similar discriminatory prejudice against me. It appears that my removal from the inquiry may be linked to my identity as a Muslim woman who is unwilling to compromise her faith, as reflected in an increase in anti-Islamic statements following my exclusion and during the inquiry hearings and thereafter.
Tellingly, as of today, Rupert Lowe replaced the pinned post of the inquiry report on X. In its place, he now has a long screed voicing his pride at Restore coming third in the Makerfield by-election.
The Restore Britain leader has actually tabled an Early Day Motion in parliament on 16 June, trying to draw attention to the his political stunt of a report. Thus far, the submission hasn’t reached the necessary six signatures to sponsor the motion. However, in the context of this article, some of Lowe’s language choices are sickening:
this House notes the publication of the independent Rape Gang Inquiry Report, […] pays tribute to the survivors, […and] further notes the Inquiry’s findings regarding the scale of organised child sexual exploitation and the institutional reluctance to confront its causes and characteristics.
According to Femi’s testimony, Lowe and his cohorts demonstrated quite clearly that they are only interested in confronting the “causes and characteristics” that could be used to whip up Islamophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment.
It’s also completely accurate that those bigoted sentiments have spilled out in the wake of Lowe’s ‘report’. In particular, far-right hatemongers picked up and amplified the bogus ‘250,000’ figure. Likewise, white-supremacist agitator Tommy Robinson took the opportunity to call for the lynching of Pakistanis as “the only solution”.
‘Not interested in the full truth’
It is clear that this inquiry is not interested in the full truth, nor in justice for all victims. It is about maintaining a narrative that aids political ambitions by pandering to the present climate and exploiting emotional sensitivities.
I want to make it abundantly clear that as a victim of a Pakistani individual, I support Rape Gang victims. However, I will not support the religion of Islam being blamed or demonised for the actions of Pakistani or Muslim abusers or used to stir up hatred within our society.
Femi and other survivors like her have been put through a twofold ordeal. First, they had to suffer through sexual and psychological abuse. Then, they have had to endure politicians and agitators weaponising their stories against their faith and their community.
We, all of us, must stand together with the victims – all of the victims. In doing so, we must refuse to stay silent in the face of exploitation, both by the abusers themselves, and the demagogues like Rupert Lowe who seek to profit from them.
Featured image via the Canary
By Grace
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