Jess Phillips has spent her career fighting for women and girls who have suffered violence at the hands of men. She has spent decades listening to what the victims of abuse have to say, hearing what they need.
Now she is the target of a vile social media campaign against her by Elon Musk and others. The result, according to reports, is that Phillips has had security around her tightened and has been told not to go out alone. “There is absolutely no doubt that this whole storm, wherever it started, has meant that I have had to make changes to my life,” she told Channel 4.
Her accusers say Phillips, who became the target of their rage after she rejected calls from Oldham Council to hold a government inquiry into grooming gangs in the town and suggested they start their own instead, is somehow complicit in covering up abuse – part of a wider cover-up of the whole scandal.
This is dangerous nonsense. In 2018, Philips wrote this in the Guardian: “We need to create a vehicle to tackle the specific nature of grooming gangs. Every police force and every children’s service in the country needs a specialist team that only works on this subject.”
“These teams need to work on prevention as much as on prosecution, offering intensive work with vulnerable groups of girls – those in care, with special needs, mental health problems and other difficulties. Police teams should be doing outreach work with the communities identified in every case.”
Then, in 2022, professor Alexis Jay published the results of a seven-year inquiry into child sex abuse in Rotherham, which included grooming gangs. Her report was scathing about the lack of protection and safeguarding for victims and how they are dismissed and not believed.
“We’ve had enough of inquiries, consultations and discussions – especially for the victims and survivors who’ve had the courage to come forward,” Jay said this week, calling for government to implement the recommendations of her report rather than begin the lengthy and expensive process of another inquiry.
Watching Musk call Jess a “rape genocide apologist” is not only inciting hate and violence against her; it’s unspeakable and unforgivable. We should be giving her a parade, not putting both her and her family’s lives at risk.
The attacks by Musk and others on Phillips seem mostly concerned with highlighting the race of the grooming gang in Rotherham, and stirring up Islamophobia. The same arguments about using power and control to silence girls could have been made about caucasian priests worldwide.
And as soon as the likes of Musk or Tommy Robinson have it pointed out that the vast majority of abusers are men, the tables are flipped and women like Phillips – and me, as co-founder of a group that campaigns for women’s safety – are raving misandrists.
Do you want to know what actual victims are saying about her work and the advocacy that Jess Phillips has personally carried out for them?
In a letter shared with the Guardian, seven women, including three survivors of the Telford sexual abuse scandal, came to the Labour MP’s defence and said that there was “no one in public life who has done more to support victims and survivors and to advocate for their interests”.
Musk’s platform actively removed protections that helped to protect the women Jess has fought for, and I should know – I am one of those women. I was one of five women that the Center for Countering Digital Hate studied to document the amount of misogynist threats on social media for high-profile women.
Big tech does little to nothing to protect females in the public eye and Musk has been instrumental in silencing our voices by allowing our stalkers and abusers more access to us.
In February 2022, someone made a fake Only Fans profile of me which consisted of my real name and pictures cut together with close-up, intimate videos of another woman. The account was sent to my father and brother.
This coincided with the week that my group, Reclaim These Streets, was instrumental in Cressida Dick being removed as police commissioner. This is the reality of choosing to fight for women.
It was a horrific and terrifying experience. But it is minor compared to the constant, credible threats Phillips and her family receive. With no cameras present and nothing to do with the public hearing, she advised me to pursue justice and stay safe.
This is who Jess Phillips is. This is what she lives, breathes and does; for me, for you, and for all of us.
Every International Women’s Day, Phillips reads in the House of Commons the name of every woman killed at the hands of a man. More than any other lawmaker I have met, she stands up to bullies and those who abuse and silence women.
Phillips continues to stand for office despite losing her colleague and friend, the MP Jo Cox, because of the very type of campaign of hate that Musk launched this past week. She knows why this fight must go on,
Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is an autobiographical account of being raped as an eight-year-old child and becoming selectively mute as a result of the attack. When adult men choose to exert sexual power and control over young children, a big part of instilling fear in their victims is telling those children that they will never be believed.
That they were asking for it and that it is inherently the child’s fault. That the child has bewitched or entranced the adult to lose control and cause the abuse and damage done unto them.
Those children fear for their own lives, their siblings’ lives, their parents’ jobs or their family’s standing in the community or church. All of the actualised and imagined threats build into the mountain of shame against these undeserving and innocent children. Shame, disgrace and loss of agency and voice are a huge component of the abuse and continued control over victims.
For the last 30 years, we have seen, heard and read countless accounts of structured sexual abuse against children by organised groups of men who play on fear, shame and religion to silence and control their victims.
A core part of the abuse is that the perpetrator of this sexual violence convinces their victims that no one would ever believe them. That the victim would get in trouble for having tried alcohol or for getting themselves in the situation.
They groom and convince their victims that their voices aren’t worth being heard and that their lives and stories do not matter. They are repeatedly silenced while their accusers roam free and claim to be persecuted.
In every case that is eventually brought to light, we celebrate that one teacher, social worker, doctor or survivor who refused to let those victim’s voices be silenced. But, for every case we hear about, there are thousands we do not.
Later, sometimes decades later, if those survivors’ accounts are told and some semblance of justice is achieved, we are only then outraged on their behalf. We believe that the institutions that were complicit in cover-ups and abuse will learn lessons from their failings.
That this latest case will be a watershed moment. That thoughts and prayers will result in collectively believing girls when they recoil from their mothers’ boyfriends, wet their beds incessantly to keep rapists out of their bedrooms, cut themselves or end up self-medicating with any drug they can find just to stop the pain of sexual abuse.
What those survivors deserve from the countless systems that have ignored, silenced and mocked their claims is for those departments and institutions to be dismantled and rebuilt under new rules that focus on the victim’s wellbeing and safeguarding.
Jess Phillips understands this, because she has listened to these women telling these stories, for years. How much listening to them has Kemi Badenoch, who denigrates Jess Phillips, done? How much has Nigel Farage, who did not deem it necessary to be present in parliament for the latest debate on this very issue, done?
How much has Elon Musk done? He does not care about violence against women and girls, nor does he care about those victims being heard. The only voice Musk cares about is his own.
Another inquiry into grooming gangs when the last inquiry’s recommendations have not been enacted is just more of the same circus without actually doing the work of protecting victims. So get on with that.
And get on with giving Jess Phillips the security and support to get on with the job she has dedicated her life to doing. We owe her that.
Jamie Klingler is co-founder of Reclaim These Streets, which campaigns on women’s safety issues.
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