In an interview published on Tuesday, former Conservative MP and podcast host Rory Stewart said that he did not believe that the grooming gangs scandal in Britain was a “big problem”. He instead described it as “manageable” and a thing of the past. His comments have caused outrage, particularly among victims such as me.

The fact that the thinking class continues to minimise the grooming gangs scandal is a major reason why thousands of victims are still fighting for justice. It perpetuates a culture in which victims feel unheard and overlooked — something they’ve felt throughout this entire process.

This scandal is huge and spans decades, with thousands of victims who experienced some of the worst abuse imaginable from perpetrators, compounded by failures from the institutions — not just from the perpetrators but also by the institutions supposed to protect them. Many lost their lives either as a direct consequence of abuse or when the trauma and memories became too much to bear.

Any mere suggestion that this issue is manageable is insulting. If the issue was manageable, the grooming gangs scandal may never have happened. A country that cannot keep its children and communities safe is failing in its most basic duty.

Perhaps if child sexual abuse had received the recognition it deserved — if it had been prioritised over the poison of “community tensions” — the gangs might have been manageable. Instead, these behaviours have been normalised for so long that our own safeguarding professionals no longer seem to understand that raping a child is wrong.

The focus on community tensions also allowed criminal networks trafficking and abusing children to grow because the law was not properly enforced. These networks now wreak havoc on our streets, while politicians living in their bubbles fail to see the harm they cause. We do. We live with it every day. This is especially true for the victims, whose lives remain in constant danger because of the threat posed by these gangs, compounded by the fact that police forces appear to have very little control.

But the driving factors and institutional failures behind the grooming gangs scandal are not unique to this scandal. Exposing it has highlighted long-standing problems embedded within our institutions that affect every part of our country and the people those institutions are meant to serve.

Until real justice is served and changes are made, this issue will never be just “manageable”. To suggest otherwise is an insult to those children who continue to suffer up and down the country.

Britain’s institutions are still failing. Victims wake each day to horrors most people could scarcely imagine, while the very services meant to protect them turn a blind eye. Too often, those institutions seem more concerned with concealing their failures than preventing further abuse. Some victims have waited for years even to reach court, prolonging their trauma still further. Rory Stewart, of all people, should know that. The country needs a reckoning, and many politicians need a reality check.