‘It could have been me’: The Grenfell children who survived the blaze
Sixty-seven children lived in Grenfell Tower when the west London block caught fire in June 2017. Eighteen of them never got a chance to grow up.
For many of the others, the traumatic loss, anxiety and PTSD that followed the disaster has shaped their childhoods and young adult lives.
They lost friends, family and everything they owned; spent months or years in hotels; and missed valuable school time.
In the seven years since the tragedy, more than 1,000 children and young people have been treated for mental health issues, according to the NHS Health and Wellbeing Hub, set up in the wake of Grenfell.
They were traumatised by what they saw or heard from friends and family, by having to cope with the loss of a friend or a neighbour, their natural sense of safety shattered on the night of the fire.
New referrals still come in each month.
This week, the Grenfell Inquiry releases its final report into the fire that cost 72 lives.
Sky News has spoken to some of the children who survived the tragedy. These are their stories.
Luana, 19: ‘I feel guilty that I’m here living’
Luana Gomes was 12 at the time of the fire. She managed to escape, with her sister and her pregnant mother, but they were in a coma for weeks. Her baby brother, Logan, was stillborn – the youngest victim of the disaster.
Now 19 and standing at the base of the tower, Luana can’t help but smile at some of the memories.
Pointing to where their flat was on the 21st floor, she recalls looking out the window and calling out to her friends in the park below.
“Every time my friends were down there I’d shout their names. I don’t think they could hear me,” she says, laughing.
She recalls how her friend Mehdi would knock on her door and be scared of her dog: “She was so tiny and sweet but he was terrified of her, which was funny.”
Eventually Mehdi won over his fear of the dog. He died in the fire along with his sister, brother and parents. He was eight.
Luana as a little girl
Luana pauses, takes a deep breath and says: “I feel a bit guilty.
“When you think about your friends and family members and neighbours – I feel guilty that I’m here living and doing all this stuff, and they didn’t get the chance to live and do the stuff they wanted to at such a young age.”
The last seven years have been difficult. She has suffered from anxiety and depression. She missed weeks of school by being in hospital, and remembers being painfully behind when she went back to the classroom.
But she has found solace in dance. This month she goes to university to study it. It’s a cliche, she says, but “dance allows me to express my feelings in a way I can’t say in words”.
Since surviving the fire, Luana has found solace in dance
She doesn’t want to speak about the little brother she lost, but shows us a message to him written years ago on the memorial wall.
The message says: “Logan. I love and miss you so, so, so much and know that your big sister is always thinking of you. RIEP Brother.”
Abem, 12: ‘It could have been me’
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‘I realised the burning building was my own home’
Abem Abraham’s memory of his first home is hazy, but he remembers watching the tower burn, and he remembers the best friend he lost.
As the fire raged, four-year-old Abem was taken down the smoke-filled stairs by his parents – then to a friend who lived nearby. He was safe.
But before falling asleep that night, he looked out of the curtains.
“I see a tall building block engulfed in flames. I don’t know what it was,” he recalls all these years later.
“And then later I realised that it was my own home.”
Seven years after the Grenfell tragedy, Abem called on politicians to remove ‘deadly’ cladding
The cruellest part of the tragedy was losing his best friend, five-year-old Isaac Paulos.
“He was my best friend from my school at the time,” he says. “He was a bit older than me, like a brother. Like a big brother.”
Abem is a kind, smart and energetic boy who loves Formula One, basketball and football. He plays a Manchester United song on the piano, and proudly shows me his new PlayStation 5 – a present from his uncle for having done well at school.
Abem with his friend Isaac, who was killed in the blaze
But this 12-year-old also has a message for the politicians and developers.
“They need to remove the cladding off of every UK building because that cladding is deadly. When it comes to fire, it can destroy houses within minutes, within hours, like it did to Grenfell. Everyone, please, please remove it.”
He wants the children who died to be remembered for their “bright dreams”.
“One of them wanted to be a footballer, wanted to be an engineer, wanted to be an architect. All gone in one flame,” he says.
“It could have been me.”
Ines, 23: ‘I was known as Grenfell girl’
Ines sat her chemistry GCSE exam a day after the blaze. Pic: Lauren Hurley/PA
As her family ran from the burning building soon after the fire started, 16-year-old Ines Alves grabbed her textbooks.
The next morning, with her home a smouldering ruin, she sat her chemistry GCSE exam.
In the days after the tragedy that destroyed her home, Ines became known as “Grenfell girl”. She has spent much of the past years trying to escape that title.
Initially, she was a viral inspiration. In the months that followed the tragedy, she gave interviews about the disaster and updates on her grades and results to eager journalists.
Ines became known as ‘Grenfell girl’, a title she wishes to escape
But it was the following year’s AS-level exams that triggered a mental health crisis.
“My biggest trauma was watching the building burning and people screaming, as I was revising for my GCSEs,” she says.
“So just revising and concentrating generally just kind of led me to dark places after that.
“When June came around it just kind of all came rushing back. And I had probably the biggest mental breakdown. It was just a horrible time.”
Pic: Lauren Hurley/PA
She ended up retaking the academic year. It was difficult seeing her friends go off to university without her – but she eventually found her own path.
For Ines, Grenfell is a story in her past, one she doesn’t want to define her future.
At university, she craved anonymity. One of her best friends didn’t realise it was her for over a year. “She just said to me, ‘that was you! What the hell?!'”
Now she’s graduated from Leeds with a degree in maths and has been travelling the world – Australia, Thailand and other parts of Asia.
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“Trying to live life like a normal young adult,” she says.
“I kind of don’t really like to live life by knowing what I’m going to do in a month’s time.”
Yousra, 19: ‘They’re not just numbers’
Yousra lived on Grenfell Walk, at the base of the tower
Yousra Cherbika is angry. She’s angry about the fire, the friends she lost, the home she can never return to – and the way she feels other children and young people were treated after the disaster.
She was 12 years old when she watched the tower burn, desperately calling her friend Nur Huda who lived inside to “get out”. But she couldn’t, and her whole family perished.
“They’re not just numbers. They’re not just ‘part of 72’,” she says.
“They have names, we love them. They had stories to tell. They had full lives which were cut short.”
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Grenfell Tower lit up for anniversary
Yousra and her family lived on Grenfell Walk, at the base of the tower. Less is known about those residents who managed to escape, but they also lost everything in the disaster.
“There’s parts of my childhood that I just block out and I don’t remember, like the year after the fire,” she says.
“I don’t remember living in a hotel. We were in one room, five of us, and my mum was pregnant.
“I had no home to go back to, no school to go back to. And even when we did go back to school, it was different, because there were empty chairs in our classrooms.”
Green ribbon hangs from a lampost near the tower
She feels as though their support as ‘Walk’ residents was much worse.
“We didn’t know what we were entitled to at first, and so many people turned us away.”
Yousra wants to be a teacher
Today Yousra is a campaigner, a leader among local young people, volunteering in her spare time.
She is also training to be a primary school teacher, inspired by the form tutor who helped her through her lowest, darkest points in secondary school.
“I just stayed in bed and I just didn’t go into school. But she encouraged me. She motivated me.”
She feels outraged that seven years on, there is still cladding on buildings across the country.
“Why does it take 72 people to die for them to even think, oh, ‘maybe we should take cladding that might kill people?’
“And still, they haven’t done that.”
Watch Sky News’ special programme on Grenfell tonight at 8pm.
Ava was heading home from Pizza Hut when she found out her dad had been arrested.
Warning: This article includes references to indecent images of children and suicide that some readers may find distressing
It had been “a really good evening” celebrating her brother’s birthday.
Ava (not her real name) was just 13, and her brother several years younger. Their parents had divorced a few years earlier and they were living with their mum.
Suddenly Ava’s mum, sitting in the front car seat next to her new boyfriend, got a phone call.
“She answered the phone and it was the police,” Ava remembers.
“I think they realised that there were children in the back so they kept it very minimal, but I could hear them speaking.”
“I was so scared,” she says, as she overheard about his arrest.
‘Ava’ says she was ‘repulsed’ after discovering what her dad had done
“I was panicking loads because my dad actually used to do a lot of speeding and I was like: ‘Oh no, he’s been caught speeding, he’s going to get in trouble.'”
But Ava wasn’t told what had really happened until many weeks later, even though things changed immediately.
“We found out that we weren’t going to be able to see our dad for, well we didn’t know how long for – but we weren’t allowed to see him, or even speak to him. I couldn’t text him or anything. I was just wondering what was going on, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.”
Ava’s dad, John, had been arrested for looking at indecent images of children online.
We hear this first-hand from John (not his real name), who we interviewed separately from Ava. What he told us about his offending was, of course, difficult to hear.
His offending went on for several years, looking at indecent images and videos of young children.
His own daughter told us she was “repulsed” by what he did.
But John wanted to speak to us, frankly and honestly.
He told us he was “sorry” for what he had done, and that it was only after counselling that he realised the “actual impact on the people in the images” of his crime.
By sharing his story, he hopes to try to stop other people doing what he did and raise awareness about the impact this type of offence has – on everyone involved, including his unsuspecting family.
John tells us he’d been looking at indecent images and videos of children since 2013.
“I was on the internet, on a chat site,” he says. “Someone sent a link. I opened it, and that’s what it was.
“Then more people started sending links and it just kind of gathered pace from there really. It kind of sucks you in without you even realising it. And it becomes almost like a drug, to, you know, get your next fix.”
John says he got a “sexual kick” from looking at the images and claims “at the time, when you’re doing it, you don’t realise how wrong it is”.
‘I told them exactly what they would find’
At the point of his arrest, John had around 1,000 indecent images and videos of children on his laptop – some were Category A, the most severe.
Referencing the counselling that he since received, John says he believes the abuse he received as a child affected the way he initially perceived what he was doing.
“I had this thing in my mind,” he says, “that the kids in these were enjoying it.”
“Unfortunately, [that] was the way that my brain was wired up” and “I’m not proud of it”, he adds.
John had been offending for several years when he downloaded an image that had been electronically tagged by security agencies. It flagged his location to police.
John was arrested at his work and says he “straight away just admitted everything”.
“I told them exactly what they would find, and they found it.”
The police bailed John – and he describes the next 24 hours as “hell”.
“I wanted to kill myself,” he remembers. “It was the only way I could see out of the situation. I was just thinking about my family, my daughter and my son, how is it going to affect them?”
But John says the police had given information about a free counselling service, a helpline, which he called that day.
“It stopped me in my tracks and probably saved my life.”
‘John’ thinks children of abusers should get more support
‘My world was crumbling around me’
Six weeks later, John was allowed to make contact with Ava.
By this point she describes how she was “hysterically crying” at school every day, not knowing what had happened to her dad.
But once he told her what he’d done, things got even worse.
“When I found out, it genuinely felt like my world was crumbling around me,” Ava says.
“I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone. I was so embarrassed of what people might think of me. It sounds so silly, but I was so scared that people would think that I would end up like him as well, which would never happen.
“It felt like this really big secret that I just had to hold in.”
“I genuinely felt like the only person that was going through something like this,” Ava says.
She didn’t know it then, but her father also had a sense of fear and shame.
“You can’t share what you’ve done with anybody because people can get killed for things like that,” he says.
“It would take a very, very brave man to go around telling people something like that.”
And as for his kids?
“They wouldn’t want to tell anybody, would they?” he says.
For her, Ava says “for a very, very long time” things were “incredibly dark”.
“I turned to drugs,” she says. “I was doing lots of like Class As and Bs and going out all the time, I guess because it just was a form of escape.
“There was a point in my life where I just I didn’t believe it was going to get better. I really just didn’t want to exist. I was just like, if this is what life is like then why am I here?”
Professor Armitage says children of abusers should be legally recognised as victims
‘The trauma is huge for those children’
Ava felt alone, but research shows this is happening to thousands of British children every year.
Whereas suspects like John are able to access free services, such as counselling, there are no similar automatic services for their children – unless families can pay.
Professor Rachel Armitage, a criminology expert, set up a Leeds-based charity called Talking Forward in 2021.
It’s the only free, in-person, peer support group for families of suspected online child sex offenders in England. But it does not have the resources to provide support for under-18s.
“The trauma is huge for those children,” Prof Armitage says.
“We have families that are paying for private therapy for their children and getting in a huge amount of debt to pay for that.”
Prof Armitage says if these children were legally recognised as victims, then if would get them the right level of automatic, free support.
It’s not unheard of for “indirect” or “secondary” victims to be recognised in law.
Currently, the Domestic Abuse Act does that for children in a domestic abuse household, even if the child hasn’t been a direct victim themselves.
In the case of children like Ava, Prof Armitage says it would mean “they would have communication with the parents in terms of what was happening with this offence; they would get the therapeutic intervention and referral to school to let them know that something has happened, which that child needs consideration for”.
We asked the Ministry of Justice whether children of online child sex offenders could be legally recognised as victims.
“We sympathise with the challenges faced by the unsuspecting families of sex offenders and fund a helpline for prisoners’ families which provides free and confidential support,” a spokesperson said.
But when we spoke with that helpline, and several other charities that the Ministry of Justice said could help, they told us they could only help children with a parent in prison – which for online offences is, nowadays, rarely the outcome.
None of them could help children like Ava, whose dad received a three-year non-custodial sentence, and was put on the sex offenders’ register for five years.
“These children will absolutely fall through the gap,” Prof Armitage says.
“I think there’s some sort of belief that these families are almost not deserving enough,” she says. “That there’s some sort of hierarchy of harms, and that they’re not harmed enough, really.”
‘Ava’ started taking drugs after her dad’s arrest and ‘didn’t want to exist’
‘People try to protect kids from people like me’
Ava says there is simply not enough help – and that feels unfair.
“In some ways we’re kind of forgotten about by the services,” she says. “It’s always about the offender.”
John agrees with his daughter.
“I think the children should get more support than the offender because nobody stops and ask them really, do they?” he says.
“Nobody thinks about what they’re going through.”
Although Ava and John now see each other, they have never spoken about the impact that John’s offending had on his daughter.
Ava was happy for us to share with John what she had gone through.
“I never knew it was that bad,” he says. “I understand that this is probably something that will affect her the rest of her life.
“You try to protect your kids, don’t you. People try to protect their kids from people like me.”
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
MasterChef presenter John Torode will no longer work on the show after an allegation he used an “extremely offensive racist term” was upheld, the BBC has said.
His co-host Gregg Wallace was also sacked last week after claims of inappropriate behaviour.
On Monday, Torode said an allegation he used racist language was upheld in a report into the behaviour of Wallace. The report found more than half of 83 allegations against Wallace were substantiated.
Torode, 59, insisted he had “absolutely no recollection” of the alleged incident involving him and he “did not believe that it happened,” adding “racial language is wholly unacceptable in any environment”.
John Torode and Gregg Wallace in 2008. Pic: PA
In a statement on Tuesday, a BBC spokesperson said the allegation “involves an extremely offensive racist term being used in the workplace”.
The claim was “investigated and substantiated by the independent investigation led by the law firm Lewis Silkin”, they added.
“The BBC takes this upheld finding extremely seriously,” the spokesperson said.
“We will not tolerate racist language of any kind… we told Banijay UK, the makers of MasterChef, that action must be taken.
“John Torode’s contract on MasterChef will not be renewed.”
Australian-born Torode started presenting MasterChef alongside Wallace, 60, in 2005.
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Why Gregg Wallace says he ‘will not go quietly’
A statement from Banijay UK said it “takes this matter incredibly seriously” and Lewis Silkin “substantiated an accusation of highly offensive racist language against John Torode which occurred in 2018”.
“This matter has been formally discussed with John Torode by Banijay UK, and whilst we note that John says he does not recall the incident, Lewis Silkin have upheld the very serious complaint,” the TV production company added.
“Banijay UK and the BBC are agreed that we will not renew his contract on MasterChef.”
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Earlier, as the BBC released its annual report, its director-general Tim Davie addressed MasterChef’s future, saying it can survive as it is “much bigger than individuals”.
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BBC annual report findings
Speaking to BBC News after Torode was sacked, Mr Davie said a decision is yet to be taken over whether an unseen MasterChef series – filmed with both Wallace and Torode last year – will be aired.
“It’s a difficult one because… those amateur chefs gave a lot to take part – it means a lot, it can be an enormous break if you come through the show,” he added.
“I want to just reflect on that with the team and make a decision, and we’ll communicate that in due course.”
Mr Davie refused to say what the “seriously racist term” Torode was alleged to have used but said: “I certainly think we’ve drawn a line in the sand.”
In 2022, Torode was made an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, for services to food and charity.
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