r/AndrewGosden • u/Repulsive-Meat-9243 • 20d ago
Grooming possibility
Did Andrew receive a letter by post from somebody connected to the Gifted Talented program (or somebody he thought) or some "organization" offering a unique one off educational opportunity or to meet somebody that had to be on that Friday he simply could not refuse and he kept it on the hush because he knew his parents would have many questions about it as to why it's in London and on a school day and he was offered a lift back afterwards and thought he would just this explain to his family afterwards?
Was It an "opportunity" that he felt he just could not refuse and because this letter came from somebody he thought was educational person or somebody from that gifted program or connected to it and because it was professionally written that he absolutely trusted it.. it was a well organized well thought out plan by his groomer(s)..
It would explain a way he possibly could have been groomed without it leaving any digital trace whatsoever and why he chose to take such a leap of faith that day...
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u/Comfortable-Unit-248 19d ago
The Sarah Everard tragedy makes me think, could a pedophile policeman have approached him and asked him why wasn't he at school. He would have panicked, the policeman would have said you will have to come to the police station to sort this out. He would have then been driven off to a location, abused and disposed of .This would explain why the police claim all the security camera films were erased. He would have been able to destroy any film evidence.
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u/CountingRandomStuff 3d ago
I'm not as well versed in this case as other people are, was cctv evidence destroyed?
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u/Astoria75 19d ago
My daughter was in the gifted and talented programme while in school. She was just starting comp when Andrew went missing. We live in a different area but can confirm all of our letters connected to it were addressed a to the parent or guardian of (followed by the child’s name). The school was also very aware of what was going on in the programme for their school. Andrew would have been aware of how he was contacted for it. I know my daughter’s school held updates for it during each half term. Would be interesting to know how Andrew’s school ran their part of the programme.
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u/Eye-on-Springfield 19d ago
If Andrew kept it a secret from his parents because he knew they'd have questions about it, he obviously also had those questions
This is one of the most far-fetched theories I've seen on this sub. It's possible Andrew could've been receiving post from someone, but where's the evidence? Were they burn-after-reading letters? Was it just a one-off and he took the letter with him to London? It seems a bit strange that he'd bunk off and travel 200 miles on his own based on one letter
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u/Sensitive_Leader4167 16d ago
exactly he was naturally closed off, and him trusting someone so much so to the point he’d travel to another city to meet up with them when he didn’t even meet up with his own school friends would’ve required constant back and fourth communication over. along period of time to even build a relationship of trust with him, which his parents would’ve caught on
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u/Sensitive_Leader4167 16d ago
he wasn’t groomed at all lmao, it was most likely a opportunistic predator they usually hang around training stations looking for vulnerable teenagers who look lost in big cities, popular in the 2000s, and andrew was the perfect victim seeing as he looked younger than 14 and was out in London during school hours making him stick out to a predator, they could’ve lured him through underground tube stations and commercial exist which provided him blind spots and possibly robbed him seeing as he might’ve seen with £200 when trying to pay for something or could’ve striked up a conversation about the band t-shit he was wearing and promised to try get him into an event or something along those lines with obviously ill intent. or possibly he got lost and asked the wrong person for directions etc. this was a crime of opportunity not pre planned
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u/Mc_and_SP 7d ago
I generally lean toward this angle too, mainly because no evidence has come up indicating premeditation thus far.
Of course, it doesn’t answer the one big question of why he went in the first place? I wonder if the concert was his plan but he never managed to get there.
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u/Sensitive_Leader4167 7d ago
honestly it could have easily just been him being an impulsive teenager, i remember being around his age and doing stuff like that and when being questioned why i didn’t have a clear cut answer i was just doing it out of impulse. Andrew was described to be a smart boy who found school work boring because of how easy it was and went to school because he saw it as something he had to do to achieve his end goal & he also seemed to not have many close friends seeing as he never hung out with anyone outside of school while also being bullied (people say he was teased and it was banter but from his lense that could of been bullying). I think possibly due to it being the first week back from the summer holiday where he was used to the routine of being away from school he possibly decided to not go in on a Friday (with the mindset of it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission-seeing as his parents were understanding people) and go to London for the day seeing as it was his favourite place to go taking familiar routes or maybe see family idk but this was a time of no mobile devices meaning no online maps to give u directions if u took the wrong turn into a dodgy area for example. the concert theory also makes sense too cause he possible was planning on sticking around in london until the doors for his fav band opened at 4pm cause school finished at 3:30 and it took almost. 2 hours to get to london
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u/GhanianGentleman 19d ago
Yes, it's possible, but I imagine that any number of his family may well have noticed or commented on him receiving letters from an unknown source. Or certainly have remembered this. I think this is a tenuous possibility. Post in the UK does not always come at a fixed time
School, library and home computers were all subject to extensive testing and yielded no clues. Whoever did for Andrew I fear was known to him IRL.
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u/Responder343 19d ago
Possible yes. Probably no. One thing to keep in mind that generally speaking groomers don’t usually kill their victims.while I’m sure it happens statistics show that it is all about control and the repeated abuse. Also groomers tend to target people who are already at risk. Per all reports I have seen Andrew came from a loving and stable household and outside of having vision issues and partially deaf in one year doesn’t appear to have been all that vulnerable.
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u/DocJamieJay 17d ago edited 17d ago
I believe in the grooming theory & I think it happened like this: someone connected to the church in either Doncaster or London sought out the Gosdens precisely because of Andrew. They identified Andrew as a 'prize' to a sick perv who liked that type. Then laser focused in on Andrew, making him their priority. From 5 years of journalism I learned in this case that the groomer is in general paid by the abuser well ahead of time & having the abusers money the groomer becomes anxious to get the job done wich usually leads to multiple mistakes that sees them getting caught. But not in Andrew's case - his particular case ran smoothly. Andrew had been a boy scout but earned pocket money cutting grass & doing errands for the church & people connected to it on his weekends in both Doncaster & on occasion in London when visiting relatives with his family. This is were he will have met the groomer & were the groomer selected him.
In the 90s (& earlier) a truly vile child abuser named RAYMOND HODGSON used the church & the guise of a Christian to gain the trust of vulnerable families he had befriended. He would often take the kids of churchgoers out on his boat, camping or miles & miles away from their homes to swimming pools. This got the kids away from their poor unexpecting parents & relatives & build up to the point that Hodgson was alone with the kids then subject them to unimaginable horrific sexual abuse. Getting them away from their parents meant Hodgson was unlikely to be stopped but the kids wouldn't run away because they knew the only way to get home was to do what he said. The abuse would be discovered, reported & like clockwork Hodgson would do a runner before the police would turn up at his home.
At one point in the mid 90s Hodgson's vile insatiable sexual desires saw him divide his time between Southend, Liverpool & Bradford - about as far away on a weekly plan as it gets. The police found hours of footage & concluded that Hodgson was being enabled by one or more people in the various churches he popped up in. Hodgson confirmed that people from the church were involved but he wouldn't name names.
I'm convinced, based purely on my own research, that someone belonging to the same church based ring Hodgson was a part of, befriended the Gosdens in either Doncaster or London but they have slipped through the net.
A new investigation needs to be done & the police need to re-interview alot of people who they interviewed in 2007 but with the advance in technology they need to look to see if there was indeed someone with connections to both Doncaster & London & connect the dots to see if they lead in any way to Hodgson & his associates.
That is the key to finding out what happened to poor Andrew but very sadly, I believe he lost his life for a snuff movie within 72 hours of arriving in London
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u/ColaPopz 20d ago
Letters like that did come out with NAGTY but how would his parents not have seen he had a letter from them?
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u/AngelasGingerGrowler 19d ago
Also, a lot of people are applying a 2026 lens to a 2007 event, and focusing too much on digital media.
It's entirely possible that someone from the G&T at Lancaster Uni could have kept a correspondence with Andrew via post.
In 2007 my sister regularly send me quick notes while she was at Uni.
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u/Comfortable-Unit-248 20d ago
Do we know everything about his family in London? Did they have any links to pedophiles, maybe they had a friend who was a pedophile?
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u/Comfortable-Unit-248 20d ago
This was when I was 18, a man appeared In the night and asked if I was gay I said no. Imagine if he had been approached by someone who had asked him if he was gay. He probably wouldn't not have been able to answer,the person would have then started saying don't worry if you are.He would have then engaged him in a friendly conversation and asked him if he wanted to have a coffee
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u/AngelasGingerGrowler 19d ago
What exactly happened?
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u/Comfortable-Unit-248 19d ago
I was walking through London at night and a Chinese looking man came up to me , asking if I was gay.He obviously wanted sex, if I was gay and had said yes who knows what would have happened.
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u/danhug68 19d ago
Couldn't Andrew have discussed this with his parents quite easily? I.e. it wouldn't have been a particularly covert communication