by Girls were “left at the mercy” of pedophile grooming gangs for years in Rochdale because of failings by senior police and council chiefs, a report has said.
The damning review covers 173 pages between 2004 and 2013 and outlines numerous failed investigations by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and the apparent indifference of local authorities into the plight of hundreds of young people, mainly white girls from poor backgrounds, to clearly identified as potential victims of abuse. in Rochdale by Asian men.
One revelation detailed in the report includes an incident where GMP secretly took the forbidden fetus of a 13-year-old victim from Rochdale Hospital for DNA testing, without the consent of the girl or her parents.
Malcolm Newsam CBE, co-author of the report, said: “Follow-up police operations were launched during this period, but were under-resourced to match the scale of widespread organized exploitation within the area.
“As a result, children were left at risk and many of their abusers have not been caught until now.”
The report identifies 96 men who are still considered a potential risk to children, but this is “only a fraction” of the number involved in the abuse.
In a press conference on Monday, GMP apologized for its failure, as Chief Constable Stephen Watson said: “One of the main tasks of the police is to protect the vulnerable from the cruel and predatory, and in this regard, we have failed you .
“It is still a matter of great regret, of course, that we cannot turn back the clock,” said: “We remain determined to do all we can to bring offenders to justice.”
The Rochdale report follows reports by the same authors on grooming in Manchester and Oldham, which found that authorities had again failed to take children who had left them in the care of pedophile gangs.
Eight of the men involved in the grooming gang, Abdul Rauf, Hamid Safi, Mohammed Sajid, Abdul Aziz, Abdul Qayyum, Adil Khan, Mohammed Amin and Kabeer Hassan, were found guilty of conspiracy and rape.
Mr Newsam, a well-known childcare expert, authored the report with Gary Ridgeway, a former detective chief, following allegations by whistleblowers Sara Rowbotham and Maggie Oliver in the BBC television documentary The Betrayed Girls. which aired in 2017.
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham commissioned the authors to look at the issues highlighted by the women in the documentary.
The report said Ms Rowbotham, co-ordinator of the Crisis Intervention Team set up to support young people in Rochdale, and former GMP detective Maggie Oliver, who resigned from the force in disgrace, revealed the clear evidence. “Fertile serial rape of countless children in Rochdale.”
The report says there was “overwhelming evidence” of widespread organized sexual abuse of children in Rochdale from as early as 2004, citing multiple reports of involvement by groups of Asian men.
But children’s unwillingness to make a formal complaint was repeatedly used as an excuse not to investigate.
In 2007, the Crisis Intervention Team led by Ms Rowbotham alerted GMP and Rochdale Council to the presence of an organized crime group.
GMP identified the ringleaders, described as “prolific career criminals”, but did not investigate further because children were too scared to help.
The report said this was a “serious failure” to protect the children, ignoring the coercion and control exercised by the groomers over their victims and their families, who were sometimes threatened or assaulted with violence. houses.
Another police investigation into two Rochdale takeaways, involving 30 adult suspects, was prematurely ended after police chiefs failed to resource it and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) considered that the main child victim is an unreliable witness.
Three years later, in January 2010, the multi-agency Sunrise Task Force was formed in Rochdale where a child reported to a social worker that up to 60 men were abusing children on a large scale.
One police report said: “It is clear that an organized industry is emerging in which vulnerable young children are targeted for sexual abuse…”
The detective inspector asked for more staff to investigate but police chiefs denied the request.
The report says: “Once again, children have been left at the mercy of their abusers due to an inadequate response from GMP and children’s social care to the serious exploitation of vulnerable children.”
In December 2010, more than two years after it was first alerted to abuse targeting two takeaways, GMP finally acted, launching Operation Span which led to convictions nine men in a high-profile court case in May 2012 that attracted far-right demonstrators. .
The trial heard that girls as young as 12 were drugged and drugged and gang-raped in rooms above takeaway shops and taken to various flats in taxis where money was paid to use the girls.
But while the force hailed Operation Span as a “great achievement for British justice”, the report says the police operation failed to tackle many other crimes and ignored allegations of children leaving their abusers. the hook, as both Ms Oliver and Ms Rowbotham alleged.
GMP and Rochdale Council presented the court convictions for a grooming “solution” at home, but in reality “only the surface was scratched”, the report said.
And while the “public face of GMP” reassured the public it was a police priority to hunt down other baby groomers, this was “a far cry from the situation on the ground”, the report said.
GMP has since launched further investigations, which have so far led to the convictions of 42 men involved in the abuse of 13 children.
The report concludes the scale of abuse in Rochdale was known to senior and middle managers in the police and children’s social care, but the problem was not given “adequate priority”.
“We think this is a deplorable strategic failure by senior leaders in GMP and Rochdale Council,” the report continues. He said the failure to prioritize, detect, intervene or prosecute “should be laid firmly at the door of senior officers in GMP during this period.”
Sir Peter Fahy was chief constable of GMP between 2008 and 2015. He was knighted in the 2012 Birthday Honors ‘for services to policing’ and became honorary professor of criminal justice at Manchester University when he retired.
Maggie Oliver has since set up the Maggie Oliver Foundation, a charity which supports adult survivors of child sexual abuse.
