by Girls were “left at the mercy” of pedophile gangs for years in Rochdale due to failings by senior police officers and council bosses, a report has claimed.
The damning 173-page review covers the period from 2004 to 2013 and sets out multiple botched investigations by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and the apparent indifference of local authorities to the plight of hundreds of young people, mainly white girls from poor backgrounds, all identified as potential victims of abuse. in Rochdale by Asian men.
One revelation detailed in the report includes an incident in which GMP secretly took the aborted fetus of a 13-year-old victim from Rochdale Hospital for DNA testing, without the consent of the girl or her parents.
Malcolm Newsam, co-author of the report, said: “Successive police operations were launched during this period, but were insufficiently resourced to match the scale of widespread organized exploitation in the area.
“Consequently, the children were left at risk and many of their abusers have not been arrested to this day.”
The report identifies 96 men who are still considered a potential risk to children, but this is “only a proportion” of the numbers involved in abuse.
At a press conference on Monday, GMP apologized for its failures, as Chief Constable Stephen Watson said: “One of the police’s primary responsibilities is to protect the vulnerable from the cruel and predatory, and in this regard, we we fail.
“Of course, it remains a cause of deep regret that we cannot go back in time.” He added: “We remain determined to do everything possible to bring offenders to justice.”
The Rochdale report follows reports by the same authors into bullying in Manchester and Oldham, which found that authorities had failed children, leaving them in the clutches 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.
Newsam, a renowned childcare expert, wrote the report alongside Gary Ridgeway, a former detective superintendent, following allegations by complainants Sara Rowbotham and Maggie Oliver in a BBC television documentary. The betrayed girlswhich aired in 2017.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham commissioned the authors to analyze the issues highlighted by the women in the documentary.
The report said Ms Rowbotham, coordinator of the Crisis Intervention Team set up to support young people in Rochdale, and former GMP detective Maggie Oliver, who quit the police in disgust, were “lone voices” who had flagged the clear evidence of “Prolific serial rape of countless children in Rochdale.”
The report claims there was “compelling evidence” of widespread and organized sexual abuse of boys in Rochdale from 2004 onwards, citing multiple reports of the involvement of groups of Asian men.
But the children’s unwillingness to file a formal complaint was repeatedly used as an excuse for not investigating.
In 2007, the Crisis Intervention Team, led by Ms Rowbotham, alerted GMP and Rochdale Council to the presence of an organized crime group involved.
GMP identified the ringleaders, described as “prolific professional criminals”, but did not investigate further because the children were too scared to help.
The report said this was a “serious failure” to protect children, ignoring the coercion and control that suitors had over their victims and their families, who were sometimes threatened or subjected to violence or had their homes attacked. .
Another police investigation into two takeaway shops in Rochdale, involving 30 adult male suspects, was also aborted prematurely because police chiefs failed to provide resources and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) deemed the main victim infantile was an unreliable witness.
Three years later, in January 2010, the specialist multi-agency Sunrise Team was set up in Rochdale, where a boy told a social worker about large-scale abuse of children by up to 60 men.
A police report said: “What is clearly emerging is an organized industry in which vulnerable young children are being sexually abused.”
A detective inspector asked for more staff to investigate, but police chiefs denied the request.
The report states: “Once again, children were left at the mercy of their abusers due to an inadequate response by GMP and child welfare to the gross exploitation of vulnerable children.”
In December 2010, more than two years after it was first informed of abuses centered on two takeaway restaurants, GMP finally acted and launched Operation Span, which led to the May 2012 conviction of nine men. in a high-profile court case that attracted the far right. protesters.
The trial heard that girls as young as 12 were abused with alcohol and drugs and gang-raped in rooms above takeaway shops and transported to different floors in taxis where they were paid cash to use the girls.
But while the force praised Operation Span as “a fantastic result for British justice”, the report claims the police operation failed to tackle many other crimes and ignored the children’s allegations, leaving their abusers free, as both Oliver and Rowbotham. .
GMP and Rochdale Council had presented the court convictions as having “solved” harassment in the town, but in reality they had “only scratched the surface”, the report said.
And although the “public face of GMP” assured the public that it was a police priority to pursue more child abusers, this was “far from the case on the ground”, according to the report.
GMP has since launched further investigations, which have so far resulted in the conviction of 42 men involved in the abuse of 13 children.
The report concludes that senior and middle managers in the police and child welfare services were aware of the extent of abuse in Rochdale, but the issue was not given “sufficient priority”.
The report continues: “We regard this as a regrettable strategic failure by senior leaders at GMP and Rochdale Council.” He said the lack of prioritisation, detection, disruption or processing “must be firmly attributed to senior GMP officials during this period”.
Sir Peter Fahy was GMP’s chief constable between 2008 and 2015. He was knighted in the 2012 Birthday Honors “for services to policing” and, following his retirement, was appointed honorary professor of criminal justice at the University of Manchester.
Maggie Oliver has since founded the Maggie Oliver Foundation, a charity that supports adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
