Heading back to London tonight, it’s hard to process all that’s been revealed today by the review into serious failings in tackling child sexual exploitation in Rochdale.
Where to start?
The most distressing fact has to be that there are still 96 men at risk to children at large in the area, which is “only a proportion of the individuals engaged in child sexual exploitation” over 2004-2013.
Most of them have never been prosecuted. They are ALL walking free tonight.
The report has provided total vindication for Maggie Oliver and Sara Rowbotham, the whistleblowing pair who exposed the failings and extent of the “widespread” abuse in Rochdale while GMP and local services continuously underplayed the crisis and underfunded the response.
The press conference this morning was raw with emotion, as Rowbotham and Maggie both took aim at the civil servants and police officers who rejected their pleas and urgent concerns.
It was remarkable to watch the GMP chief constable deliver an apology before being roundly criticised from the pulpit by Maggie, who rejected much of what he said.
The GMP boss said he was in regular conversation with The Maggie Oliver Foundation, but she stood up in front of our cameras and said “I haven’t heard from you in two years”.
But there are some wins for Oliver and Rowbotham. Their testimony has finally been officially acknowledged and upheld and those who slandered them as liars or unprofessional have been widely discredited.
The report’s findings are stark. Below is just a snippet of the sections that stunned me most. It’s quite long, but so is the history of the horrors of Rochdale.
Dozens of cases of horrific abuses were reported but ignored, with several men accused of rape but not arrested or questioned by the police.
There were multiple “deplorable” failings in reporting abuse, supporting victims, and securing justice.
One child victim, known as Amber, gave “significant evidence”, but the horrendous crimes committed against her were not recorded by the police and her rapists were free to continue their atrocities.
The review team also uncovered that GMP neglected to follow-up evidence given by a child related to the Operation Span investigation. She had been sexually exploited at the same takeaway restaurant as ‘Amber’, but like her, she was not taken seriously.
The report found that Operation Span was “limited” and addressed just a “small number of perpetrators.” It secured the convictions of just 9 men — 8 Pakistanis and one Afghan asylum-seeker — in 2012 despite the “widespread” abuse from 2004.
More convictions eventually followed, but just “a very small proportion” of those known to be exploited in Rochdale were included in later trials.
In another damning assessment of Span, the review slammed the “deplorable” disregard for a victim’s feelings after an aborted foetus was retained by GMP without requesting the consent of the child, aged just 13.
A further “deplorable” example of GMP and the CPS failing victims was revealed with the report outlining the ‘tactical’ decision made in 2011 to name ‘Amber’ as a co-conspirator in the sexual exploitation of other children and include her name on the indictment for the trial.
Malcolm Newsam during a press conference for the publication of the independent assurance review into child sexual exploitation in Rochdale, commissioned by the Mayor of Greater Manchester, at The Tootal Buildings in Manchester.
PA
The lead barrister reportedly made the decision to ensure her evidence could be heard in court, despite the knowledge that she had been coerced by her abusers and was a victim herself. She was not informed of the process nor was any consideration given to assess the repercussions for her. Once again, a failure to promote a victims-focused approach to CSE.
The reviewers found just ONE record of an attempt to disrupt abuse gangs through liaison with relevant agencies, which was an engagement with Rochdale Council’s licensing department taxi enforcement team.
In another grave breach of victim-focused approaches to investigating abuse, survivors were reportedly given just three opportunities to make a formal statement to a GMP investigation. If a statement was not signed after three approaches, “they were required to sign a disclaimer to that effect.”
Child victims throughout the timeline of Rochdale investigations were sometimes made to feel responsible for their abuse. In one case, a child was raped by a gang of “Asian” men in a park aged 13 and later kept in a house for further abuse by an “Asian man”.
A social worker said that her “choices and actions have ultimately led to her being involved in situations and having experiences that have exploited her level of immaturity and relative vulnerability”.
This victim-blaming attitude is consistent with reports we’ve seen from Rotherham, Telford and other grooming gang hotspots.
This particular survivor did not receive adequate police support, with no further action taken due to the girl not offering a statement.
She later gave birth to a child. The father — an adult who was referred to as her ‘pimp’ — did not face any police action. She was just 15 years old at the time.
The review uncovered a “significant probability” that 74 out of the 111 children on police records were being sexually exploited.
There were serious failures to protect 48 of the children.
Elsewhere, the report said that in 2007, Rowbotham’s Crisis Intervention Team informed the police that an organised crime gang was exploiting “many children” in Rochdale, but GMP and its partners failed to sufficiently investigate.
The Crisis Intervention Team, headed by Sara Rowbotham, was briefed against in the media and official reports as failing to adequately pass over information about abuse cases, a “misrepresentation” that the review team found “quite disturbing”. There were cover-ups and obfuscations throughout this crisis.
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham during a press conference for the publication of the independent assurance review into child sexual exploitation in Rochdale, commissioned by Mr Burnham, at The Tootal Buildings in Manchester.
Two serious case overview reports published by Rochdale Local Safeguarding Children’s Board in 2013 explicitly criticised the team for not following procedure.
The authors of the overview reports provided a joint written statement to the report team “that did not directly address” its concerns. They declined to be interviewed by the review team.
This morning, close to tears at the momentous occasion of the report’s release, Rowbotham said “shame on you” to everyone who refused to engage with the review team.
Gary Ridgeway, the report’s co-author, told me that sadly some police officers and council staff often feel that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to get involved with these official reports.
In effect, they are prioritising their comfort and reputation over efforts to secure justice and peace for a generation of abused girls.
Andy Burnham also voiced concern about the number of public servants who did not give evidence when asked.
He said that we need “a duty of candour on all public servants to tell the truth at the first time of asking, and that’s often the only thing that people affected by events like this want people to do”.
The civil servants who slandered Rowbotham did so while the Rochdale health worker and her colleagues in the Crisis Intervention Team referred some 260 potential victims.
The report said the team was sharing “explicit testimony” ignored by GMP and Rochdale Council.
Rowbotham and her colleagues were “lone voices” in expressing concerns about abuse, the report added.
And the abuse that they ignored is truly reprehensible. Most of it is so disturbing that it is almost beyond comprehension, but it has to be noted and read and understood so it can be stamped out.
The report makes regular references to violent sexual abuse, deliberate intoxication, widespread physical violence, and pregnancies through rape.
Other recorded abuse includes severe emotional and physical degradation.
Children were found with significant bruising by social workers in Rowbotham’s team.
Young girls were put in cages and made to bark like dogs.
Some were dressed like babies by the rape gangs.
Girls were plied with alcohol and drugs, particularly amphetamines, cocaine, and ecstasy.
They were abandoned on the moors.
Charlie Peters speaks to grooming gang victim
GB News
They were forced to be raped by multiple men while threatened with further violence.
Like reviews into Rotherham and Telford, the report makes regular references to “Asian” men engaging in the sexual exploitation of predominantly white girls.
But unlike those reports, there is no mention of whether nervousness about race or political correctness contributed to the failure to prosecute the rape gangs.
In the only mention of fears of racism hindering investigation across the report’s 173 pages, a Senior Investigating Officer in GMP said that his “only guess” for why taxis driven by “Pakistani-looking” men with a “female passenger” were not stopped was because “patrols were frightened of being tarnished with a race brush for doing it”. That’s it. That’s the only coverage. This feels like a drastic understatement of what was surely a key factor in the failure to adequately prosecute the rapists.
The same SIO added: “I was concerned that we’d got these kids who had been raped by these Pakistanis in Rochdale who are, who have groomed them, who have given them food and drink, whatever else, free rides in taxis, I’m thinking at the time that they probably felt more love from these idiots than they were getting at home.”
When I asked co-author Gary Ridgeway this morning why the Rochdale report had not made the same conclusions about anti-white racism and racial nervousness as the Rotherham and Telford reports, he told me that it was not up to the review team to “speculate” without evidence.
But I have to say, the pattern is obvious. The trend is clear. These predominantly Pakistani men wanted to abuse white girls.
The report does not appear to work out WHY they did it or the motivations behind their targeting. This feels like a shortfall, but Maggie Oliver told me that the understanding of the racial issue in the British grooming gangs scandal is widely understood, so it probably wasn’t necessary.
Recalling the visceral reaction when Suella Braverman pointed out these facts last year, I’m not sure I agree. This is a crucial element of this scandal that many influential voices are still tip-toeing around. This approach supports abusers.
The Rochdale report is the third of four reviews being conducted by Ridgeway and Malcolm Newsam. The next will assess contemporary approaches to tackling CSE in Greater Manchester. I interviewed a survivor earlier today who said that the failures she endured in 2004 are STILL being continued today. She was abused, now she is desperately trying to save a close family member from the same appalling mistreatment. She alleges that the authorities are still failing to get a grip.
Maggie also said that in the last month, she spoke to “a new Maggie Oliver,” who has recently retired from GMP due to critical underfunding and insufficient focus paid to CSE.
There is clearly much more to come on this generational scandal.
One day I hope that we won’t need to cover more stories like this.
More justice is urgently needed. The national conversation must not swiftly move on once again. And until we approach this appalling crisis with the frankness and determination it deserves, it is destined to continue.
The mayor, GMP and Rochdale Council stressed wholesale changes have now been made in the way police handle child sexual abuse.
