rochdale grooming case

As a responsible publication the M.E.Ns editors respected this request from senior detectives at GMP and eventually our story was published a few months later. Following the case in Rochdale similar cases of grooming and sexual abuse/exploitation of young girls came to light in various towns and cities across the UK. But after a while it had been going on for so long and with so many different men, I didn't feel anything towards it anymore. I felt sick, got upset nothing never no one from police came to me to explain why I was no longer going to court. Also cited were a lack of managerial oversight in 2008 and 2009 and lack of resources and managerial support for the investigations despite formal requests. 2023 BBC. Despite one victim going to the police in 2008 to report the child grooming, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to prosecute two men, invoking the witness's lack of credibility. [20], Four of the convicted, Shabir Ahmed, Adil Khan, Abdul Rauf and Abdul Aziz, who had dual British and Pakistani citizenships, were denaturalized (stripped of their British citizenship) by then Home Secretary Theresa May in order for them to be deported to Pakistan. This kind of institutional neglect of a whole sector of society must never happen again and we need programmes like Three Girls to remind us.. "Any criminal convictions that [Daisy] has, have been as a direct consequence of the abuse and exploitation. While GMP has finally settled the claim, which includes the personal apology from the chief constable, the DPP has so far resisted. The three-part series tells the story of the victims of an infamous child grooming and sex trafficking scandal in Rochdale, and continues on Wednesday night. The perpetrators would pass the girls to their friends, often to settle a debt. The ID parades were particularly gruelling for Amber, who did 12 in one day alone, correctly identifying 10 of her abusers. [32], Wendy Shepherd, child sexual exploitation project manager for Barnardo's in the north of England, said that since she started working with the organisation, there has been "a shift from the men selling children in ones or twos to something that is much more organised in groups and networks. News. An independent report commissioned by Rochdale council said three employees had spoken of victims making life choices rather than being rape victims. She told me: It wasnt like a forced thing. [5], In March 2015, Greater Manchester Police apologised for its failure to investigate the child sexual exploitation allegations more thoroughly between 2008 and 2010. [1][2], The oldest person to be convicted, Shabir Ahmed,[16] was for a while the main trafficker of the victims. There was a "shocking" inability to protect seven vulnerable girls from sexual exploitation, a report into the Rochdale grooming case has said. The review recommended the Greater Manchester Police establish a monitoring system and commit to maintaining a child sexual exploitation team. The ringleader, 59-year-old Shabir Ahmed, claimed the girls were "prostitutes" who had been running a "business empire" and it was all "white lies". This eventually led to the successful prosecution of nine men for offences included rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child. Stephen Watson says force had lacked professional curiosity when it came to young victims of grooming gangs 19 Apr 2022 Rochdale victim: 'I was groomed at 14, then the courts came for my. The grooming scandals in Rochdale and similar ones in other cities which involved Asian men, including Oxford and Rotherham, have fuelled fight-wing groups opposing multiculturalism and immigration. In relation to historical failures, he apologised to Daisy. File on 4 - Groomed, abused and put in prison: Rochdale's untold story will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 14 July at 20:00 BST and repeated on Sunday 19 July at 17:00 BST. It made me sick to my stomach. It meant she was regarded by the prosecution as a member of the grooming gang whose members would go in the dock, even though she was not charged and would not stand beside them in court. The man she accused of assaulting her walked free. [45] In particular they pointed out that the inquiry by the Office of the Children's Commissioner[33] found that, while a majority of victims were white and a majority of perpetrators were men of South Asian descent, there were many cases where "perpetrators and their victims were ethnically diverse. [41][42][43], Two of the convicted gang members worked at Eagle Taxis, which was taken over by Car 2000 after the scandal. [1] One 13-year-old victim recounted that, after being forced to have sex in exchange for vodka, her abuser immediately raped her again and gave her 40 to not say anything about the incident. She said that seven officers had been served with misconduct notices, but no further disciplinary action would be taken against them. [17], Victims were physically assaulted and raped by as many as five men at a time,[1] or obliged to have sex with "several men in a day, several times a week". It resulted in the conviction of nine men for offences including rape and human. I think it was because they were afraid of being called racist. Nine men have been convicted of sexually exploiting young girls in Greater Manchester. "[3], Sayeeda Warsi, co-chairperson of the Conservative Party, in an interview with the Evening Standard, said "You can only start solving a problem if you acknowledge it first," and added, "This small minority who see women as second class citizens, and white women probably as third class citizens, are to be spoken out against." He said the investigation was at "an extremely sensitive stage" and street grooming was the force's top priority, "a bigger priority than gun crime". She added: "The danger with saying that the problem is with one ethnicity is that then people will only be on the lookout for that group and will risk missing other threats. The gang of nine men received jail sentences of between four and 19 years from a judge who said they treated their victims as though they were worthless and beyond any respect. [31], In late 2011, the Office of the Children's Commissioner began a two-year long inquiry into child sexual exploitation by street gangs. A much bigger case had been built but, importantly, he simply believed his star witness. "You will be supported and you will be heard.". Amber was also threatened at gunpoint by a man whom she subsequently identified to the police. Sign up and we will email you daily with the best of our political and news coverage while also giving you a taste of our most-popular lifestyle, opinion and personal blogs. Nazir Afzal, chief prosecutor in the North West - who overturned the original CPS decision not to prosecute over allegations of abuse in 2009 - said: "I absolutely accept that things didn't go well for us and other agencies. Some studies suggest an overrepresentation of black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. Read about our approach to external linking. NINE men who ran the Rochdale child sex abuse ring were eventually jailed for a string of offences in 2012. The alleged offences that took place in Rochdale between 2005 and 2013 included rape, conspiracy to rape, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, sexual activity with a child, and sexual assault. Sheer lack of resource, and also the fact that their bosses seemed reluctant to grasp the nettle for fear of being branded racist, contributed to delays in the investigation. Address: CA Torrance 4101 Torrance Blvd. Read about our approach to external linking. Updated 10:47, 10 JUN 2020. The investigation into the sexual abuse of the girl had been reopened following the exposure of police failings. Last May. Furious, Maggie vowed never to be part of such an investigation in future. The convictions she received as a teen continue to hold her back to this day. This resulted in Greater Manchester Police launching Operation Doublet to investigate further claims of abuse with 19 men so far being convicted. [7] A former Detective Constable who was investigating the grooming gangs, Margaret Oliver, resigned in 2012 in disgust of the handling of the cases by the police force and spoke out as a whistleblower to inform the public. In a disused hotel ballroom just off the M60 in Greater Manchester, she describes to us how the authorities knew she was at risk, but failed to stop the abuse. "[54], One of the seven officers retired without any sanctions being taken, even though his misconduct was found to have warranted disciplinary action. The abuse of minor female children that occurred in 2008 and 2009 centred around two takeaways in Heywood near Rochdale. 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[46], The Rochdale case was one of several cases which prompted investigations looking into the claim that "the majority of the perpetrators have been British Pakistani"; the first was by Quilliam in December 2017, which released a report entitled "Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation Dissecting Grooming Gangs", which claimed 84% of offenders were of South Asian heritage. When police were called to a report of a 15-year-old girl smashing up the Balti House takeaway in Heywood, they had no idea that the crime they had uncovered would become a national scandal. No further action was taken against Amber, but it would be another two years before the CPS agreed that she should be treated as a victim and witness rather than a suspect. "[36] Narey rejected the idea that such gangs were specifically targeting white girls, but suggested vulnerable girls on the street were more likely to be white since Asian girls were subjected to strict parenting and were more likely to be kept off the streets. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. What the police and CPS did to me was worse than the abuse The apology will be a kind of a weight lifted from me. But the nightmare will never really be over. Shabir Ahmed, who abused dozens of vulnerable teenagers, was known as "Dadd A chance to stop the gang was missed in 2008 and both the police and the CPS were forced to apologise for their failings. He said that of convictions involving child sexual exploitation, 87% were of British Pakistani men and it was a significant problem for that community. Attempts by Rochdale Crisis Intervention Team co-ordinator for the NHS, Sara Rowbotham, to alert police and authorities to "patterns of sexual abuse" were ignored. *To protect her identity the victim's name has been changed. [I] cant remember exactly what they said, but it was something along the lines of being a madam, she recalled. A Serious Case Review published in 2013 concluded that the authorities 'struggled to empathise' with the girls, partly because they were from poor backgrounds, giving them a 'skewed picture of their behaviour'. Updated 10:45, 3 JUL 2017. "I got picked up so many times by the police and it was always when I was out with adult men," she says. "This is something I feel very strongly about," she says. She's now in her late 20s. "We have to remember that in most of those cases, the girls themselves did not regard themselves as victims and were not willing to make complaints and that is still the situation now," he said. Social services became involved when she started to arrive at school dirty and sometimes smelling of alcohol. She gave the police a list, at an early stage of Operation Span, with nicknames, telephone numbers and other details relating to offenders. [32], In 2011, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre launched a five-month long investigation into whether there was a link between racial profile and the crime of underage grooming. Not just once - but repeatedly - by a gang of men who would ply her with vodka and threaten her with violence unless she succumbed to horrific abuse. By then police were investigating allegations from another girl about on-street grooming in Heywood. While this is true, Amber believes that she was used as a scapegoat. [28], Ann Cryer, Labour MP for Keighley, recalled in a BBC documentary filmed in 2012 that she had worked with the families of the victims involved, and had been "round at the police station virtually every week" and was "begging" both the police and social services to do something. The police were called. She was being raped. Ive got a box in the back of my head, and I just put it all in there and its locked away.. "[37][38] Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, accused elders of the Pakistani community of "burying their heads in the sand" on the matter of sexual grooming. She was vilified and nicknamed in the press as the Honey Monster. One 13-year-old victim became pregnant and had an abortion. '", 'We should have listened to he broken teenagers'. We were making referrals from 2004, very explicit referrals, referrals which absolutely highlighted for protective services that young people were incredibly vulnerable, she said. Two members of the grooming gang the gangs ringleader Shabir Ahmed and Kabeer Hassan were arrested and released on bail. RN Case Manager - Case Management at Providence Little Company of Mary Torrance Hospital $20,000 hiring bonus for eligible external hires that meet required qualifications and conditions for payment Her mother was not allowed to be with her during the interview, and there was no mention of an appropriate adult. The serious case review looked at six girls who suffered sexual exploitation in Heywood, Rochdale between 2007 and 2010. Child sexual exploitation has been uncovered in towns, cities and counties all over the country and it affects both girls and boys from all backgrounds. The scandal shocked the nation - and helped change the way the criminal justice system treats victims of grooming. Mohammed Sajid was sentenced to 12 years for rape, sexual activity with a girl under 16, trafficking for sexual exploitation and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children. When a local teenager was caught smashing up a glass chiller at the Balti House takeaway in Heywood in August 2008, police dismissed it as a simple act of vandalism. After a while, the girl was being driven to different houses or flats where there would be other men waiting. Parents felt agencies "failed to work together", did not listen or keep them informed. Last Tuesday Amber, with two other victims of the Rochdale grooming gang, finally received an apology delivered personally by Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police. "I was scared telling them, because I didn't know what the consequences would be from the men. As a result of police failures to respond to evidence, the men who had groomed the three children were able to continue . I was like, 'why are you not listening? Maggie Oliver was again left fuming when one of the girls she had talked round - a victim of abuse - was placed in the indictment that went before the jury. Back in the police station, the girl who had just vandalised the takeaway provided a detailed account of the abuse and the perpetrators as well as evidence in the form of her underwear, which carried traces of one of her attackers' DNA. Running though them is repeated mentions of the fact that many in authority believed that the girls had brought the abuse on themselves. The trial of nine of the grooming gang was pending, and in the meantime, despite never having been informed, arrested or cautioned, Amber was added to the indictment by the CPS as a co-conspirator. The investigation was suddenly scrapped with no-one arrested or charged. "It made me feel like I was pretty. Police said the victims were from chaotic, council estate backgrounds and as many as 50 girls could have been victims of the gang. Why is it me that suffers still?". [10] The gang worked to secure underage girls to rape and exploit.[11][12]. "[32], The former head of Barnardo's, Martin Narey, said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "For this particular type of crime, the street grooming of teenage girls in northern towns there is very troubling evidence that Asians are overwhelmingly represented in the prosecutions for such offences. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 'We are not going to stop' - Mikel Arteta sends Man City title message after Arsenal win, Manchester City now trail Arsenal by five points in the Premier League table after the Gunners beat Everton 4-0 on Wednesday night, Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp learns Real Madrid lesson ahead of Manchester United clash, Liverpool beat Wolves in the Premier League on Wednesday and face Man United this weekend, West Ham manager David Moyes delivers bullish verdict on FA Cup defeat to Manchester United. Something went wrong, please try again later. She not only suffered at the time [of the abuse] but she continues to suffer because of the criminal records. Another five-year sentence was given to Abdul Qayyum for conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children, while Hamid Safi received four years for trafficking for sexual exploitation and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children. Behind the scenes, however, there was consternation. Taxi drivers with nick-names like Car Zero and Master Aziz, a pillar of Rochdale's Pakistani community known as Tiger and a Muslim preacher were . Exploit. [ 11 ] [ 12 ] being driven to different houses or flats there... Investigation into the sexual abuse of minor female children that occurred in 2008 and 2009 centred around two takeaways Heywood! A child sexual exploitation team for offences including rape and exploit. [ 11 [! `` failed to work together '', did not listen or keep them informed police said the victims were chaotic. 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