Actress Maxine Peake starred in the series as Sara Rowbotham, the sexual health aid worker who first uncovered the patterns of severe abuse in the area, but struggled to bring it to the attention of authorities. Hamid Safi, then 22 and of no fixed address, was convicted of trafficking girls for the purposes of sexual exploitation and sentenced to four years. 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. During that period, Amber by now pregnant and living in a one-room flat continued to be targeted by the grooming gangs. The testimony of one of the five victims of the Rochdale grooming ring revealed the depth of the exploitation she suffered. The review acknowledged that police officers might have discriminatory attitudes towards the victims, that the victims were interviewed by detectives without training in child exploitation and no strategy when victims returned to their abusers. It is worth remembering though that none of it would be happening without a frightened, angry girl who had been raped venting her rage in a takeaway in Heywood and then being courageous enough to speak about what had happened. Nazir Afzal, the newly-appointed chief crown prosecutor for the north west, reversed the decision not to prosecute the two who had been arrested and eventually authorised the charging of ten men in June 2011. Rochdale grooming case - what really happened? This resulted in Greater Manchester Police launching Operation Doublet to investigate further claims of abuse with . Shabir Ahmed received the longest sentence, 19 years for rape, aiding and abetting a rape, sexual assault, trafficking for sexual exploitation and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children. In Rochdale, which is home to approximately 20,000 people of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, far-right activists spied an opportunity. One example mentioned was the issue of child protection for one of the victims, which was discussed in 40 meetings, without any record of police attendance. Instead of being viewed as child victims of sexual abuse, they were branded by police as "bad" or "unreliable" witnesses and were sometimes arrested themselves, the women said. "They threaten you, and you're scared of them, and that's how they make you do it.". [52], In December 2013, the case review by Rochdale County was leaked, which highlighted findings from an internal police investigation. In response to Ambers claim that it was wrong to name her on the indictment, it says it was both legally and tactically the correct course to take. The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, Stephen Watson QPM, has met and personally apologised to three victims of grooming gangs in Rochdale for a catalogue of investigative failings that prevented their abusers from being brought to justice. Writing for HuffPost UK, chief executive Javed Khan of childrens charity Barnardos described Three Girls as absolutely vital viewing.. The Rochdale child sex abuse ring involved underage teenage girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Between 2008 and 2010, a child abuse ring that came to be known as part of the grooming gang phenomenon operated in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. They ripped away all my dignity". Rochdale grooming scandal Nine men who abused girls as young as 13 were convicted over a child sex grooming ring, guilty of 21 counts of sexual abuse over a two-year period. [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. Girls aged between 13 and 15 were trafficked, prostituted, raped and assaulted by the gang. The trial at Liverpool Crown Court in 2012 heard five girls - aged between 13 and 15 - were given alcohol, food and money in return for sex but there were times when violence was used. 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. I didnt want other people to feel how I felt. Her courage and Olivers support resulted in a database of abusers whom she identified by names, car registrations, telephone numbers and addresses. The men from Rochdale and Oldham were found guilty of offences including rape and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child. Mohammed Amin, 45, of Falinge, was convicted of sexual assault and received a five-year jail term. Two worked for the same taxi firm and another two worked at a takeaway restaurant; some came from the same village in Pakistan and another two men shared a flat. 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. You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk, Grooming gang member in deportation plea over son, Grooming gang member complains over treatment, Higher Broughton: Stabbing outside McDonalds leaving boy injured, BREAKING: Boy, 15, in a serious condition after stabbing outside McDonalds, Firefighters tackle waste fire in Milnrow after 'explosion', Delays on M62 Westbound near Birchwood after vehicle overturned, Bolton: Five charged on suspicion of drug crimes, Met Office snow and weather forecast for where you live in Greater Manchester, Street fighting in Bakhmut but Russia not in control, Russian minister laughed at for Ukraine war claims. 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.. In a case with similarities to the grooming gang scandals of Rotherham and Rochdale, girls were groomed, drugged and raped by paedophiles and victims warn the crimes are still happening. A SURVIVOR of a Rotherham grooming gang says she knew all along a teenager was posing as a "fake" victim of sexual abuse. Those failings allowed seven youngsters, and potentially dozens more later identified by police, to be exposed to a catalogue of horrific sex abuse at the hands of manipulative predators. She told me: Police werent arsed with us, really. "[30], Tim Loughton, the Minister for Children and Families, said that while there was no evidence that ethnic communities condoned child sexual abuse, he was concerned that some had been slow to report it to the police, and urged police and social workers not to allow "political correctness around ethnicity" to hinder their work to apprehend such criminals. Adil Khan, then 42, and also of Rochdale was convicted of trafficking a child within the UK for sexual exploitation and received eight years. What's the least amount of exercise we can get away with? [24], The case raised a serious debate about whether the crimes were racially motivated. 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. To date, the CPS has not accepted any failure on its part and instead continues to herald this case as the first successful prosecution of a grooming gang. Assistant Chief Constable Dawn Copley said that, at the time of the earlier investigation, "there was a strong target driven focus, predominantly on serious acquisitive crime. Grooming victim: "What they did to me was evil. Now they werent prepared to do that. Even when the authorities did recognise the problem, their slow reaction allowed the abusers to carry on exploiting their victims for years. A separate civil claim launched by the women against the Crown Prosecution Service is ongoing. [25][26][27] A report by the deputy children's commissioner in 2012 said that 33% of child sex abuse by gangs in Britain was committed by British Asians, where Asians are 7% of the population, but concluded that it was "irresponsible" to dwell on the data. Abdul Aziz received a similar sentence: nine years (concurrently) for trafficking for sexual exploitation and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children. Just before the due date of her second baby, she was called to the family court, where an application was made to remove both children on the grounds that Amber was an abuser and a danger to children. Cast list: Playbook is told Theresa May, Hunt and Deputy PM Dominic Raab all plan to go to Windsor. etween 2008 and 2010, a child abuse ring that came to be known as part of the grooming gang phenomenon operated in Rochdale. The networks of men come from different backgrounds: in the North and Midlands many have been British Asians; in Devon it was white men; in Bath and Bristol, Afro-Caribbeans; in London, all ethnic mixes, whites, Iraqis, Kurds, Afghans, Somalis". Shed been the victim of abuse from the age of 14. [18] Among the incidents recorded by the police were a 15-year-old victim too drunk to recall being raped by 20 men, one after the other; and another victim so drunk that she vomited over the side of the bed as she was being raped by two men. BBC Ones new drama Three Girls launched on Tuesday to five million viewers. What happened to the Rochdale grooming ring and how many men were found guilty in the child sex abuse scandal? These involved the grooming and sexual exploitation of several girls, aged in their early teens. The court heard how the men - eight of Pakistani origin and one from Afghanistan - gave their victims drink and drugs before passing them round for sex. Finally, officers did not challenge a Crown Prosecution Service decision not to prosecute. rochdale grooming case details. The patchy training of frontline staff was to blame for the way childrens social care responded to the victims, the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board (RBSCB) said in its review into child sexual exploitation after the trial. Abdul Rauf was sentenced to six years for trafficking for sexual exploitation and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children. Amber still sees those whom she says raped, beat and tortured her, out and about in Rochdale. [5] The girls were mainly White British. In 2012 nine men were sentenced for the abuse and exploitation of young, mostly white girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Willmer added: "We think this is the tip of the iceberg", although she cautioned against treating the matter as a race crime: "It's a criminal thing. At conservative gathering, Trump is still the favourite. On one occasion, she was picked up by police on the moors, miles outside Manchester, and told officers she told a man she did not want to sleep with him and he had taken her coat, thrown orange juice over her, and left her to walk home with no socks or shoes on. Officers on the Rochdale division were under pressure at the time to hit volume crime targets like bringing down the number of burglaries and were overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the grooming problem they had uncovered. 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