Rochdale: The horror goes on
A shocking BBC drama relived the scandal of how nearly 50 under-age white girls were groomed and raped by a Pakistani gang. Ten years on, this investigation reveals abuse is STILL rife – and police are STILL hidebound by political correctness
The Tasty Bites takeaway on the outskirts of Rochdale is still open. It is has a different name now and is under new ownership. But some places can never escape their notoriety.
The takeaway on Market Street is such a place. The visceral details of what occurred in the dingy, nicotine-stained flat above the shop in Greater Manchester are not easy to forget once you know them.
This is where a 15-year- old girl was once lured by a hulking, middle-aged brute. ‘Look, you’re my b***h now — if you cross me, I’ll kill you,’ he told her. ‘It’s part of the deal.’
The ‘deal’ in question began when he started giving her free kebabs, chips, cheap vodka — anything she asked for — and ended with him yanking off her jeans on the bed, under a Disney clock on the wall, to ‘collect his part of the deal’. he urged her to call him ‘Daddy’ as he hauled himself on top of her.
The facts are there in the girl’s police state- ment. They were revisited in the most brutal fashion in the harrowing BBC drama Three Girls last week.
Nearly 50 under-age girls were groomed, raped and in some cases gang-raped at the Tasty Bites takeaway.
The victims were white, working class and predominantly from broken or chaotic homes. All but one of the perpetrators were originally from Pakistan. Most were married with children, respected in their community.
The scandal, which culminated in ringleader Shabir Ahmed (‘Daddy’) and eight accomplices, many of them taxi drivers, being jailed for a total of 77 years in 2012, was the subject of the three-part drama watched by around five million shocked viewers last week.
Just one disturbing question remained when the final credits rolled: could this kind of abuse still be happening in Rochdale?
Shockingly, according to our own inquiries in the former mill town over the past tragedy-filled week, the answer is ‘yes’. experts we spoke to in child protection confirmed what many have suspected for some time. But, even now, they remain fearful of going ‘on the record’.
After all, the levels of official denial that race or culture played any part in the Rochdale case run deep. Police have always insisted the girls were targeted because they were vulnerable, not because they were white.
They deny any accusations that, to quote former Labour MP Ann Cryer at the time, they were too ‘petrified of being called racist’ to pursue the likes of individuals such as the odious Shabir Ahmed.
A recent report commissioned by the Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner gives little cause for optimism.
The number of child sexual exploitation offences (‘grooming’) in Greater Manchester increased fivefold from 146 in 2013 to 714 in 2016, the study revealed.
Some 1,732 youngsters are currently identified as victims of exploitation or at risk of grooming — almost treble the figure from 2015.
But those figures don’t tell the whole story. Despite the rise in offences, the report acknowledges, grooming remains under-reported. even these latest sickening statistics could actually represent the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
Meanwhile, no details of ethnic backgrounds of offenders are given. The topic of race, in fact, is largely avoided, dismissed in a few sentences. ‘A small minority of British Pakistani men are criminal sex offenders as in other communities,’ the study concludes.
The statement is accurate but highly misleading in this context.
White men, acting alone, are responsible for most sex offences in the country.
But, judging by recent trials, street grooming gangs are disproportionately made up of a sub- section of British Pakistani society.
There have been at least 14 major trials, such as the ones in Rochdale and Rotherham; in Oxford, Derby, Leeds, Aylesbury, Telford, Banbury, Middlesbrough, Dewsbury, Carlisle, Burnley and Blackpool.
The prosecutions resulted in the conviction of 66 men, many from a Pakistani background. But even this figure does not reflect the true scale of a problem that liberal commentators are still shamefully reluctant to confront.
The ongoing inquiry in Rotherham alone — which is expected to run until 2018 — has already identified 300 ‘predominantly’ Asian suspects.
Yet, how many times is the word Pakistani even mentioned in the 146- page Crime Commissioner’s report? Just five.
A more realistic — some might say honest — assessment of the problem in Rochdale comes from individuals such as Liz Thirsk. She is a former Liberal Democrat councillor and the tireless campaigner behind the Rochdale- based group Parents Against Grooming.
her anecdotal evidence is alarming.
Only the other day she met a woman whose 14-year-old niece had used her mobile phone to call a taxi recently. After making the call, she gave the phone back to her auntie. About 30 minutes later the auntie received a call from the taxi driver. The taxi driver thought he was speaking to her niece. ‘hi, are you Ok,’ he inquired. ‘Do you want to come for a drink?’
Mrs Thirsk takes up the story. ‘The woman told him in no uncertain terms that this was not her niece’s phone and she was not a 14-year-old girl,’ she said. ‘As soon as the taxi driver heard her voice, he hung up.’
The taxi driver worked for one of the biggest cab firms in Rochdale. Most, if not all the drivers, are Pakistani men.
It is not an isolated episode. Mrs Thirsk, a 67-year-old grandmother, says that 12 men, all Pakistanis, are currently on bail on suspicion of grooming another girl, whose family have turned to her for help.
The girl is 15 now, but was 14 when she slipped through the net, like many of the girls who were violated at the Tasty Bites takeaway, after being placed in foster care.
‘She was staying out all night and not going to school,’ said Mrs Thirsk. ‘She ended up getting drink and drugs from these men in exchange for sexual favours.’
The girl is now back at home and, with the help of Mrs Thirsk, police are trying to piece together what happened to her.
Parents Against Grooming have been told of an isolated car park, off Bury Street, where young girls have apparently been seen getting into cars late at night.
‘The bottom line is that this is still going on,’ said Liz Thirsk. ‘It hasn’t stopped and in my opinion it is not going to be stopped as long as we choose to be politically correct and refuse to admit that we have got a cultural issue here with some Pakistani men.’
Rochdale, with a population of just over 200,000, is situated in the foothills of the Pennines. Around 10 per cent of the town is Pakistani British and it has one of the highest concentrations of asylum seekers (more than 1,000) in the country.
The town is consistently near the top of league tables measuring poor health, alcohol abuse and unemployment. Last year, Rochdale also topped a list of the Uk’s most struggling towns — ahead of Burnley, Bolton and Blackburn — compiled by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
It is a world the vast majority of victims of grooming gangs come from. Why? Because girls from such backgrounds are regarded as worthless and ‘easy’. But most of all,
Youngsters are seen getting into cars late at night ‘It won’t stop if we refuse to admit the cultural issue’
these poor, wretched girls are simply easily available.
For men like ‘Daddy’ Shabir Ahmed, from misogynistic backgrounds in rural Pakistan, conduct unthinkable with Muslim girls is somehow acceptable with white girls who they believe to be sullied and fair game for any man trapped in an unhappy arranged marriage.
The judge who presided over his trial said one of the reasons white girls were targeted was because they were not part of their ‘community or religion’.
Ahmed himself remains in prison after being given a 22-year sentence and is now engaged in a taxpayerfunded fight against deportation, claiming, with breathtaking irony, that the decision to strip him of his citizenship when he was convicted was a breach of his right to family life under the Human Rights Act.
For the record, Ahmed’s wife and four children have disowned him and have moved out of the family home, an imposing Victorian terrace overlooking a park in Oldham, according to someone who still lives in the street.
Only Ahmed, now 64 — who once worked as community adviser for Oldham Council — and one of his accomplices remain locked up. The rest of the gang are back on the streets of Rochdale.
They are not the only predators at large in the town, says former detective Maggie Oliver, who was instrumental in bringing Shabir Ahmed and his paedophile ring to justice.
Many of the alleged offenders named by victims were not officially recorded by detectives. ‘They are still out there right now in Rochdale,’ she says. ‘ I still support many of the girls and they tell me they’ve seen them.
‘Once a paedophile, always a paedophile in my book. This is still happening. It’s heartbreaking.’
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) would not comment on the claims but said they wanted to ‘reassure communities our priority is to protect children and young people, prosecute offenders and prevent further offences.’
The news that seven of the nine men in one of the biggest child abuse scandals in recent memory have returned to Rochdale after being released on licence or completing their sentence will do little to reassure them.
Among them is Abdul Rauf. Taxi driver Rauf, 48, a father of five, was a qari, reading the Koran for the congregation at Rochdale’s Bilal mosque. In court, he could be heard constantly praying under his breath.
Rauf wept when he admitted having sex with a girl in his VW Sharan cab. It had been a ‘mistake’, he insisted, claiming the girl looked ‘maybe 30’.
However, another girl, the prosecution’s main witness, told how she had been forced to have sex with him 20 or 30 times.
Rauf was given six years for trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children. His wife is standing by him.
A few weeks ago, Rauf was spotted visiting his family wearing a baseball cap and glasses to disguise his appearance. Neigh- bours called the police but were informed that he was entitled to visit his home on certain days under the terms of his licence.
Like Rauf, Abdul Qayyum was also regarded as a pillar of the community.
A fellow taxi driver, he later set up his own vehicle recovery business from his home. Father-oftwo Qayyum, 49, was given five years for conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child.
Qayyum had a nickname. His victims knew him as Tiger. Qayyum was released three months ago after serving his sentence.
He and his wife were recently seen in the street with suitcases packed. Neighbours say they flew to Pakistan with their young son and are not expecting them back.
Qayyum’s wife was not the only person to stand by him. Two local councillors, it emerged, gave character references for him in court, praising him for his hard work and how he had ‘fully adopted the British way of life’.
After the verdicts, the two politicians (one still serves on Rochdale Borough Council) issued public apologies for their ‘error of judgement’. Qayyum, they said, had betrayed their trust.
It wouldn’t be the first time, however, that such ‘mistakes’ have been made among some sections of the wider Muslim community.
Nazir Afzal, former Crown Prosecution Service chief for the North West took the decision to put ‘Daddy’ and all the others in the dock. But he also faced what he called ‘more subtle’ hostility from a minority of the Asian community.
He noticed Asian attendances dropping off at events where he would engage with the community. ‘Some boycotted me by not turning up at events,’ he said.
‘They said I had picked a subject which was a stick to beat the Muslim community. Some even accused me of being a coconut (that’s white on the inside to you and me).
All for prosecuting depraved individuals like ‘Daddy’ Shabir Ahmed. This, of course, is one of the reasons his reign of terror at the Tasty Bites takeaway lasted for so long. And it is undoubtedly the central reason for the continued failure of the authorities to admit such things are still going on in Rochdale and goodness knows how many other towns around the country.
‘Prosecuting the gang led to me being boycotted’