‘Horrific rape case of Sophie failed by police is not unique’
FORMER DETECTIVE AND WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS READING DAMNING REPORT ON COPS WAS LIKE ‘GROUNDHOG DAY
THE HORRIFIC case of a 12-yearold girl who was raped by strangers and let down by authorities in Oldham is ‘not unique,’ says the exdetective who has repeatedly blown the whistle on child abuse failings.
Maggie Oliver, a former detective constable with Greater Manchester Police (GMP), resigned from her job claiming that the force had failed the victims of the Rochdale sex grooming scandal.
She has since been instrumental in Mayor Andy Burnham’s decision to launch a wide-reaching assurance review looking into failures in how police and social services protected vulnerable girls.
The first part of that review, published in 2020, focused on the abandoned ‘Augusta’ police operation which was investigating abuse by mainly Pakistani men in the Rusholme area of Manchester.
The authors, Malcolm Newsam and Gary Ridgway, proved that the force closed down the operation despite knowing that scores of potential paedophiles were preying on vulnerable girls.
Now the second part focusing on Oldham and how services handled allegations of child sexual exploitation and protected children, has been published.
Its damning findings are all too familiar for Maggie, who describes reading it as being like ‘groundhog day.’
During 2005 to 2006, and 2011 to 2014, the report has found that vulnerable children in the borough were being exploited and let down by institutions which tried and failed to protect them.
In an individual case, the review found that Sophie – not her real name – fell into the hands of predators after trying to report a sexual assault at Oldham police station, which led to a further 24 hours of torment in which she was raped repeatedly.
Only two men were ever arrested over Sophie’s ordeal which took place in October 2006.
The one man to be jailed for his crime, Shakil Chowdhury named two other men involved in the rapes of Sophie as part of his mitigation. GMP were told their names, but did not follow them up at the time. One of the men was later convicted of attempting to murder his wife.
The review team said Sophie was ‘shocked and dismayed’ that GMP had ‘not pursued these lines of investigation’ and had not shared the information with her.
Maggie says the findings of the report show there were ‘catastrophic failings’ in how the force handled the investigation into the attacks on Sophie.
“I took Sophie to read her chapter in this review and she fell apart when she read that for 15 years GMP had known the identities of another two of her rapists and yet that was the very first time she found that out,” she explained.
“Victims are put through the mill time and time again and we need it to change because it destroys lives. This report shows yet again the lengths to which these organisations will go.
“Sophie is a case that we know, Sophie is by no means a unique case. This is going on all the time and it’s very rare that a victim is heard in this way.
It’s buried by these organisations.
“It’s shocking that so many of the things that came out in the report should have been known right from day one. Basic investigative paths should have been followed from the start but they were not followed.
“There have been errors and failures all the way through. It shouldn’t have taken 15 years for that to be acknowledged. Delays can lead to further abuse.”
Maggie said information known by the police was hidden from Sophie, and internal GMP investigations which had found no failures were ‘not worth the paper they’re written on.’
“Where is the accountability?” she added. “I really think trust in these organisations is broken.
“Rape and child abuse is almost becoming decriminalised because prosecutions are so low that even the figures now of reported rape, less than two per cent reach court. That’s without all those, like Sophie’s, which have not been recorded.”
However she said that she has not given up hope of trying to improve the situation for survivors of abuse, both in victim care and developing best practice when investigating these ‘life-destroying’ crimes.
For the past six months the foundation has been speaking to GMP about a number of cases similar to Sophie’s.
But Maggie says she doesn’t want to be part of a ‘talking shop’ – she needs action now.
“We’ve referred 33 serious cases through to very senior officers where victims and survivors are coming to us saying they do not believe their cases are being dealt with properly,” she adds.
“Of those 33 cases we have only seen a resolution on one of those cases.”
One of the authors of the Oldham report, Gary Ridgway is a former detective superintendent. He said: “A culture that allows middle managers to say we’re no longer taking on multiple rapes of a 12-year-old child because the resources aren’t there and just to push that away, that’s unhealthy and that for me – if it had been picked up properly and there had been a full investigation I think that would have saved Sophie so much heartache over the years.”