WHERE WERE THEY WHEN VICTORIA WAS BEING ABUSED?
● Police & social workers blasted by report into death of teen, 15 ● 97 ‘predominantly Asian’ suspects identified ...few faced justice ● Whistleblower calls for negligent cops to face charges
POLICE and social workers investigating child sex exploitation in Manchester knew children were suffering “the most profound abuse... but did not protect them”, a report has found.
After the death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia in 2003, police identified at least 97 “predominantly Asian” suspects, but “very few” faced justice, the independent review found.
The police operation was “prematurely closed down” after senior officers decided to “remove resources”, it said.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham commissioned the report, which focused on the death of Victoria and GMP’s subsequent Operation Augusta.
Victoria was in the care of Manchester City Council following the death of her mother.
The report found her carers were aware of her being subjected to “multiple threats, sexual assaults and serious sexual exploitation” and had been told that she was being “injected with heroin by an older Asian man [but] no action was taken by the police or social care”.
Victoria subsequently died “having been administered an overdose”, but the men who exploited her “have never been brought to justice”, the report said – adding that its authors had been denied access to files relating to Victoria by the Manchester coroner.
Heroin
At the time she died, Manchester Social Services said it had done everything possible to keep Victoria safe.
In 2004, 50-year-old Mohammed Yaqoob was cleared of Victoria’s manslaughter but admitted two offences of injecting her with heroin and was jailed.
Operation Augusta was set up to tackle “the sexual exploitation throughout a wide area of a significant number of children in the care system by predominantly Asian men”, the report said.
It identified at least 57 children “as potential victims” and up to 97 “persons of interest” involved in the crimes against them.
The report found the operation was ultimately “prematurely closed down... before it could complete its work”.
The report’s authors, childcare expert Malcolm Newsam and former Det Supt Gary Ridgeway, found eight men identified in the investigation had gone on to commit serious sexual offences – including rapes of girls aged under and over 16 – after the operation was ended and that one suspect vehicle was linked to a GMP officer, who was later dismissed from the force.
Victoria’s gran, Joan Agoglia, said she was lied to by the police and social workers at the time of her death, adding: “Where were they when Victoria was being abused?”
“I told them and I told them, Vicky came time and time again to me... and she told me herself what these men had done to her.”
Maggie Oliver, a former detective constable with GMP, was lead investigator on Operation Augusta.
Following what she describes as a ‘ coverup’ of the scale of the issue that she believes encompasses hundreds of perpetrators and countless victims, she blew the whistle and exposed the conduct of her own force.
She said: “I want the law changing so there can be retrospective accountability for people whose duty it is to protect the vulnerable.
“It’s knowing and deliberate neglection of duty. Those who were involved should be charged with gross misconduct – it’s criminal – where is the accountability?”