‘Police officers acted without any shame, I felt it was wicked’
“WHAT I saw in Rochdale was police officers and senior cops acting without any shame because it was convenient to ignore the abuse they knew was happening. I felt it was wicked. If I can’t look myself in the mirror and feel proud of what I’m doing then it makes me as bad as them. So I had to make a stand for what I believed was right.”
Former Det Con Maggie Oliver speaks of how she resigned from GMP in disgust saying the force had failed the victims of the Rochdale sex grooming scandal.
Maggie had been central to the investigation and persuaded vulnerable and reluctant girls to give evidence against the paedophiles who had sexually abused them for years. But one of the victims she convinced to speak ended up being portrayed as a member of the grooming gang in the subsequent trial. Maggie felt betrayed, ashamed and resigned.
She became a whistleblower and a vocal critic of how police had mishandled the case. She has now worked with the BBC to dramatise her experience in Three Girls, which starts on BBC1 tomorrow.
And Maggie believes abuse is continuing in Rochdale.
“Don’t believe any of this rubbish that police have learned from their mistakes,” she says.
She worked on a child abuse investigation in 2004 which was a “virtual carbon copy of Rochdale” - men of largely Pakistani heritage abusing vulnerable white girls, in Hulme and Rusholme.
She gained the trust of victims, compiled evidence and identified the abusers. She says: “We also had social workers telling us they’d been trying to get the police to take this problem seriously for years. But not one offender was arrested or charged.
“I couldn’t believe it. It was as if none of it had ever happened.
“Nobody was ever able to explain to me why the case had been dropped. I wanted to know because I’ve got four kids of my own. I believe if you don’t prosecute paedophiles you are leaving them free to abuse children for decades to come. As a result, I swore I’d never get involved in a job like that again.”
But in November 2010, Maggie was asked to join Operation Span - an investigation into the abuse in Rochdale - and gain the trust of victims. She says: “I was given cast-iron guarantees that what had happened in 2004 would not happen again and I agreed to help.”
She says after six months’ work, she was told one of the victims would ‘not be used’ in the case.
“History was repeating itself,” says Maggie. “Even though she had been a victim, she was accused of being involved in the grooming. It was outrageous.
“She’d been the victim of abuse from the age of 14. It made me sick to my stomach. I’d been used. This vulnerable girl had been failed.”
Maggie later resigned. She says: “I was seeing senior officers in the force letting these girls down.
“They are more interested in covering up for mistakes instead of holding their hands up.”