Report discovered

Liberal Democrat Paul Rowen, who took over from Coun Farnell – who was accused in the report of a ‘shameful’ failure to take responsibility.

“Mr Rowen bore considerable responsibility for the school as council leader from 1992 to 1996,” it concludes.

“As with Richard Farnell, he was prepared to blame others without acknowledging his own failures of leadership,” the report found.

●●POLICE AND PROSECUTORS

The report found no evidence of any coverup by any institution, including the police, who investigated the initial claims about Cyril Smith at Cambridge House in 1970 and did a ‘comprehensive’ job.

But their 80-page dossier on Smith was knocked back by the Director of Public Prosecutions, the predecessor to the Crown Prosecution Service, in just three days.

In the early 1990s, the report finds, the police did investigate the Smith Street abuse, although it is unclear why nobody was charged due to a lack of records. Had a better report been commissioned by the council at the time, the police may have more easily been able to act, it adds.

Later in the 1990s, allegations of abuse surfaced again and were looked at under Greater Manchester Police’s Operation Cleopatra.

The inquiry does not direct criticisms at GMP but does find the Crown Prosecution Service wanting.

“A valuable opportunity was lost in 1988 and 1999, not only to charge and to prosecute Smith during his lifetime but also for the complainants to seek justice,” it says. Nevertheless it was the CPS’s advice, not a ‘cover up’, that caused that failure, it finds.

●●THE VICTIMS

Ultimately the inquiry is fundamentally about the many victims who were abused in Rochdale between the 1960s and the 1990s, some of whom reported their suffering but were ignored.

Some of them ‘may have been very young indeed’, finds the report, which says that not only were they abused in residential care homes such as Cambridge House and Knowl View, but also ‘targeted on the streets of Rochdale’, which it says was a ‘compelling’ reason to investigate abuse in the town.

Many came forward and gave evidence to the inquiry under anonymity.

The report describes the backgrounds of the teenagers and young men who were offered places at Cambridge House in the mid-1960s, often in unhappy foster placements and wanting an escape.

One victim describes how Smith simply turned up one day at his home and offered him a place at the hostel – and says he was initially ‘happy’ there, but that things later took a darker turn.

Others experienced abuse straight away.

The children at Knowl View were vulnerable in a whole range of additional ways, some having autism, others with learning disabilities and mental health problems.

“We conclude that no individual, not any institution with responsibility for them, took decisive action to address what was happening to these exploited children,” it says.