Police chief says ‘sorry’ to victims of grooming gang
Abused trio get ‘substantial’ payout
THREE women who were sexually abused by Rochdale grooming gangs have received a “substantial” payout from GMP after the Chief Constable admitted and apologised for “failures” made by the force.
Stephen Watson met the victims at GMP’S headquarters in north Manchester on Tuesday afternoon where he gave an in-person apology for the police failings in their cases.
The top officer acknowledged the force’s failure to protect the women, who were children when they were repeatedly raped and sexually abused by gangs of men in Rochdale.
Mr Watson also apologised for his predecessors’ errors in not investigating the abusers, a culture which happened under the previous Chief constables, including Sir Peter Fahy.
He told the women: “It is a matter of profound personal regret that your childhood was so cruelly impacted by the dreadful experiences which you endured. GMP could and should have done much more to protect you and we let you down.”
One of the three women was depicted as the character Ruby in the award-winning BBC dramatisation of the Rochdale grooming scandal - Three Girls.
In legal documents, Ruby, who is identified as BXW, states the abuse began aged 12 and continued for four years where she was passed “like a ball” between “thousands” of men for rape and sexual abuse.
She was impregnated by one man, Adil Khan, when she was aged 13 and had an abortion. Police seized the foetus as evidence, but she was not notified - and nor was her mother or any responsible adult.
The second woman, Amber, also depicted in the BBC drama in 2017, was aged 14 when the abuse began, according to her legal claim. She was first raped while intoxicated and thereafter raped and sexually assaulted by numerous men on numerous occasions, giving police the names or nicknames of 45 males who abused her or other children.
The third woman, Daisy, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, was only 12 when the abuse began. It continued for the next five years.
She was punched in the face and called a “white slag” by one of her abusers outside a pizza shop in Rochdale in 2006. But she was the one arrested for harassment.
On one occasion, she was picked up by GMP officers on the Moors miles outside Manchester. She had told a man she did not want to sleep with him, and he had taken her coat, thrown orange juice over her, and left her to walk home with no socks or shoes on.
Police drove her home and told her they could not do anything because they did not have the man’s name. Later police were called after she had been burnt repeatedly with a heated spoon when she refused to comply with the demands of a group of adult men.
When interviewed by the police, she was accused of inflicting the wounds on herself and arrested for disorderly behaviour. Her claim against GMP stated she was treated as a perpetrator not a victim.
“I don’t know if I believe that Greater Manchester Police have really changed their ways as they say they have, but I’m happy that they’ve taken into account their failings and there’s finally been some accountability,” she said after being awarded damages.
The women, backed by lawyers from the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) charity, brought a legal claim against GMP that said, according to legal documents, that from the early 2000s there was growing evidence from multiple allegations that gangs of predominantly Asian men were grooming, trafficking and sexually abusing predominantly white workingclass girls in Rochdale.
Lawyers for the three successfully argued their human rights were breached by GMP failing to protect them by putting a stop to the abuse.
This included failing to record crimes, investigate offenders, collect intelligence, or charge and prosecute abusers.
Instead of child victims of sexual abuse, the three were viewed by police as “bad” or “unreliable” witnesses and were sometimes arrested themselves while reporting abuse, the women said.
Though the abuse was happening “in plain sight”, a police operation to tackle the gangs was closed down abruptly in 2004, despite police and social services having the names of the men involved and their victims.
Eight years later, following a second major police investigation, Operation Span, nine men were convicted for sexual exploitation of children in Rochdale. The trial heard that girls as young as 12 were plied with alcohol and drugs and gang-raped in rooms above takeaway shops, and ferried to different flats in taxis where cash was paid to use them.
Another of the three women, Amber, said: “I feel like this is the first time I’ve really been seen and publicly recognised by authorities as an innocent child victim who needed protection.”
Former detective constable Maggie Oliver resigned from GMP in 2012 to turn whistle-blower over the force’s failings.
Ms Oliver, founder of the Maggie Oliver Foundation, a charity that supports and advocates for survivors of child sexual abuse, said: “I feel relieved that finally, after an all-consuming 10-year battle, GMP have at last acknowledged their horrific treatment of these three victims was wrong, even inhumane.”
Kate Ellis, a solicitor at the CWJ who acted for the three claimants, said: “We hope that today’s outcome will serve as a reminder to Greater Manchester Police, and other police forces, that they will be held to account if they fail to protect vulnerable children from exploitation and abuse.”
GMP settled the claim before the matter got to court.