A report into non-recent child sexual exploitation in Rochdale has slammed "widespread" and “deplorable” failures in tackling abuse gangs by the police and council workers from 2004 to 2013.

The review into the multi-agency response to child sexual exploitation in Rochdale was launched by Greater Manchester Combined Authority in 2017 after allegations made by Maggie Oliver, a police whistleblower, and Sara Rowbotham, a council worker, in a BBC documentary titled The Betrayed Girls.

Oliver and Rowbotham raised serious concerns that details of sexual exploitation reported by girls in Rochdale were not being followed-up by the relevant organisations, in particular Greater Manchester Police and Rochdale Council.

They alleged that “dozens” of cases of horrific abuses were reported but ignored, with several men accused of rape but not arrested or questioned by the police.

Oliver and Rowbotham both said that mistakes were not learned from and widespread abuse continued without police intervention.

Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham launched the review after the allegations shocked the nation.

The review team, comprised of Malcolm Newsam CBE and Gary Ridgway, was tasked with four areas to assess. The first, on the notorious failed police operation Augusta, was published in 2020. The review into Oldham Council was published in June 2022.

This report, its third, has found “compelling evidence” of “widespread organised sexual exploitation of children” in Rochdale from 2004 onwards and lamented several “deplorable” failings in reporting abuse, supporting victims, and secure justice.

Malcolm Newsam, the lead author, said: “During the period covered by this review, GMP and Rochdale Council failed to prioritise the protection of children who were being sexually exploited by a significant number of men within the Rochdale area.

He added: “Successive police operations were launched over this period, but these were insufficiently resourced to match the scale of the widespread organised exploitation within the area. Consequently, children were left at risk and many of their abusers to this day have not been apprehended.”

In several shocking examples across a wide-ranging period, it details multiple failures to adequately collect information about child sexual exploitation and act on it.

The report primarily covers a police operation called “Span”, which was eventually launched by GMP after original failures in investigating reports of sexual abuse made in 2008 and 2009 centering around two restaurants in Rochdale.

The police were found to have failed to sufficiently engage with the first allegations made by Child 41, a victim who has their anonymity protected, which led to the Crown Prosecution Service describing them as an “unreliable victim”.

Child 41 was arrested in August 2008 after damaging one of the restaurants where they were abused.

Despite four interviews and extensive testimony of abuse, the victim was deemed “not credible” and the CPS decided that the two men who raped her should be released.

Operation Span was then launched in December 2010, with Maggie Oliver tasked as a detective constable to engage with victims.

The CPS and GMP eventually apologised for their many failures in the initial investigation after nine men were finally convicted in 2012. Eight of the vile perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage, another was an Afghan asylum-seeker.

The gang’s ringleader, Shabir Ahmed, was convicted of 30 rapes and regularly accused the court’s proceedings as being racist.

At the time of the convictions, Span was described by GMP as “comprehensive and effective, mitigating threat risk and harm.”

But in a shocking new discovery, the review team has uncovered that another child also gave evidence that she had been sexually exploited at the same location as Child 41.

The report said: “She had also provided a statement setting out how she had been a witness to the exploitation of other children by the same men who had raped Child 41.

“The detective responsible for investigating her crime failed to focus on her disclosure and as a result insufficient effort was put into identifying the man who raped her.”

The review team concluded that “had this investigation been sufficiently resourced, and her complaints pursued with the rigour required, it may have strengthened the evidence to proceed with the prosecution,” referring to the CPS decision to drop the case.

In other assessment of Operation Span, the review slammed the “deplorable” disregard for a victim’s feelings after an aborted foetus was retained by GMP without requesting the consent of Child 44, aged just 13, nor her mother.

The report also found that Operation Span neglected several potential avenues of investigation and disruption of the abuse gangs, such as covert tactics and racially motivated crime.

The shortcomings in Span were found across the other investigations during the report’s term of reference, with GMP consistently failing to use other disruption tactics and new avenues for evidence to support charges.

It said: “There is only very limited evidence of GMP using child abduction warning notices and risk of sexual harm orders and very few examples of GMP liaising with the council’s licensing and environmental health departments to tackle the sexual exploitation of children within the taxi and restaurant industries,” despite these night-time economy industries being notorious for the prevalence of abuse associated with them.

In Operation Span, reviewers found just one record of an attempt to disrupt abuse gangs through liaison with relevant agencies, which was an engagement with Rochdale Counci’s licensing department taxi enforcement team.

The neglect of covert tactics was a “missed opportunity” that would have “almost certainly” raised the chances of success, the review added.

In its summary of the multitude of failures of Operation Span, the report concluded that GMP put “insufficient resources” into the investigation and closed it down prematurely.

It found that several perpetrators were free to continue abuse, putting many more children at risk of exploitation.

Maggie Oliver told the team that in 2011, GMP leaders became concerned that evidence from one victim, Amber, was likely to expand the investigation beyond the scope of its limited resources.

It added: “None of Amber’s evidence was entered as crimes against her on the police system and did not form part of the forthcoming Operation Span trial.”

In another “deplorable” example of GMP and the CPS failing victims, the report discussed the ‘tactical’ decision made in 2011 to name Amber as a co-conspirator in the sexual exploitation of other children and include her name on the indictment for the trial.

The lead barrister reportedly made the decision to ensure her evidence could be heard in court, despite the knowledge that she had been coerced by her abusers and was a victim herself.

The report slammed the lack of concern for how this would affect her and her family, adding that she was not informed of the process nor was any consideration given to assess the repercussions for her.

In 2022, the Chief Constable of GMP finally gave Amber a public apology for neglecting to investigate the crimes she suffered and not recognising her as a child victim.

Operation Span was heralded as a success after the convictions in 2012, but the report found that GMP leaders failed to acknowledge that the operation barely “scratched the surface” of the true extent of child sexual exploitation in Rochdale.

In a follow-up to Operation Span, called “Doublet”, which focused on just 10 children. Child 44 and Amber were not included, despite the significant evidence they had shared.

One girl, known as Child 3, had been providing evidence from 2004 and was still not included, despite being told during Operation Span that she would first be used as a witness before eventually investigating the crimes committed against her. The review said this decision was “particularly deplorable”.

Doublet’s remit eventually expanded to 260 potential victims, but the report found that just 90 had been approached.

Following the coverage of the 2012 Span trials, the abuse of girls in Rochdale was well-documented, but the relevant teams decided to not take the required action for the remaining 170 girls, unless they formally approached GMP, the report said.

This decision was eventually reversed in 2013 after coverage in the media.

Doublet had a “very high victim drop-out rate,” which the review team assessed was primarily due to insufficient resources to engage effectively with survivors.

Survivors were reportedly given just three opportunities to make a formal statement to the investigation. If a statement was not signed after three approaches, “they were required to sign a disclaimer to that effect,” a grave breach of victim-focussed approaches to investigating abuse.

Child victims throughout the timeline of Rochdale investigations were sometimes made to feel responsible for their abuse. In one case, a child was raped by a gang of “Asian” men in a park aged 13 and later kept in a house for further abuse by an “Asian man”.

A social worker said that her “choices and actions have ultimately led to her being involved in situations and having experiences that have exploited her level of immaturity and relative vulnerability.”

This survivor did not receive adequate police support, with no further action taken due to the girl not offering a statement.

She later gave birth to a child. The father — an adult who was referred to as her ‘pimp’ — did not face any police action. She was just 15-years-old at the time of the birth.

By June of 2013, just five victims were still engaging with Doublet. At the same time, some 52 perpetrators had been identified.

Requests for further staff to bolster the investigation were ignored, despite the pleas of the Senior Investigating Officer, with some detectives taken off the operation to assist with murder enquiries.

This approach, the report said, clashed with the public claims by GMP that investigations into abuse in Rochdale were a priority.

Doublet has seen the convictions of 30 men, with lengthy prison sentences handed down. But the report said that these trials included just 13 children, “a very small proportion of the children who were known to be sexually exploited in Rochdale over the period we have covered.”

Elsewhere, the report said it has identified at least 96 individuals who could pose a risk to children, warning that they believe this is “just a proportion of the individuals engaged in CSE over this period.”

Across all of the cases covered, the review found little evidence that GMP nor children’s services carried out risk assessments for the children of those charged nor any children they had contact with.

In one stark statement, it was recorded at a strategy meeting that a senior officer said: “None of the suspect's children are in danger and case conferences will not be held about them.”

Reviewing evidence from 2004 until the closure of Operation Span and the overlapping start of Operation Doublet, the review concluded from a sample of 59 children that there was a “significant probability” that 45 children had been sexually exploited.

Shockingly, of the 45 cases of likely abuse, the review could only provide assurance that three children were “appropriately protected by the statutory agencies.”

In 37 cases, they found “serious failures” to protect children.

The team then considered a further 52 children, bringing the total number of children being assessed by the review team to 111.

It also found “serious failures” to protect the children in 48 cases, from a “significant probability” that 74 of the children were being sexually exploited.

They found sufficient assurances of appropriate protection for just three children.

The report acknowledged that improvements have been made in tackling child sexual exploitation since the dates of their review, but it noted that despite these adjustments the response still fell far short of what was required at the time.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of abuse and organised exploitation of girls by rape gangs, GMP and Rochdale Council only established a multi-agency team in Rochdale in 2011. It was launched by just one “inexperienced police constable and a social worker with a large caseload.”

The review team has also revealed that lessons from the tragic death of Victoria Agoglia in 2003 and earlier investigation Operation Augusta, were not appropriately developed and learned from by GMP.

Elsewhere, the report said that in 2007, Rowbotham’s Crisis Intervention Team informed the police that an organised crime gang was exploiting “many children” in Rochdale, but GMP and its partners failed to sufficiently investigate.

The Crisis Intervention Team, headed by Sara Rowbotham, was briefed against in media reports and official reports as failing to adequately pass over information about abuse cases, a “misrepresentation” that the review team found “quite disturbing.”

Two serious case overview reports published by Rochdale Local Safeguarding Children’s Board in 2013 explicitly criticised the team for not follow procedure.

The authors of the overview reports provided a joint written statement to the report team “that did not directly address” its concerns. They declined to be interviewed by the review team.

By December 2013, some 260 potential victims had been referred by the Crisis Intervention Team.

Vindicating Rowbotham’s testimony, the report said the team was sharing “explicit testimony” ignored by GMP and Rochdale Council.

Rowbotham and her colleagues were “lone voices” in expressing concerns about abuse.

Details of abuse suffered by children throughout the report are harrowing, with references to violent sexual abuse, deliberate intoxication, widespread physical violence, and pregnancies through rape.

Other recorded abuse includes severe emotional and physical degradation.

In 2007, Child 16 reported having had sex with a man she believed was 19.

A member at the Crisis Intervention Team said she had suffered significant bruising on her back but refused to speak to the police.

In their meeting, the worker recorded that: “Child 16 went on to talk about the ‘Dangerous man, Nominal 47. There’re some girls they’ve got who they put in a cage and make them bark like a dog or dress like a baby ... they are perverts. I had to burn my sim card. They (residential staff) made me do it so that they (the men) couldn’t get in touch with me, they witnessed it.”
In another meeting in 2007, a Crisis Intervention Team member told a constable and sergeant that “there are a number of properties to which the girls go to entertain men.”

The worker detailed extensive abuse suffered by the girls, who were plyed with “alcohol and drugs eg amphetamines cocaine ecstasy and have had sex with some men there.”

The recording of the meeting added: “Many of the girls are reluctant to make a complaint because they feel these men are the only ones who care for them. There have been reports of girls being forced to have sex with men, serious sexual assaults and Physical assaults. Threats were made to one girl and her family. This girl was left on the moors in a state of undress and did not know how she got there.”

Many of the children who spoke to the team described typical predatory grooming procedures.

In one case, a child named a suspect “as one of her boyfriends he loves her and has bought her presents.”

In one interview, a Senior Investigating Officer in GMP said that his “only guess” for why taxis driven by “Pakistani-looking” men with a “female passenger” were not stopped was because “patrols were frightened of being tarnished with a race brush for doing it.”

The same SIO said: “I was concerned that we’d got these kids who had been raped by these Pakistanis in Rochdale who are, who have groomed them, who have given them food and drink, whatever else, free rides in taxis, I’m thinking at the time that they probably felt more love from these idiots than they were getting at home.”

Reacting to the report, Maggie Oliver said: “I will remain eternally grateful to Malcolm and Gary for doing such a thorough job in officially exposing the extent to which Greater Manchester Police (GMP) failed hundreds of vulnerable young girls, and the force’s deliberate attempts to hide this truth and cover up their failings. I am also grateful on a personal level as their report confirms the truth of what I have been saying for over 12 years, and that is so important to my own recovery.”

She added: “My overriding emotion though is one of anger. I am angry that not one Senior Officer or official has ever been held individually responsible for these failures, lies and cover ups.

“Despite this being institutional corruption, the report makes it clear that individuals were responsible for the decisions that were made. These decisions to not resource the investigations properly, were mostly because Senior Officers were not willing to dedicate resources to them.

“Repeatedly failing to prioritise them, to protect children and prosecute known abusers, whilst all the time publicly pretending they were doing a brilliant job! I knew then that was a lie … and yet it has taken over 10 years to finally have this publicly and officially acknowledged.”

In response to the report, Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said: “This report is hard to read. It gives a detailed and distressing account of how many young people were so seriously failed. That said, it fulfils the purpose of why I set up this review in the first place. It is only by facing up fully and unflinchingly to what happened that we can be sure of bringing the whole system culture change needed when it comes to protecting children from abuse.

Thanking Oliver and Rowbotham and Oliver for their courage, he added: “I decided to set up this review shortly after taking office in 2017 on the back of the serious allegation that lessons from failings in Manchester in the early 2000s, which led to the tragic death of Victoria Agoglia, were not learned and were subsequently repeated in Rochdale several years later. The report from the review team finds that this claim is accurate. That represents a serious failing by those in the Greater Manchester system at that time.”