Damning report finds 48 girls were "seriously failed" by GMP and Rochdale Council in being protected from sexual exploitation from 2004-2012
Date published: 15 January 2024
The findings of the review into Operation Span and the investigation of non-recent child sexual exploitation in Rochdale
As many as 48 girls in Rochdale were “seriously failed” by Rochdale Borough Council and Greater Manchester Police in being protected from sexual exploitation between 2004 and 2012, a damning independent review has found – with as many as 260 potential victims overall.
Published today (Monday 15 January), “The review into Operation Span and the investigation of non-recent child sexual exploitation in Rochdale” found that both agencies “seriously failed” the children who were groomed and sexually exploited in the borough from 2004 to 2013.
Today’s report, the result of a six-year-investigation, is part three of the overall review into the effectiveness of multi-agency responses to CSE commissioned by Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, following the airing of the 2017 BBC documentary, The Betrayed Girls, about child sexual exploitation in the region.
The review – split into four parts – is being led by child protection specialist, Malcolm Newsam CBE and former senior police officer, Gary Ridgway. The first considered Operation Augusta and the premature death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia. The second covered historic child sexual exploitation in Oldham.
The Rochdale review focused on the sexual exploitation of children in Rochdale between 2004 and 2012, specifically considering the allegations set out by both sexual health worker Sara Rowbotham and former GMP detective constable Maggie Oliver, who blew the whistle on the 2012 grooming scandal.
The report details how the emerging threat of child sexual exploitation was not addressed between 2004 and 2007, noting the multiple failed investigations by police and lack of response from Rochdale Borough Council to the many girls, who were mainly white and of a poor background, who all identified as potential victims of abuse by Asian men.
Both women have been vindicated in the report’s findings as it concludes there was “compelling evidence” of widespread, organised sexual abuse of children in Rochdale from 2004 and that the Crisis Intervention Team where Sara worked had shared “explicit information with the local authority,” contrary to a 2013 report by the Rochdale Local Safeguarding Children Board which explicitly criticised Sara and the Crisis Intervention Team for ‘not following child protection procedures and for not communicating appropriately with other agencies’.
After looking at the cases of 111 children in the Rochdale borough, the authors found there “was a significant probability that 74 of these children were being sexually exploited at that time, and in 48 of those cases, there were serious failures to protect the child.”
It also said as many as 96 men were still deemed to be a potential risk to children in 2013.
Malcolm Newsam, lead author, said: “This review was initiated following the serious allegations made by both Maggie Oliver and Sara Rowbotham and we have found through this review their allegations to be substantiated.
“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. We have also concluded that Sara Rowbotham was unfairly criticised by the two serious case reviews for not having appropriately referred children at risk of exploitation.
“For several years, Sara Rowbotham and her colleagues were lone voices in raising concerns about the sexual exploitation and abuse of these children. Both GMP and Rochdale Council failed to respond appropriately to these concerns, and it has been a gross misrepresentation to suggest that the Crisis Intervention Team in some way was complicit with this failure and to tarnish the reputation of this small group of professionals.
“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 response to the report, Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said that whilst “hard to read” due to its “detailed and distressing account of how many young people were so seriously failed”, it “fulfils the purpose of why I set up this review in the first place.”
He continued: 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.
“I would like to thank those who have had the courage to come forward and share what happened to them. We know how difficult it must have been and still is. We are sorry that you were so badly failed by the system that should have protected them.
“I would also like to praise those who blew the whistle on their behalf, particularly Sara Rowbotham and Maggie Oliver, and for the support they have provided to them ever since. That took huge courage and determination and we thank them for it.
“The Deputy Mayor and I will personally ensure that support continues to be in place for all the victims of this appalling abuse and the organisations who support them.
“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.
“I have asked Greater Manchester Police and Rochdale Council to ensure that every possible action is taken to follow up any leads arising from this report and to pursue any potential perpetrators.
"More broadly, we will now proceed to the fourth and final stage of this process which will seek to answer the original question which I set at the start: whether the Greater Manchester public can have confidence in the arrangements in place now for protecting children from sexual abuse.
"The events described in this report took place over 10 years ago and things have changed considerably in that time. Recent Ofsted inspections have found the way children at risk of sexual exploitation are protected by Rochdale's children’s services has improved, and GMP have a specialist child sexual exploitation unit.
“But there can no complacency on this of all issues, and that is why we continue to challenge ourselves and will not rest until we have independent assurance that today's arrangements are robust."
CSE in Rochdale
The report details how the emerging threat of child sexual exploitation was not addressed between 2004 and 2007.
In 2007, due to escalating concerns, the Crisis Intervention Team alerted GMP and Rochdale Council to the presence of an alleged organised crime group believed to be dealing in child sexual exploitation in Rochdale and using these children to facilitate the gang’s illicit dealing in Class A drugs.
The Crisis Intervention Team identified at least 11 children they believed had been sexually exploited by this gang of Asian men.
GMP and Rochdale Council chose not to progress any investigation into these men. The review concludes this was a “serious failure” to protect these children. Although a small-scale police investigation started in 2007, run by a single detective, this did not look at the organised crime groups that were suspected to be exploiting children, and the investigation resulted in no charges or convictions.
In 2008, a child was arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage at a takeaway in Rochdale. Following her arrest, this child disclosed that she had been raped and sexually assaulted by staff at the takeaway restaurant in Rochdale.
From August 2008 to July 2009, the first investigation failed to bring forward any charges.
The report concludes that this investigation identified widespread sexual exploitation of many vulnerable children by at least 30 adult perpetrators. This was a complex inquiry and needed to be resourced accordingly, but the additional resources were not provided.
Consequently, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) determined that the main victim, was an unreliable witness and the available forensic evidence was problematic.
Both the CPS and GMP apologised for this failure in 2012, after the conviction of the Operation Span defendants.
However, the review team discovered that another child had also given evidence that she had been sexually exploited at the same venues. She had also provided a statement setting out how she had been a witness to the exploitation of other children by the same men.
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 states 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.
Operation Span
It was not until December 2010 that these matters were re-investigated by Operation Span leading to the conviction of nine men in May 2012. This operation was described at the time by GMP as “comprehensive and effective, mitigating threat risk and harm.”
However, the report has found that Operation Span was a relatively limited offender-focused investigation that primarily addressed a small number of perpetrators who had not been prosecuted following the earlier disclosures in 2008.
The review has also found that during this operation numerous crimes were reported by a child victim, ‘Amber’, who disclosed that she had been a victim of sexual exploitation and violent abuse for several years.
She was formally designated a victim under Operation Span, but these crimes were not recorded by GMP even though she had provided significant evidence over a six-month period. The report concludes that these perpetrators were potentially left to continue their abuse of other children.
In December 2011, the CPS in consultation with GMP, decided to name Amber as a co-conspirator in the sexual exploitation of other children and included her name on the indictment for the trial. This was a legal tactical decision by the lead barrister for the prosecution to ensure the jury heard Amber’s critical evidence to the case.
Amber was never informed of this decision and was unable to defend herself against these allegations which she has always denied. No consideration was given to how the decision would affect Amber personally or what the repercussions of the decision might be for her family.
By naming her as a co-conspirator, the review team believed there was a foreseeable risk to her and her family’s personal safety that was either ignored or not considered. The review team regard this failure to protect a vulnerable victim as deplorable.
In total, the review considered the cases of 111 children for whom information was held on file during this time and, for each child, looked at whether there was evidence they were being sexually exploited, and whether any abuse was appropriately addressed by agencies including GMP and Rochdale Council.
The review found there was a significant probability that 74 of these children were being sexually exploited at that time, and in 48 of those cases, there were serious failures to protect the child.
They also found that lessons from the tragic death of Victoria Agoglia in 2003 and from Operation Augusta, which ended in 2005 and were related to offending that took place in Manchester, were not followed through by GMP.
CSE continued to be “treated as a low priority and under-resourced” by GMP, the authors said.
Other report findings
The review also found that the two serious case overview reports published by Rochdale Local Safeguarding Children Board in 2013 explicitly criticised Sara Rowbotham and the Crisis Intervention Team for not following child protection procedures and for not communicating appropriately with other agencies.
However, this review has established that, by October 2012, the multi-agency CSE strategy group chaired by GMP was aware of approximately 127 potential victims referred by the Crisis Intervention Team to children’s social care that had not been acted on over the years.
This figure later grew to 260 potential victims. This information was “clear to all the partners three months before the publication of the serious case review overview reports in December 2013.”
In contrast, the review has found compelling evidence to support the view that the Crisis Intervention Team was sharing explicit information with the authorities on the exploitation of multiple children.
The terms of reference for this review did not extend beyond December 2013.
However, in November 2023 GMP provided the review team with a schedule of convictions resulting from the three major operations that occurred after the conclusion of Operation Span. These were Operation Routh, Operation Doublet and Operation Lytton.
In total 30 men had been convicted, and most received lengthy prison sentences. This is a significant number of successful convictions and the report acknowledges the considerable amount of effort that was dedicated to achieving these successful convictions.
However, the review team has noted that these trials only included 13 children in total, and just six of these were previously known to the Crisis Intervention Team and are included in the 74 children believed by the review team to have been sexually exploited, a very small proportion of the children who were known to be sexually exploited in Rochdale over the period the review has covered.
What has changed?
Since early 2012, Greater Manchester Police and Rochdale Council have overhauled the way they prevent and respond to child sexual exploitation to ensure that victims and survivors are cared for and receive the expected level of service.
Whilst criminal justice outcomes are one aim of investigations and operations, through the Complex Safeguarding Hub also known as The Sunrise Team which co-locates police with local authority and health service colleagues, the partnership has refined the focus on the safeguarding of vulnerable young people and the prevention and reduction of exploitation.
The team also run proactive operations to educate communities, identify potential victims and offenders, and close gateways to child sexual exploitation.
For example, under Operation Cobalt, the team visits hotels and taxi companies to educate staff on the signs of child sexual exploitation and how to report concerns to GMP or Rochdale Council.
Under Operation Vigilant, the team responds to intelligence gathered from key sources within communities to identify potential victims and offenders to enable early intervention. In 2023, the team conducted seven days of action resulting in the seizure of 4,733 illegal vapes – which intelligence suggests are sometimes being used to groom vulnerable young people.
Just last year, an Ofsted report regarding Rochdale Council - including the Complex Safeguarding Hub - was published and confirmed that ‘children at risk receive an effective response from the dedicated Sunrise team’.
When crimes are identified or reported, the partnership designs and implements bespoke care plans to ensure victims and survivors are offered specialist support from the outset. Engagement is led by trained staff, who have experience of building rapport with people abused in childhood.
At the right time, suspect-focused and evidence-based investigations – like operations Doublet, Routh, and Lytton – then progress, with the support of the force’s Child Sexual Exploitation Major Investigation Team, to ensure they are reflective of the best practice recognised by The Hydrant Programme and National Association of People Abused in Childhood.
Significant progress has also been made through Operation Lytton, which is investigating non-recent multi-victim multi-offender child sexual exploitation in Rochdale between 2000 and 2008. So far, 37 suspects have been charged with 303 offences.
In 2023, five were convicted of 22 offences and sentenced to a combined total of 71.5 years imprisonment.
An additional 29 suspects are scheduled to go on trial in 2025.
Parts 1 and 2: Operation Augusta and Oldham Council – and Part 4
The findings of the first report – about Operation Augusta – were published in January 2020, and the second, commissioned by Oldham Council in 2019, into allegations of historic CSE in Oldham, published on 20 June 2022.
Operation Augusta was launched by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) following the death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia.
Originally from Rochdale, Victoria was placed in the care of Manchester City Council at the age of eight. The teenager sadly died of an overdose in 2003 after years of abuse, just days after she was forcibly injected with heroin by a 50-year-old man.
Victoria's death led to the launch of Operation Augusta, a 2004 police and social services investigation into child sexual exploitation in South Manchester which identified almost 100 potential suspects and over 50 potential victims of child sexual exploitation.
However, the investigation was closed down in 2005 to free up resources.
Whilst the report states there is "much to be commended" in Operation Augusta, it found that it had not addressed the issue it was set up for: to tackle the sexual exploitation of a number of children in the care system.
The review team’s judgement was that this was driven by a decision to remove resources from the investigation rather than a sound understanding that all lines of enquiry had been successfully completed or exhausted.
The review team concluded that they could offer no assurance that appropriate action was taken by Greater Manchester Police or the responsible local authority to address the risk in relation to 16 children in their sample including Victoria Agoglia.
Very few of the relevant perpetrators were brought to justice and neither were their activities disrupted, although there were eight criminal justice outcomes in total. Seven were prosecutions relating to police investigations and one was an immigration outcome.
Off the back of this review, a new investigation under Operation Green Jacket was opened by GMP, which encompasses both Victoria Agoglia’s case and those involved in Operation Augusta.
This in turn also spawned another new investigation, Operation Exmoor.
Part 2, the Oldham report, looked at the way authorities have dealt with child sexual exploitation in Oldham between 2011 and 2014, and one specific case dating back to 2005.
It uncovered that Shabir Ahmed, the ringleader of the 2012 Rochdale grooming gang, worked as a welfare officer in Oldham unchecked for a year – despite being accused of serious child sexual abuse.
Ahmed’s links to Oldham and the council had been investigated as part of the review, which has uncovered ‘serious failures’ in how authorities dealt with the predator.
The report found that there was a “significant allegation” of child sexual abuse made to police in 2005 against Ahmed whilst he was working at Oldham Council.
This occurred three years before he was arrested in relation to the widespread grooming and gang rape in Rochdale, which also saw abused girls let down by police and social services.
The final report (part four) will consider current practice across Greater Manchester to address the risk of child sexual exploitation, and an analysis of the current processes in place under Greater Manchester Complex Safeguarding Hub. It will also look at the GMP Operations to tackle CSE that have happened more recently: Operation Green Jacket, Operation Bernice, Operation Sherwood and Operation Exmoor.
Now that the part three report has been published, the review team can focus on completing part four, which is expected to be ready for publication by the summer.
Help and support
If you suspect someone of committing CSE or believe someone you know may be a victim, you can report it to GMP via LiveChat at gmp.police.uk or by calling 101. In an emergency, dial 999.
The public can contact Rochdale Borough Council with any concerns or questions on 0300 303 0323, CSEreview@rochdale.gov.uk, or find information at www.rochdale.gov.uk/ChildProtection.
Greater Manchester Victims’ Services provides support for all victims of reported and unreported crime in Greater Manchester. The service is available weekdays from 8am to 8pm and Saturdays from 9am to 5pm via phone: 0800 876 6155 or email: GMVictims@catch22.org.uk.
Saint Mary's Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Manchester provides a comprehensive and co-ordinated response to men, women and children who live or have been sexually assaulted within Greater Manchester. They offer forensic medical examinations, practical and emotional support as well as a counselling service for all ages. Services are available on a 24-hour basis and can be accessed by calling 0161 276 6515.
Greater Manchester Rape Crisis is a confidential information, support and counselling service run by women for women over 18 who have been raped or sexually abused at any time in their lives. Call on 0161 273 4500 or email help@manchesterrapecrisis.co.uk
We Are Survivors provides specialist trauma informed support to male victims in Greater Manchester who have experienced sexual abuse, rape or sexual exploitation. Call 0161 236 2182.
If you are struggling to cope or having suicidal thoughts, call the Samaritans 24/7 on 116 123.
The Maggie Oliver Foundation provides emotional support and legal advocacy to survivors and those at risk of child sexual exploitation - The Maggie Oliver Foundation - Helping Survivors of Abuse.
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