The intervention from Elon Musk this week has reignited discussion about grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation in the UK. Some of the claims made have sparked allegations that the media and politicians have been part of a cover-up, that reporting has been limited and that institutions and politicians have failed to respond to the issue. In this piece Jo Timan details the history of the grooming gang scandal in Greater Manchester and how the Manchester Evening News has reported on it for more than a decade.
In September 2003, a 15-year-old girl from Rochdale died from a suspected heroin overdose.
Victoria Agoglia had been placed in the care of Manchester council at the age of eight and it was later revealed that social workers knew she had been taking drugs and engaging in what they referred to at the time as ‘prostitution‘ for years. Her death led to a police investigation, Operation Augusta, aimed at finding out if there was a wider problem of child sexual exploitation in south Manchester.
Officers soon identified a network of nearly 100 Asian men linked to takeaways in and around Rusholme who were potentially involved in the abuse of scores of girls. But the operation was shut down by Greater Manchester Police shortly after in 2005 due to ‘resources’.
It was around that time, 30 miles away in Yorkshire, when Labour MP Ann Cryer first raised concerns about young white girls being sexually exploited by older Asian men in Keighley. She feared that raising the issue publicly would lead to her being branded a ‘racist’ and embolden the British National Party – but she would later find out that it was happening in towns and cities all over the country.
Over the next decade, details of what became known as the grooming gangs scandal would emerge. In October 2010, the Manchester Evening News learned of a police probe into the abuse of girls in Rochdale and, months later, we were among the first to report on it.
The following year, nine men from Rochdale and Oldham, eight of whom were of Pakistani heritage, were convicted of being part of a child sexual exploitation ring linked to takeaways in Greater Manchester. In the years that followed, more men would be convicted.
Several local, regional and national inquiries were launched, each one uncovering huge failings by the authorities responsible for protecting vulnerable children. Some believe further inquiries are still needed to uncover the truth, while others want action now.
In the last week, the world’s richest man has unceremoniously waded in on the debate too. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is in the inner circle of incoming US present Donald Trump, has criticised the government for rejecting calls from Oldham for a new inquiry.
Mr Musk has posted obsessively about it on X – the social media platform he owns previously called Twitter – calling Keir Starmer ‘complicit’ and his minister Jess Phillips a ‘rape genocide apologist’. He has also amplified voices accusing the media of a ‘cover-up’.
At first, there was undoubtedly a reluctance to report on the pattern of predominantly Pakistani-origin men abusing young white girls with many fearing that it would inflame racial tensions. It’s a fear the Times journalist Andrew Norfolk who spent years investigating the scandal admits he had when reflecting on why it took him five years to look into the claims about grooming gangs in the North.
But as the serious failings of authorities have been exposed over the last 15 years, it became clear their inaction was not simply about fears of racism – the young girls from poor backgrounds who were being abused were not taken seriously. Here is how it all unfolded.
Rochdale.
Rochdale
Police began to investigate child grooming in Rochdale almost by accident. The probe began after a local teenager was arrested for smashing up a cabinet at the Balti House takeaway in the summer of 2008.
But in the custody suite, the vulnerable girl revealed how she was being systematically abused and raped by a group of men. She provided police with a detailed account of the abuse as well as evidence including her underwear, which carried traces of one of her attackers’ DNA.
Two members of the gang – the gang’s ringleader Shabir Ahmed and Kabeer Hassan – were arrested and released on bail. But the investigation, according to one officer who was involved, was a ‘car crash’.
Officers on the Rochdale division were under pressure at the time to hit ‘volume crime’ targets, like bringing down the number of burglaries, and were overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the problem. More than that, the alleged abusers were Asian men picking on vulnerable white girls and there were fears that police bosses seemed reluctant to grasp the nettle for fear of being branded racist.
It took police 11 months to compile a file of evidence for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) – after interviewing her on four separate occasions. On one of those interviews a police officer can be heard yawning while repeatedly asking why she had put herself in such a vulnerable position.
And then, in July 2009, an ‘experienced’ CPS lawyer ruled the victim was ‘not credible’ and decided that the two men who raped her should be released without charge.
The abuse of the girls continued until May 2010 – 10 months after the case was dropped – when police decided to revisit the investigation after a Rochdale youth project raised concerns about other complaints. A new investigation, dubbed Operation Span, was instated, including Detective Constable Maggie Oliver whose task was to convince the victims to speak to the police.
In October 2010, the M.E.N. learned about the investigation and when we approached GMP, the force asked us to postpone our story until they had spoken to all the alleged victims and re-assure them about the publicity the case would generate. We eventually published a few months later.
Nazir Afzal, the newly-appointed chief crown prosecutor for the North West, reversed the decision not to prosecute the two who had been arrested and eventually authorised the charging of ten men in June 2011. Nine of them were convicted following an 11-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court in May, 2012 – but police revealed that they believed the gang may have had as many as fifty members.
Following the trial, Greater Manchester Police, Rochdale council and the CPS apologised for failures that allowed the gang to abuse girls for two years after the crime was reported. Later that year, a Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board report found that social workers, police and prosecutors missed opportunities to stop a child exploitation ring abusing young girls in the town.
Deficiencies in the way children’s social care responded to the victims’ needs were caused by ‘patchy’ training of frontline staff, according to the 29-page report into child sexual exploitation. Two months later, Sara Rowbotham, a sexual health worker who had made 181 referrals about young people she thought were being groomed for sex in Rochdale, told the Home Affairs select committee in Parliament that girls continued to be groomed despite the police investigation and sweeping changes to how things were handled.
In March 2013, Mrs Oliver resigned from GMP in disgust, claiming that men who abused young girls were still walking the streets. The former detective also accused prosecutors of failing to use evidence to convict others aside from the nine who were eventually jailed.
Later that year, a 136-page independent report into Child Sexual Exploitation Issues at Rochdale Council was published. It said there was a culture of complacency and former chief executive Roger Ellis ‘did not appear to be interested in children’s social care issues’.
A serious case review later found that widespread sexual abuse of vulnerable young girls in Rochdale could have been avoided if the authorities had acted sooner. It found police, social workers, health workers and the CPS failed to grasp the scale of child sexual exploitation in the town and that they ‘struggled to empathise’ with the girls, partly because they were from ‘poor backgrounds’.
Rochdale Town Centre
In March 2015, GMP’s investigation into the Rochdale grooming scandal was published after a four-year probe. Seven officers were served with misconduct notices and all received management advice – but none were none were disciplined.
One Detective Inspector was found to have a case to answer for but retired before the inquiry could be completed. In all it is thought this report went through nine re-drafts after the previous two reports submitted by the police force were rejected by the Independent Police Complaints Commission because they were ‘lacking in detail’ and ‘failed to cover key areas’.
Eight months later, it was announced that Rochdale would be one of 12 areas subject to investigation as part of an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. The national review was first announced by the then home secretary Theresa May in July 2014.
In May 2017, the stories of victims in the Rochdale grooming scandal were depicted in BBC drama Three Girls. The three-part series starring Maxine Peake was followed by a damning documentary – Betrayed Girls – which aired on the BBC two months later.
It was after watching these programmes that Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham commissioned his own independent inquiry. Following reports into child sexual exploitation in Manchester and Oldham, the independent assurance review, which was led by child protection specialist Malcolm Newsam CBE and former senior police officer Gary Ridgway, published a report on Rochdale last January.
The review team said it found ‘compelling evidence’ of ‘widespread organised sexual exploitation’ of children in the town between 2004 and 2012. The report identified ‘at least’ 96 individuals ‘who potentially’ posed a risk to children – and despite numerous convictions, it found that 68 further ‘remaining’ children believed to have been abused were still said to be waiting for justice.
Damningly, the report went on to find GMP and the council had ‘a clear understanding of the prevalence of [child sexual exploitation] within the borough’ at the time, but failed to learn lessons from the death of teenager Victoria Agoglia and the failed police operation in south Manchester that followed. According to the report, a dedicated unit to tackle child sexual exploitation – staffed by just one constable and a social worker with a large caseload – wasn’t established in the town until January 2011 ‘despite the clear evidence that organised crime gangs had been sexually exploiting children in Rochdale for many years’.
Responding to the report at the time, chief constable Stephen Watson admitted that GMP ‘messed up’ on historic cases of child sexual exploitation in Rochdale and apologised for the failings. But appearing alongside Mr Watson at a press conference, Mrs Oliver – the former GMP detective turned child sex abuse campaigner – claimed that ‘failures that happened then are still happening now’.
Late last year, Mr Burnham issued an update on GMP’s investigations into grooming gangs in the city-region. The Greater Manchester mayor said Operation Lytton, which is looking at cases in Rochdale, has seen 96 arrests, five people convicted and sentences to a cumulative total of 71 years in prison with three further trials scheduled this year where 26 defendants face over 200 charges.
However, more than a decade after nine men were convicted for their part in the Rochdale grooming gangs, a row over whether some will be deported to Pakistan continues after claims this would breach their human rights. Multiple legal challenges by three of the men who were due to be deported means that, for years, their victims have been bumping into their abusers in the town.
Manchester City centre skyline.
Manchester
The stories of the Rochdale grooming victims which were told in the BBC documentary Betrayed Girls led Greater Manchester’s mayor to commission his own inquiry into how the matter was handled. The first report from this review was published in January 2020.
The report found that children were raped and abused by up to 100 members of a south Manchester grooming gang two decades ago – but despite police and social workers knowing what was happening, they weren’t stopped. It also considered the death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia, also known as Victoria Byrne, in September 2003 who had been in the care of Manchester council at the time.
She died of a drugs overdose two months after reporting that she had been raped and injected with heroin by an older man. After her death, Operation Augusta was set up to see if there was a wider problem of child sexual exploitation in areas of south Manchester.
Officers working on the investigation amassed details, including phone numbers, car registrations plates and locations, of nearly 100 ‘persons of interest’ – a network of older predominantly Pakistani men suspected to be using takeaway premises in south Manchester as a base to abuse young girls in the care system. The abusers had been operating ‘in plain sight’ of the authorities, the review found, picking up girls from care, taking them to sex parties and returning them – and in some cases, allowed to visit them in care homes.
Multiple girls had told both social services and police officers of harrowing sexual exploitation, of being paid for sex and plied with hard drugs. It took less than four months, between February and May 2004, for an initial police scoping report to identify not only a huge network of suspects but at least 26 potential victims, more than half of whom were prepared to cooperate, the review found.
But the short-lived operation that followed had ‘fundamental’ flaws in its resourcing from the start. Its small team – several of whom were not trained detectives, while others were having to juggle the investigation with other cases – initially couldn’t even find space in a police station and was eventually placed at a syndicate in Wythenshawe, with one detective recalling feeling like an ‘annoying add-on’ at a time when several major murders and an ongoing gangland crisis were sapping GMP’s major incident resources.
Tensions simmered over which division should provide staff and money while the senior investigating officer was also keenly aware of the Operation Cleopatra investigation in the late 1990s, a GMP probe into abuse in care homes that had become much larger than expected. According to the review, the terms of reference for Operation Augusta ‘were kept deliberately tight’ due to ‘resources’.
And then, in April 2005, while the late Michael Todd was Chief Constable, a decision was made to abruptly close it. The review – despite requesting detailed information from Greater Manchester Police – was unable to identify who had taken the decision.
The closure of Augusta on July 1, 2005, was effectively the end of police inquiries into a suspected 100-strong Manchester paedophile ring for the best part of 15 years. In the time that had elapsed since, at least eight of the men identified in the operation went on to commit serious sexual crimes, including the rape of a child, the rape of a young woman, sexual assault and sexual activity with a child.
For years afterwards, Mrs Oliver, who worked on the operation, could not get its implications out of her head. The GMP detective, who had personally built up a relationship with many of the victims, had left work to go on compassionate leave in March 2005.
She returned a few months later to find ‘it was as if Operation Augusta had just disappeared as if it had never even existed, none of the serious sexual offending had been addressed, and no one prosecuted’. Before she resigned from the force in 2011, Mrs Oliver said she found it impossible to track down the records of ‘hours and hours’ of interviews that she had personally conducted with victims.
Mrs Oliver also says she was repeatedly undermined by senior officers at GMP and dismissed as an ‘emotional woman’ for raising it. Her calls were ignored – as were those of Victoria Agoglia’s grandmother, who had been calling for the case to be reviewed by the force.
It was well into 2019 – after the review was complete – before GMP eventually launched what was understood to have initially been a desktop review into the original Augusta investigation. Code-named Operation Green Jacket, it then became a fuller investigation later in the year, with one arrest and an interview under caution carried out in connection with Victoria’s ultimately fatal abuse.
The first report of the independent review commissioned by Andy Burnham, which was published in January, 2020 looked in detail at the files of 26 potential victims identified by GMP in 2004. It found that most of the children in the cases considered were ‘failed by police and children’s services’ and concludes that the authorities knew that many were being subjected to ‘the most profound abuse’.
Council files reviewed as part of the inquiry also showed a number of children in care at the same time as Victoria had reported ‘harrowing’ abuse to social services, including one ‘very young’ girl who described being restrained by a man in his 20s, before being subjected to ‘an extremely serious and distressing sexual act’. It also raised serious questions about how Simon Nelson, the coroner who carried out Victoria’s inquest in 2007, was able to conclude her death could not have been foreseen by the authorities.
The report’s damning findings vindicate a 15-year campaign by Mrs Oliver and Victoria’s family, who have long fought for a full police investigation to be carried out. In March 2024, the High Court quashed the verdict of Victoria’s original inquest which was held 17 years earlier, requiring a new inquest – but nearly one year on, Joan Agoglia is still waiting for her granddaughter’s inquest to be re-opened.
Meanwhile, the latest police probe into child sexual exploitation in south Manchester 20 years ago continues. It comes after police recovered a diary written by Victoria in August 2020, providing crucial new evidence which soon lead to more arrests of suspects.
By last September, two decades after Operation Augusta’s failings, GMP had arrested 64 suspects as part of Operation Green Jacket.
Oldham
Oldham
In January 2014, the M.E.N. revealed that GMP was investigating shisha bars which they believed were being used as child grooming dens. At least two police operations, in south Manchester and Oldham, were targeting a ‘handful’ of the Middle Eastern-style cafes which they believed were acting as ‘magnets’ for paedophiles as part of a wider strategy to monitor cafes, takeaways, pubs and clubs.
Eight years later, a major review revealed that Oldham council and GMP had been aware of threats posed by shisha bars and cafes in relation to grooming and potential exploitation by the end of 2010. The independent assurance review commissioned by Andy Burnham found girls as young as 13 were visiting private shisha bars run by ‘Asian young men’, often out of derelict pubs in Oldham.
Patrols and intelligence reports had linked the operation of these establishments with vulnerable young people – specifically young women who were known to be at risk of sexual exploitation. Four girls were known to be frequenting one shisha bar – but despite ‘grave concerns’ being raised after a raid of the cafe, two of these children were still frequenting the venue 18 months later.
Other bars of concern in the borough at this time had private rooms upstairs raising ‘serious concerns about the sexual activity going on in the rooms and the potential links to child sexual exploitation’. It was later established that there were 18 children thought to be visiting these shisha bars who were at risk of being groomed and sexually exploited.
Threats and reports of vulnerable and school-age girls visiting shisha bars in Oldham continued until mid-2013. But efforts to disrupt activities at shisha bars were at times thwarted by the legal framework of the time – much to the frustration of some local councillors.
A coordinated campaign by authorities to close down these shisha venues and alert young people to their risks was under way from 2011 to 2013. The council and police collaborated to ‘disrupt the shisha bar business model’ by deploying a range of operations, including fire safety and environmental health – however a specialist team set up to tackle grooming was not involved in this work.
Schools were requested to notify parents that the bars and cafes were not as they seemed to be and not safe, but this information was not relayed. The report concluded there had been a ‘weakness’ in the approach to safeguarding children visiting shisha bars and intelligence was not always channelled to the right officers who were tasked with detecting and preventing child sexual exploitation.
The review also found that a number of Oldham taxi drivers had been accused of rape or sexual offences against children – but they were allowed to keep their licences. Two drivers who were alleged to have assaulted girls should have had their licences revoked by the council, the report found, and several ‘known offenders’ had been granted or had their taxi licences renewed by councillors.
Taxi drivers were recognised as a threat by those working with children at risk of sexual exploitation within the town hall – but the review found more could have been done to protect girls and women. However, the authors of the report said they were provided with ‘no evidence’ that senior managers or councillors sought to cover up the potential exploitation of children by local taxi services.
In 2014, following the Rotherham grooming scandal, Oldham council reviewed all the cases where licence holders had been accused of sexual offences. There were originally five drivers identified who had serious criminal convictions, but only one was taken to a panel where his licence was revoked while one of the other four went on to commit a sexual assault on a young female passenger in 2015.
Unlike the previous report in Operation August which exposed widespread failings within children’s homes in south Manchester, the Oldham review found there was no evidence of such endemic exploitation in the borough. But it concludes that some children in the care of the local authority were still being abused, including at Rivendell which had been set up to protect young girls from grooming.
Staff said that the victims told them they were first approached by younger men who would become their ‘boyfriends’ to build trust, and then later introduced to older men who would exploit and abuse them. One staff member said that it was ‘all very organised’.
The notorious Rochdale grooming gang leader Shabir Ahmed, and his links to Oldham and the council were also investigated as part of the review which uncovered ‘serious failures’ in how authorities dealt with the predator. The review concluded that sexual abuse by Ahmed could have been prevented if earlier ‘offending behaviour’ and the threat he posed to children had been properly addressed.
Ahmed worked at Oldham council from 1988 to 2006 and was employed as a welfare rights officer seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community Centre. This role meant he would ‘potentially have had contact with a range of vulnerable adults and their children’.
The report found that there was a significant allegation of child sexual abuse made in 2005 against Ahmed. In February 2008, Ahmed was arrested for sexual assault on a child, and that July was also arrested on suspicion of abducting two other children – but there is no evidence that GMP notified the council about the allegations, so that it could investigate the risks he may have posed to children.
Oldham council were also not involved in subsequent ‘strategy discussions’ between GMP and Rochdale council about Ahmed when allegations were made. Even after Ahmed was charged with sexual assault in 2008, no action was taken by Oldham council to undertake a safeguarding assessment, or liaise with the police force. He would not be jailed for his prolific sexual offending until 2012.
Crucially, the report into child sexual exploitation in Oldham that was published in 2022 found ‘no evidence’ of a widespread cover-up. However in one case considered in the report, it appeared the council and GMP were more concerned with covering up their failures.
A specific case dating back to 2005 involving ‘Sophie’, a 12-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped, was singled out for intense criticism for the way authorities dealt with the investigation into her assaults by strangers, and for the failure to take action when she was being groomed online. When the report was published, GMP’s chief constable offered to meet Sophie to apologise in person.
The police and Oldham council apologised for the failings identified in the report. But many were still unconvinced by its findings.
Protesters heckled and booed Andy Burnham at the first public meeting held since the release of the damning report in June. A group of around 100 people were allowed into the main chamber at the Civic Centre, with many holding up paper signs reading ‘Cover Up’.
Two year earlier, protesters assembled outside the home of then council leader Sean Fielding who had requested the review into child sexual exploitation in Oldham. The incident occurred during a council meeting held online where the matter was discussed.
It followed calls from Conservative councillors for a Home Office review to replace the one commissioned by the mayor. In the years that followed, repeated allegations of a ‘cover up’ contributed to the dethroning of three council leaders, including Coun Fielding.
In July 2021, the new leader of Oldham council was targeted in a “cowardly” and “appalling” firebomb attack. By the time the report was published the following year after several delays, she was ousted at the elections and replaced by a third leader in as many years.
There was immediate criticism of the ‘limited scope of the review commissioned by Mr Burnham when it was finally published in June 2022. Survivors of abuse, families and others said the timeframe was too narrow and that too few cases had been considered.
Weeks later, a motion calling for the council to request a ‘fully independent and broad ranging’ public inquiry tabled by independent councillors in Oldham was defeated. It was the third such call for an inquiry, but the first to be tabled since the report was published.
Nevertheless, opposition councillors in Oldham continued to call for the government to launch a public inquiry into the matter. Further calls for a full public inquiry were made later in 2022 and again the following year, but both were rejected by the Labour-run council.
But earlier this year, after Labour lost overall control of Oldham council at the local election, a deal was struck. Council leader Arooj Shah agreed to back calls to the government for a new inquiry in a bid to gain support from independents and keep Labour in power.
And at a meeting in July, a motion on the issue was unanimously voted through. Tabled by the Failsworth Independent Party but ‘hosted’ by Labour, it required the council to write to the Home Office requesting a review into child sexual exploitation in Oldham.
The Home Office, which, under the Conservative government, rejected previous requests by local Conservative councillors, has now responded to Oldham council’s request. The government confirmed to the M.E.N. last week that such an inquiry would not take place.
Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips wrote to the council saying that any inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham should be organised locally. Oldham council said it has promised victims their voices will be heard despite the lack of government intervention.
Responding to the news on New Year’s Day, Mr Musk described the government’s decision as ‘shameful’ and said that Mrs Phillips ‘deserves to be in prison’. In another post on X two days later, he described the Labour minister as a ‘rape genocide apologist’.
Later that day, he accused the Prime Minister of being ‘complicit’ in the ‘RAPE OF BRITAIN’. The post on X by Mr Musk on January 3 refers to Sir Keir’s previous position as director of public prosecutions at the Crown Prosecution Service between 2008 and 2013.
Mr Musk also accused former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown of having ‘committed an unforgivable crime against the British people’ and ‘sold those little girls for votes’, over his handling of grooming gangs while in office – attacks which BBC Verify has established draw on a baseless claim about a Home Office memo supposedly issued 17 years ago. The Tesla and Starlink owner also questioned why the Conservatives had rejected a request from councillors in Oldham for an inquiry while they were in government.
Responding to questions on social media posts from the Mr Musk on Monday (January 6), the Prime Minister said ‘a line has been crossed’ after safeguarding minister Jess Phillips and others received threats. Asked about the posts by Mr Musk, he said: “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible are not interested in victims, they are interested in themselves.”
Sir Keir defended his own record on tackling grooming gangs, saying he had dealt with the problem ‘head-on’ as director of public prosecutions. He said: “I reopened cases that had been closed and supposedly finished, I brought the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang – in the particular case it was in Rochdale, but it was the first of its kind, there were many that then followed that format.
“We changed, or I changed, the whole prosecution approach, because I wanted to challenge and did challenge the myths and stereotypes that were stopping those victims being heard. When I left office, we had the highest number of child sexual abuse cases being prosecuted on record. Now that record is not secret. As a public servant, it’s there for all of you, for everybody to see.”
The row prompted by Mr Musk’s comments has also seen Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch call for a ‘full national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal’. Reform leader Nigel Farage has also waded in on the debate, defending Mr Musk’s comments – hours before the tech multi-billionaire, who is in talks about making a donation to the party, said that Mr Farage ‘does not have what it takes’ to lead it.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer
However, asked about the issue last week, Greater Manchester MP Andrew Gwynne said that Mr Musk should ‘focus on the United States’ instead. The row comes nearly a decade after the Tory government commissioned a national inquiry into child sexual abuse.
Led by Professor Alexis Jay, the inquiry looked into abuse by organised groups following multiple convictions of sexual offences against children across the UK between 2010-2014, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Rochdale and Bristol. The final report published in 2022 set out 20 recommendations. However, these recommendations have still not been adopted by the government.
Professor Jay said she felt ‘frustrated’ that none of the probe’s recommendations had been implemented more than two years on but has rejected calls for a new national inquiry. On Monday (January 6), Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the government would begin to implement Prof Jay’s call for mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse, with further details to be set out in the coming weeks.
This week, Andy Burnham said he is ‘not be opposed’ to a new national inquiry into grooming gangs the day after a Conservative bid to set one up failed. He told BBC Radio Manchester on Thursday (January 9): “I do think there’s a case for limited national inquiry which draws on local reviews to draw out some of these issues which compels people to speak. It may draw out charges.”
But culture secretary and Wigan MP Lisa Nandy said she disagreed with the Greater Manchester mayor – although the Labour MP and cabinet minister said the government would not rule out launching a further investigation “if it’s needed”. She said: “I get the point that Andy’s making. He said that there was a case for a smaller, more limited national inquiry into the specific issues that the inquiry that he instigated could not pick up. I do understand that because the inquiry that we had here in Greater Manchester, astonishingly, some of the Greater Manchester Police officers refused to even take part, and the local inquiry couldn’t compel them to do so.”
She added: “But I do disagree with Andy actually. The reason that the Theresa May government set up a national inquiry, which ran for seven years and took evidence from thousands of victims, is precisely because of the points that Andy made.
“That inquiry found what every inquiry has found, that young girls weren’t believed because they were young, they were female, and they were working-class, and that the systems that were supposed to protect them protected themselves instead of protecting those brave young victims.”
This article contains sections based on previous M.E.N. reporting by Neal Keeling, John Scheerhout, Paul Britton, Jen Williams and Charlotte Green.