Adil Khan was sentenced to eight years for the same offences. [52], In December 2013, the case review by Rochdale County was leaked, which highlighted findings from an internal police investigation. She noted that white male predators on the street tend to work alone. She was being shared around paedophiles across the north of England. Saving Private Ryan actor Tom Sizemore dies at 61. involved the grooming and sexual exploitation of several girls aged in their early teens. As a result of police failures to respond to evidence, the men who had groomed the three children were able to continue . It was unfortunate that it was about attitudes towards teenagers. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. The dramatisation tells the story of three children who were victims in the scandal and stars Maxine Peake as sexual health worker Sara, who recorded and reported cases of child abuse for years. 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. A 15-year-old girl was ordered to have sex with takeaway worker Kabeer Hassan as a birthday "treat", the judge told the court. "[40], Hindu and Sikh groups have objected to media use of the "Asian" description saying that the culprits were "almost always of Pakistani origin" and "Muslim". If such people know they have been 'rumbled', and they will sense it by the way people look at, behave and react to them, it will help disrupt their activities. A key member of the team was Detective Constable Maggie Oliver whose task was to convince the victims to speak to the police. Writing for HuffPost UK, chief executive Javed Khan of childrens charity Barnardos described Three Girls as absolutely vital viewing.. For other inquiries, Contact Us. 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Amber was understandably reluctant to trust the police. Abdul Rauf, then 43, of Rochdale, was convicted of trafficking a child within the UK for sexual exploitation and received six years. Rochdale grooming scandal Nine men who abused girls as young as 13 were convicted over a child sex grooming ring, guilty of 21 counts of sexual abuse over a two-year period. She has forced the police and social services to apologise to her for their behaviour. They were overlooked, they were discriminated against.. Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? Of the three not convicted, one was cleared of all charges, the jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case of the second, and the third was not present at the trial after fleeing to Pakistan whilst on bail. Former Det Con Maggie Oliver, who resigned in 2012 to turn whistleblower over the force's failings, said she was pleased with the outcome. But once the CPS advised the GMP that she was no longer seen as a suspect, she was persuaded by Oliver to begin a series of video interviews and ID parades. The picture which emerged was one of vulnerable young girls, some as young as 10, who were being targeted for sexual abuse and written off by authorities who believed the girls were making their own choices. "[3], Sayeeda Warsi, co-chairperson of the Conservative Party, in an interview with the Evening Standard, said "You can only start solving a problem if you acknowledge it first," and added, "This small minority who see women as second class citizens, and white women probably as third class citizens, are to be spoken out against." [33] After members of the Rochdale gang were sentenced, the UK's Department for Education announced new funding for a specialist foster care scheme to protect vulnerable children in residential care, where some victims had been. The testimony of one of the five victims of the Rochdale grooming ring revealed the depth of the exploitation she suffered. Abdul Aziz, 51, Adil Khan, 51, and Qari Rauf, 52, were among nine gang members jailed in 2012 for a catalogue of child sex offences in Rochdale. Two worked for the same taxi firm and another two worked at a takeaway restaurant; some came from the same village in Pakistan and another two men shared a flat. 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"[39], Nazir Afzal, who as the newly appointed chief crown prosecutor decided to bring the case to trial, said that sex, not race, was the key issue: "There is no community where women and girls are not vulnerable to sexual attack and that's a fact. I hoped that I would be able to persuade the elders to go knocking on doors and say 'this behaviour is un-Islamic and I want it to stop because I'm going to tell the whole community about you and what youre doing if you dont'. It drew statistics from organisations such as Barnardo's but the findings were considered inconclusive by expert academics because not all the figures had been compiled in the same way and ethnicity had not always been noted with each reported crime. A separate civil claim launched by the women against the Crown Prosecution Service is ongoing. A group of twenty men were found guilty in October 2018 of running a child grooming gang in Huddersfield, with the men being convicted of 120 offences against 15 different girls. [32], Wendy Shepherd, child sexual exploitation project manager for Barnardo's in the north of England, said that since she started working with the organisation, there has been "a shift from the men selling children in ones or twos to something that is much more organised in groups and networks. Three women who were groomed, raped and abused by gangs of men in Rochdale have received "substantial" damages and an apology from Greater Manchester Police. Khan, Rauf and Aziz were convicted of conspiracy and trafficking for sexual exploitation charges. He said the actions of criminals who thought "white teenage girls are worthless and can be abused" were "bringing shame on our community. They ripped away all my dignity". It made me sick to my stomach. independent.co.uk. But the situation changed and she was raped by one of the men. [45] In particular they pointed out that the inquiry by the Office of the Children's Commissioner[33] found that, while a majority of victims were white and a majority of perpetrators were men of South Asian descent, there were many cases where "perpetrators and their victims were ethnically diverse. Three Girls tells the true, harrowing tale of young girls being groomed in Rochdale BBC The dramatisation tells the story of three children who were victims in the scandal and stars Maxine Peake. The M.E.N's crime reporter John Scheerhout gives his insight into the BBC dramatisation of the Rochdale grooming case [1] One 13-year-old victim recounted that, after being forced to have sex in exchange for vodka, her abuser immediately raped her again and gave her 40 to not say anything about the incident. Because she was not involved in the trial, and therefore did not give evidence, she had no opportunity to defend herself. Nine men between 24 and 38 years old were arrested on suspicion of sexual activity with a child. [19] The gang of nine men received jail sentences of between four and 19 years from a judge who said they treated their victims as though they were worthless and beyond any respect. Just before the due date of her second baby, she was called to the family court, where an application was made to remove both children on the grounds that Amber was an abuser and a danger to children. [22] Suggestions emerged that police and social work departments failed to act when details of the gang emerged for fear of appearing racist, and vulnerable white teenagers being groomed by Pakistani men were ignored. After a troubled upbringing, Amber had been placed on the child protection register as being at risk of sexual and emotional abuse and neglect. funfetti pancake mix cookies rochdale grooming case details. Attempts by Rochdale Crisis Intervention Team co-ordinator for the NHS, Sara Rowbotham, to alert police and authorities to "patterns of sexual abuse" were ignored. Furious, Maggie vowed never to be part of such an investigation in future. The patchy training of frontline staff was to blame for the way childrens social care responded to the victims, the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board (RBSCB) said in its review into child sexual exploitation after the trial. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Mohammed Sajid was sentenced to 12 years for rape, sexual activity with a girl under 16, trafficking for sexual exploitation and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children. The taxi driver was said in court to have taken over as the main trafficker of the girls. Adil Khan (left) and Qari Rauf (right) were jailed in 2012 for a catalogue of serious child sex offences. "They threaten you, and you're scared of them, and that's how they make you do it.". It is committed by abusers from all walks of life, ethnicities, cultures and classes and it robs children of their childhoods and tears families apart. But not all. Jailing them, Judge Gerald Clifton said: You have all been convicted by the jury after a long trial of grave sexual offences which were committed between the spring of 2008 and 2010. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The abuse took place in Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, in the early 2000s. On one occasion, she was picked up by police on the moors, miles outside Manchester, and told officers she 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.