‘Child 44” was raped by many men over a long period of time, eventually forced to have an abortion, aged 13. None of her abusers was charged with rape against her; many were not even interviewed. After the termination, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) seized possession of the foetus without her knowledge, let alone consent, leaving it forgotten in a freezer until spotted during “a routine property review”.
“Child 37” was 13. She told the police that she had been “in the park with another child and met four Asian men”, two of whom had raped her. Because she was reluctant to undergo a medical or give a video interview, the police recorded the crime as requiring “no further action”.
Two distressing stories out of dozens from a report on grooming gangs in Rochdale published last week. It is the latest in a series of excoriating accounts of official attitudes to child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Rotherham, Telford, Oxford and many other towns, each one as tormenting to read as the next.
The Rochdale report details again the way the council and police ignored shocking crimes and left children “at the mercy of their abusers”. Of the 74 children in council files thought likely to have been sexually exploited, just three had been “appropriately protected by the statutory agencies”. Many more were not in the files. The report found at least “96 individuals who potentially pose a risk to children”, though the true figure was likely to be much higher. Many had not even been interviewed by police.
At the heart of such official failure is the contempt with which police, social workers and council officers viewed victims. There is a scene in the first episode of Three Girls, the viscerally harrowing 2017 BBC drama about sex trafficking in Rochdale, in which Sara Rowbotham (played by Maxine Peake), who led the NHS crisis intervention team, confronts a social worker. It was Rowbotham who, together with former police officer Maggie Oliver, helped expose the scandal.
In the TV drama, based on real events, Rowbotham informs social services that one of the trafficked girls, Holly, is pregnant. The social worker tells Holly’s parents their daughter is a “prostitute”. “Me and you,” a furious Rowbotham responds when she finds out, “we’re looking at the same thing; but where I see kids being turned inside out by abusers, you see only slags who bring it on themselves”.
The view of abused girls as “prostitutes” was commonplace. “Police weren’t arsed with us”, another of the girls, called Amber in the drama, later told Julie Bindel in an Observer interview. “They weren’t bothered… when you’re from a shit home. They don’t give a fuck when you’re not from a wealthy background.”
Amber’s story sums up the scorn of officialdom for those whom they regarded as loose, working-class girls. Aged 14 when first targeted by the grooming gang, she described to the police how she was plied with alcohol before being “passed around” groups of men. She identified more than 20 abusers, providing names, addresses, telephone numbers and car registrations. Her information helped initiate Operation Span, a belated, though half-hearted, drive against grooming gangs launched in 2010.
Yet no one was charged with offences against Amber. So disdainful were the police and lawyers of what one social worker called her “lifestyle choice” they imagined no jury would believe her. Shockingly, Amber was, in 2009, herself arrested for “soliciting” because, under duress from the gang, she had brought along some of her friends. It was two years before the CPS agreed not to treat her as a suspect.
Then, astonishingly, in 2011, Amber, having provided the information that led to nine men appearing in court on rape and trafficking charges, was named in the indictment as a co-conspirator in child sexual exploitation. It came as a complete surprise, the CPS having deliberately withheld information from her. It is difficult to describe this as anything but cowardice and betrayal. The lead prosecutor claimed in court that Amber had played “an active role in helping… these defendants sexually exploit the other girls”. National newspapers demonised her as the “Honey Monster”, a “pimp” and a “bully”. She was denounced on social media as a “paedo” and her address identified, leading to bomb threats.
The misogyny and contempt for working-class families displayed by the authorities was not unique to Rochdale. Reviews of CSE failures in Oxfordshire, Telford and elsewhere, highlight how deeply embedded was the view of an abused girl as having “prostituted herself”.
Much of this has, however, often been overshadowed by another feature of many of these cases. The Rochdale rapists and traffickers were all of Pakistani or Afghan heritage, the victims white teenage girls, a pattern seen in many high-profile cases. Far-right groups have seized on this to portray gang-based CSE as a “Muslim” phenomenon created by mass immigration, sentiments echoed by some mainstream commentators and politicians. Last week, Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine linked the Rochdale cases with Iranian terror and the Hamas 7 October massacres.
The exploitation of these cases by the far right has made many liberals fearful of addressing the issue. In 2012, the writer Daniel Trilling observed how, “in seeking to prevent the growth of racism”, Rochdale officials had “tried to police debate”. A senior council officer told youth worker Mohammed Shafiq, who was trying to raise awareness within Muslim communities, that he was “doing the work of the BNP”. A 2022 report into CSE failures in Telford suggested that “nervousness about race” may have “led to a reluctance to act”.
There is nothing antiracist in burying facts or in failing to act against rapists because of “racial sensitivities”. The facts, though, are far from clear. Some academics suggest that “Muslims, particularly Pakistanis, dominate… prosecutions”. Many disagree. A 2020 Home Office report, surveying the research, observed that “robust data is scarce” and researchers vary in their conclusions but most studies accept that “group-based CSE offenders are most commonly white”. “This is not a race issue”, wrote a “furious” Angela Sinfield, mother of an abused girl, in response to the far right trying to “hijack” the case. She even stood against the BNP in a local election to challenge that narrative. Those attempting to politicise the debate by turning grooming gangs into an issue of race or religion care little for the victims of sexual exploitation but seek to exploit pain to promote bigotry.
Terrible crimes were ignored in Rochdale and elsewhere, the callousness and contempt of officials betraying the courage and resilience of thousands of girls and young women. Discussions of gang-based CSE are suffused with prejudices about women, about the working class, about Muslims. Without confronting all these prejudices, it is difficult to confront any.
• Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
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