Vulnerable children were left exposed to sexual exploitation in Oldham because of “serious failings” by the police and council, a damning independent review has found.
The report found there were multiple missed opportunities to prevent abuse stretching back to 2005, including offences committed by a council welfare officer who was later convicted of 30 rapes.
The review also suggested senior police and council officers may have misled MPs on the Commons home affairs select committee when denying wrongdoing over the “profound sexual exploitation” of a 12-year-old girl.
It criticised Greater Manchester police (GMP) for a “less than candid” approach to MPs and said both agencies’ response to the victim’s concerns “feed a view” that they were “more concerned about covering up their failures than acknowledging the harm that had been done to a vulnerable young person”.
The review, commissioned by Oldham council in 2019, is the latest to examine child sexual exploitation in English towns following similarly damning reports on Rotherham, Oxford and Rochdale.
The authors, the child protection specialist Malcolm Newsam and the former senior police officer Gary Ridgway, found there was no evidence to suggest Oldham council sought to cover up child sexual exploitation or shy away from the issue of abuse of vulnerable white girls predominantly by men of Pakistani heritage.
However, it concluded there were “historic failings” and that “some children had been failed by the agencies that were meant to protect them because child protection procedures had not been properly followed”.
The report describes how a Rochdale grooming ringleader, Shabir Ahmed, worked for Oldham council as a welfare rights officer for 18 years until 2006 – about a year after he was accused of child sexual abuse. Ahmed is serving a 22-year jail term after being convicted in 2012 of 30 child rape charges and multiple other offences.
GMP failed to notify Oldham council of a “serious allegation” made about Ahmed in 2005, meaning he was able to continue working with vulnerable adults and their children. If this had happened, the report said, it may have “potentially avoided the tragic abuse of other children”.
The review concluded there was no “widespread child sexual exploitation” in Oldham’s children’s care homes, shisha bars or the local taxi trade, contrary to allegations that had swirled on social media. But it found examples in all three settings that left people vulnerable to abuse.
The authors found cases of taxi drivers who had been allowed to keep their jobs despite being convicted or accused of sexual offences. In one case, a driver who had been convicted of sexual offences went on to commit a further offence on a young passenger in 2015 after he was allowed to keep his licence.
Maggie Oliver, a former GMP detective who turned whistleblower, said: “Another day, yet another report about the failures of a police force to protect the most vulnerable in our society, even when there is irrefutable evidence to prosecute offenders and safeguard children. This report yet again clearly evidences catastrophic failings by the force and their repeated attempts to cover up and hide these failings both from the victims and from the public they serve, and that is extremely worrying.”
The council and GMP apologised for their failings and said their approaches to tackling child sexual exploitation had improved markedly in recent years. However, both agencies faced strong criticism in the report for how they responded to concerns raised by a victim known as Sophie, who was raped repeatedly from the age of 12.
Senior GMP and council officers played down their culpability when asked about Sophie’s case by the Commons home affairs committee, the report said.
Amanda Chadderton, the leader of Oldham council, said in a press conference that its response to Sophie’s complaints was “unacceptable” and the leadership of children’s services had since changed. She added: “It does read like a cover-up and we have to accept that. That is a failing on our part and that’s a weakness that was in Oldham council at that time.”
Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police, accepted that there was a “misplaced tendency, at least in the minds of some, to put first the organisational reputation”. The force would assess any potential cases of misconduct that arose from the report, he said.
