Former detective Margaret Oliver says arrests of Rochdale grooming gang is ‘tip of iceberg’

May 21, 2017 by

from Rochdale News:

Former detective Margaret Oliver, who played an integral role in bringing about the prosecution of a Rochdale grooming gang has spoken out, saying the arrests of the gang were ‘the tip of the iceberg’.

She is portrayed by Leslie Sharp in the BBC drama ‘Three Girls’, which is based on the true stories of young victims of sexual abuse.

Nine men of Pakistani and Afghan origin were found guilty of child sex charges after targeting vulnerable girls in Rochdale and Heywood. The girls, aged between 13 and 17, were plied with alcohol, food and money for sex and were beaten if they didn’t agree to have sex. On other occasions, the victims were so drunk they didn’t know what was being done to them and they were ‘passed around for sex’ between the gang.

All of the victims were under-age white British girls, and accusations were made that the authorities had failed to thoroughly investigate the issue amid fears of being accused of racism.

Speaking to the BBC, the former detective said: “I was left with the sense that this was a box the police didn’t really want to open, but they couldn’t keep the lid down for long and now the secret is out. A crime that had been contained and swept under the carpet for years can no longer be ignored.”

Ms Oliver later left the service.

She said: “For me, the end of the road was when they betrayed the trust I’d earned from a key witness and I couldn’t get assurances on how vulnerable witnesses would be treated in the future”.

She told the Guardian that she had been speaking to children who told her offenders they’d named have been ‘walking around Rochdale’.

She continued: “That’s why I’m saying things haven’t changed, because those men have been named by those girls and I know that they’re still out there walking around.

“A significant proportion of children and young people have a profound lack of trust in the police, and it should have acted as a wake-up call”.

Read here

The three-part drama based on the true stories of victims of grooming and sexual abuse in Rochdale may be viewed on BBC iPlayer.

These issues were also dramatised in 2014 in two harrowing episodes of Silent Witness, which can be viewed on Vimeo here (Part 1) and here (Part 2)

 

 

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