Margaret Oliver

Oliver (2018)

Margaret "Maggie" Oliver is an English detective from Greater Manchester . She is known as the whistleblower who exposed the mistakes made by the police and social services in the Rochdale abuse scandal .

Oliver has been a police officer with the Greater Manchester Police Department from 1996 until she resigned in March 2012 due to the misconduct of colleagues in the Rochdale abuse scandal .

Rochdale child abuse sex ring investigation

As a detective, Oliver was an investigator in the Rochdale abuse scandal. Overall, she states that the convictions of nine men in 2012 only covered a small part of organized human trafficking rings in which hundreds of pedophiles and sex offenders and countless victims are active. Oliver began her investigation in Rochdale in 2010, by which time she had worked for the police for 14 years. She had been a member of the Serious Crimes Department. She investigated murders, shootings, kidnappings, rape and was active in the witness protection program.

Operation Augusta in Hulme and Rusholme

She first came into contact with the phenomenon of grooming when she was investigating several serious sex crimes, most of which had been committed by Pakistani men. She was confronted with these cases in her work in Operation Augusta . Some of the victims she heard were only eleven years old. She was always shocked by the fact that the police, despite strong evidence, had not taken action and that criminal trials had never occurred. According to their estimates, the police must have known about the child molestation rings for ten years by the time they started working on the case. The investigations identified 26 underage girls as victims of human trafficking and 206 men as potential perpetrators in Hulme and Rusholme . Most of the men were Pakistani. One of the girls identified as a victim in Operation Augusta died of an overdose given to her by one of the groomers in Rochdale. At the time, a film crew was in the process of making a documentary entitled Edge of the City for the television program Dispatchers . During the filming, the crew discovered that girls were being molested by a network of men in the Yorkshire area. The girl who died in Rochdale was among the girls who were filmed. According to Oliver, the police feared after the death that the broadcast of the film would reveal the police's mistakes. Thereupon a court got that the broadcasting of the film was delayed and at the same time a small group within the police was founded to investigate the events surrounding the death of the girl, including Oliver.

In 2005, Oliver took a short break from work because her husband had cancer and was dying. When she returned to work, she found that the investigation had stopped. None of the perpetrators were prosecuted and it was clear that the victims continued to be abused. She was told by colleagues that the girls were "prostitutes who would have chosen this lifestyle" and that they were "bad girls" who would not be credible witnesses to a trial. Oliver was disgusted by these statements because she thought the girls were defenseless and defenseless victims. Operation Augusta didn't reopen until 2019 after Oliver covered the events in a BBC documentary.

Operation Span in Rochdale

In 2010, Oliver was asked to join the investigation into Operation Span , which was to investigate grooming in Rochdale. The investigation into this case began in 2008/9 due to a car accident. During the interrogations there were initial indications of grooming, but these were not followed up as the girls were labeled as unreliable witnesses. Oliver was asked to regain the trust of these victims. She started work on the condition that this operation would not end like Operation Augusta. During a routine examination, an officer found that there was a fetus among the police station's stored evidence. This was the result of a forced abortion in a thirteen-year-old girl who was given the code name Ruby. The girl's family was not informed that the fetus had been seized as evidence. Ruby's sister, who was 15 at the time (nickname Amber), was accused of being a minister fundraiser for pimps. She was arrested for it. Oliver began their investigation by trying to build a relationship of trust with Ruby, Amber and their mother. Their testimony enabled the investigators to identify the location of the abuse, the times of the crime, the cars used to transport the victims and many of the perpetrators.

Government intimidated Amber and Oliver fired

Oliver said in an interview that her colleagues said they had no intention of using or pursuing any evidence from the family's statements. She was told that they intended to scare the mother and sisters off so that the process would peter out and they would keep silent about the incidents in the future. Oliver also said that the crimes reported by the family were not recorded in the system. Because Oliver was upset about this, one of her superiors said to her, “Maggie, calm down. Listen: what would these children have contributed to society? You should have been drowned after the birth. ”After this statement, Oliver stormed out of the station.

Her colleagues did not even inform the family that they would not pursue the crimes they had described. After the public pressure became too great not to show any results from the police, twelve men from the network were reported. It was found that Amber's testimony would be needed to convict these men. But since she no longer wanted to testify as a witness because of the way she had been treated, the authorities presented her as the perpetrator at the trial. In order to defame Amber as a perpetrator, her statements from the interviews with Oliver were used. Amber was never told what she was being accused of. This violates prescribed procedures in criminal law. She was charged with working as a pimp even though she was only 15 at the time of the crimes. Since she was a minor and had already been identified as a victim by social services, she would never have been convicted. However, the authorities managed to instill enough fear into her to have her testimony at the trial. During this time, Oliver was forbidden to have any contact with the family.

Some time after the process ended, Oliver got in touch again. She asked if they were aware that Amber was being held as one of the perpetrators in the indictment. The family replied that they did not know about it. But Oliver learned that Amber had recently given birth to a child. This was withdrawn from her after the birth by the social services. Only now did the family understand that the reason for this was that they had been portrayed as the perpetrator in a child molester ring. Oliver assumes that this action represents an intimidation of the family by the social services and that they wanted to keep their misconduct in the scandal secret. The child was illegally withdrawn from Amber as no judicial order had been obtained. A year later, a judge ruled that the child should be returned to her. In addition to illegally abducting the child, Oliver also found out that social services workers in the family had tried to collect testimony alleging that Amber was an incompetent mother.

During their investigation, Oliver was told by some social workers that they had been trying for years to get the police to act on the incidents.

Oliver also said that during this time the child protection services only had training and resources to deal with child abuse that took place in the child's environment (by family members or teachers, etc.). The type of abuse that was present in grooming could not be adequately combated by the child protection service and was also not known. Neither the child protection service nor the police felt really responsible. So the responsibility was shifted back and forth and nothing happened. Oliver said she spent 18 months trying to get the police to fully investigate and follow up the incidents, speaking to various departments and authorities. These included the head of the Serious Crimes Division, the Police Commissioner, the IPCC and the Home Office.

She left the police in 2012 in protest of how her colleagues behaved in the cases. Oliver had the intention to go public after her termination and to make the wrongdoing and corruption public.

Allegations of crime cover-up

Oliver claims that many of the men who were perpetrators within the sex ring have not yet been charged, arrested and punished. One perpetrator, for example, who impregnated 13-year-old Ruby (which was proven by DNA tests on the fetus) was released after just two years. Countless other perpetrators were never charged or were also released after a short time. Some of the convicts were supposed to be deported. However, they filed an objection and received legal aid worth several million British pounds through the legal system and have delayed their deportation until today.

Criticism of the criminal offenses in the indictment

Oliver says the perpetrators could have been charged with more serious offenses. They would have received higher sentences. Although many men raped dozens of girls multiple times, they were not charged with rape. Not even the man who made 13-year-old Ruby pregnant has been charged with rape, although the fetus's DNA has proven it with virtually no doubt. Many have only been charged with complicity in rape or human trafficking. These crimes were easier to prove but resulted in shorter prison terms.

Criticism of the treatment of the victims

Oliver also criticized the way in which the victims were treated. Both during the investigation and in the court process and after the convictions. She denounced that grooming always involved multiple perpetrators. For the victims, this means that they have to be questioned individually by each of the lawyers for each of the accused, which put them under great stress and would lead to severe re- victimization . Oliver also said that victims should be offered psychological and social assistance after the convictions.

Media response

Oliver was played by actress Lesley Sharp in Three Girls , a BBC production about the Rochdale abuse scandal . She portrayed a key figure in Three Girls alongside social worker Sara Rowbotham. Oliver also contributed to the BBC's documentary The Betrayed Girls .

Oliver appeared in Celebrity Big Brother 21 .

activism

Oliver founded "The Maggie Oliver Foundation" for victims of the Rochdale scandal. The mission of the foundation is to “transform pain into power”. The foundation would like to open a women's center in Rochdale. It is meant to be run by volunteers and abuse survivors. The center aims to offer support to victims of sexual abuse. You will be provided with legal advice, therapy, training and educational opportunities there.

Oliver is also a public speaker. She draws attention to the problem of grooming gangs and police failure.

Oliver appears regularly on the television program Loose Women on itv . Together with other moderators, she started the Never Too Late To Tell campaign in December 2016. It aims to induce victims of sexual abuse to report them. In the program, she also gave tips on how to secure evidence, how to address abuse with children, what monitoring options there are for parents, listed contact points for victims of abuse and informed about changes in behavior in children if they are victims of abuse.

Publications

• Margaret Oliver: Survivors: One Brave Detective's Battle to Expose the Rochdale Child Abuse Scandal . [John Blake], London 2019, ISBN 1789460859

Web links

• Website from The Maggie Oliver Foundation
• Homepage of Maggie Oliver: website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Former Detective Constable Maggie Oliver joins Celebrity Big Brother . In: Rochdale Online . Retrieved March 19, 2019.
2. ↑ 'I had a moral duty': whistleblowers on why they spoke up . In: The Guardian . Retrieved March 19, 2019.
3. ↑ We should have listened to the broken teenagers . In: BBC . Retrieved March 19, 2019.
4. ↑ Who is Maggie Oliver? The detective who resigned over the treatment of 'Amber' . In: Manchester Evening News . Retrieved March 19, 2019.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} About . In: maggieoliver.co.uk . Maggie Oliver. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Grooming Gang Whistleblower: Ex-Cop Maggie Oliver - Three Girls . In: youtube.com . Shaun Atwood. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Who is Maggie Oliver? The detective who resigned over the treatment of 'Amber' . In: manchestereveningnews.com . manchester evening news. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Grooming Gang Whistleblower: Ex-Cop Maggie Oliver - Three Girls . In: youtube.com . Shaun Atwood. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
9. ↑ Three Girls: what really happened in the Rochdale sex abuse scandal? . In: The Telegraph . Retrieved March 19, 2019.
10. ↑ Who is Maggie Oliver? The real story of brave detective who helped Rochdale victims turned Celebrity Big Brother 2018 contestant . In: The Mirror . Retrieved March 19, 2019.
11. ↑ Maggie Oliver of Three Girls: 'The men who groomed the Rochdale sex abuse victims are still at large' . In: The Telegraph . Retrieved March 19, 2019.
12. ↑ Maggie Oliver .
13. ↑ Celebrity Big Brother 2018: who are this year's contestants? . In: The Telegraph . Retrieved March 19, 2019.
14. ^ Former GMP detective Maggie Oliver slams police 'old boy's network' on Celebrity Big Brother . In: Manchester Evening News . Retrieved March 19, 2019.
15. ↑ Saira Khan, Sammy Woodhouse and Maggie Oliver team up for Loose Women's Never Too Late To Tell campaign . In: itv.com . itv. Retrieved October 30, 2019.