Rochdale abuse scandal

In abuse scandal Rochdale underage girls in the English were Rochdale abused by groups and forced into prostitution. Nine men were convicted of rape, human trafficking for sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse in May 2012. Operation Doublet was then carried out by the Manchester Policestarted to investigate further allegations of abuse. 19 men have been sentenced so far. 47 girls were identified as victims of sexual exploitation. The perpetrators were men from Great Britain of Pakistani origin. It was initially suspected that the police had not followed up on clues for fear of racism allegations, but internal investigations found prejudices against the victims and a lack of interest in prosecuting sexualised violence on various levels. Most of the victims were white British girls, mostly living in foster homes. In March 2015, the Manchester police apologized for not properly investigating evidence of child sexual exploitation between 2008 and 2010. Sara Rowbotham, a social worker who first reported sexual abuse in the community to the police, was fired in 2017.

Perpetrator

Initially, twelve men were charged with trafficking for sexual exploitation, rape and child sexual abuse. Nine were convicted. Of these, eight were British-Pakistani and one was an Afghan asylum seeker. Of the three not convicted, two were acquitted and the third fled to Pakistan while released on bail. Most of the perpetrators were married and were considered honorable men in their community. For example, one of them convicted of sexual exploitation for human trafficking was a religion teacher and married father of five. The men were between the ages of 24 and 59 years. Two worked for the same taxi company, two worked for a takeaway restaurant; some were from the same village in Pakistan and two were roommates. They acted as a gang with the aim of sexually exploiting underage girls.

abuse

The abuse centered around two takeaway restaurants in Heywood , near Rochdale. Although one of the victims contacted the police in 2008 to report grooming by the men, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided not to charge the two accused men as the victim's credibility was in doubt.

Rochdale Crisis Intervention Team leader Sara Rowbotham repeatedly tried to alert police to patterns suggestive of organized sexual exploitation of children, but she was ignored. Between 2003 and 2004, she made more than 180 attempts to get the police to start investigations. However, she was repeatedly told that the victims were not credible witnesses.

Since the child protection service also failed to investigate the allegations, the police stopped their investigations until another girl made similar allegations in December 2009. The social services' decision not to investigate the allegations was reversed in 2011 when a new attorney general, Nazir Afzal - a British man of Pakistani origin - was appointed.

The victims were mostly young people from disturbed and poor backgrounds. They were picked up in places typically found by young people (such as takeaway restaurants). One of the victims, a 15-year-old girl known by the nickname Honey Monster , was recruiting other girls (up to 13 years old) for the network. The victims were silenced or bribed. Violence, drugs, food gifts, bribes and other gifts were used to cover up the abuse.

The oldest perpetrator was Shabir Ahmed. He was the main culprit first. Abdul Aziz, a married father of three, took over the helm from Shabir Ahmed and paid men to bring in new girls.

Victims testified that they were beaten and raped (sometimes by five men at the same time). They also said that they were forced to "sleep with several men a day, several days a week." The victims were sedated with alcohol and other drugs and taken to friends and family of the perpetrators in various parts of England, such as Rochdale, Oldham , Nelson , Bradford and Leeds . Relatively small amounts of money were paid for the “meetings”. A 13-year-old victim said she was forced to sleep with a man for vodka. After that, her pimp also raped her and paid her 40 British pounds so that she would not tell anyone else. A 15-year-old girl said she was bottled with alcohol and then raped by 20 men in a row. Another victim said she was bottled and vomited over the edge of her bed while she was raped by two men. A 13-year-old victim had an abortion after becoming pregnant from one of the incidents.

Trial and Convictions

The perpetrators said during the trial that the girls were not coerced and had fun with the men. The leader, Shabir Ahmed, referred to the girls as "prostitutes" and described his actions as business. The allegations are lies. In the courtroom he called, “Where are the white people? Why are we only being charged here as foreigners? ”Since Shabir Ahmeds behaved aggressively in the courtroom and called Judge Gerald Clifton a“ racist pig ”, he was banned from the courtroom and was not present when the verdict was pronounced.

The trial ended in May 2012. The table shows the names of the convicts, offenses and sentences.

Name of the convict	Criminal offenses	punishment
Shabir Ahmed	Rape, aiding and abetting rape, sexual assault, human trafficking, child sexual abuse	19 years
Mohammed Sajid	Rape, sexual activity with an under 16 year old, human trafficking, child sexual abuse	12 years
Kabeer Hassan	Rape, child sexual abuse	9 years
Abdul Aziz	Human trafficking, child sexual abuse	9 years
Abdul Rauf	Human trafficking, child sexual abuse	6 years
Adil Khan	Human trafficking, child sexual abuse	8 years
Mohammed Amin	Sexual coercion, child sexual abuse	5 years
Abdul Qayyum	Child Sexual Abuse	5 years
Hamid Safi	Human trafficking, child sexual abuse	4 years

Four of the dual citizenship convicts - Shabir Ahmed, Adil Khan, Abdul Rauf and Abdul Aziz - were stripped of their British citizenship by Home Secretary Theresa May and were deported to Pakistan. May said the deportations would take place "for the common good".

Second sex ring and operation doublet

After the breaking up of the first sex ring in May 2012, further arrests related to the sexual exploitation of children in Rochdale took place. Nine men, aged 24 to 38, were arrested on suspicion of child sexual abuse. The operation Doublet was launched to grooming to track and sexual abuse in the region systematically. Deputy Police Commissioner Steve Heywood said in May 2013 that 550 officers would be working in the operation. He said tracking grooming was a higher priority for police than gun violence and clues would be tracked back to 2003.

In March 2015, ten men between the ages of 26 and 45 were charged with sex offenses against victims between the ages of 13 and 23. The acts took place in the period from 2005 to 2013. The offenses were rape, aiding and abetting rape, sexual assault of minors, sexual abuse of minors and sexual assault.

Reaction and public debate

The crimes sparked a public debate about whether they had a racist background (that is, men of Pakistani origin abused white girls out of hatred of whites). It was also speculated that the police and social services failed to intervene because they were afraid of racism allegations. It was also suspected that no action was taken because the girls from the lower social classes were involved. A 2012 report by the Assistant Commissioner for Children's Rights found that 33% of all child sexual abuse incidents in the UK were committed by Brits of Asian origin, compared to just 7% of the total population.

Ann Cryer, a Labor MP for the Keighley area, said in a 2012 BBC documentary that she worked with the victims' families and "went to the police station literally every week" and "pleaded" with the police and social services to to finally do something. Cryer said, “Neither the police nor social services took care of the cases. I think the reason was that they were afraid of being accused of racism ”. Cryer had also turned to the Muslim community and tried to get them to intervene: “I turned to a friend of mine who was on the local council and was also a Muslim. He represented me before the leaders of the community. I was hoping that I could get them to spread in their communities that this behavior (the grooming gangs) was un-Islamic. And that they should threaten to publicly expose the members of the gangs in the communities. However, the rulers were not ready ”.

Tim Loughton, Minister for Children and Families, said he did not believe that child sexual abuse of some ethnicities is tolerated. However, he felt that some communities did not report the abuse quickly enough and called on the police not to let political correctness hinder their work.

In late 2011, the Children's Commissioner's office began a two-year investigation into the sexual exploitation of children by street gangs. The final report was published in November 2013. Following the Rochdale convictions, the UK Department of Education pledged money to develop better strategies to protect wards growing up in state custody. Some of the victims were in private care facilities during the crime period. A subsequent examination of these facilities found that a third of the houses of the two largest providers were poorly managed.

Times report, Jan. 5, 2011

The Times reported on January 5, 2011, discussing the grooming gang convictions in northern and central Britain. Of the 56 convicted since 1997 of crimes against 11- to 16-year-old girls, three were white, 53 were Asian and 50 were Muslim. Most were of Pakistani origin. The Times also insinuated : "With one exception in one city, no effort is being shown in the Pakistani community to address the problem."

Coalition for the Removal of Pimping

Hilary Willmer, who represents the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (Crop), said "the majority of the perpetrators were Pakistani". It was announced that up to 80% of the perpetrators were of Pakistani origin. However, The Independent reported that "Kurds, Romanians and Albanians are also involved". Willmer added, "We think this is just the tip of the iceberg". She said that she did not think the crime was racism, but organized crime.

Child protection organizations

Wendy Shepherd, Child Sexual Exploitation Project Manager for Barnardo in the north of England, said exploitation is increasingly happening in organized groups and networks. The perpetrators are from different origins. In northern and central Great Britain they are Pakistani, in Devon they are white, in Bath and Bristol they are Afro-Caribbean, in London they are white, Iraqis, Kurds, Afghans and Somalis.

Former Barnardo head Martin Narey said on BBC Radio 4 : "When minors are groomed by street gangs ... mostly Pakistani and Bangladeshi are the perpetrators." , but said they would look for unsupervised teenagers from difficult backgrounds. As Asian girls are often brought up strictly and often do not roam the streets alone, they would be less likely to become victims of these gangs.

Statements from representatives of Muslims

In the BBC documentary about grooming young girls by Pakistani men, Imam Irfan Chishti, a representative of Rochdale Mosques, said it was "shocking to see Muslims in court for such horrific acts". Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Ramadhan Foundation, accused the leaders of the Pakistani community of "burying their heads in the sand" and not addressing the problem of grooming. He said that since 87% of those convicted were British Pakistanis, this was a major problem in the community. He said what the crime said was that "white underage girls are seen as worthless and believed to be easy to use" and that this "would bring shame to the community".

Sayeeda Warsi , a senior politician for the Conservative Party, said in an interview with Evening Standard that the only way to solve the problem is to be clear about it first, adding that there is a small minority within the Asian Muslim community who Seeing women as second class citizens and white women as third class citizens and that one must speak out against it. She described the Rochdale crimes as “obnoxious,” especially since the perpetrators were adult men, some of whom were religious education teachers or entrepreneurs with their own children.

Nazir Afzal, the attorney general who brought the indictment, said discrimination based on gender, not race, was the basic problem: “There is no community in which women and children are not victims of sexual violence. That is a fact. "

Demonstrations of rights

There were several demonstrations from the right-wing political spectrum, such as the British National Party and the English Defense League .

Reactions from Hindus and Sikhs

Hindus and Sikhs spoke out against the description of the perpetrators as "Asian", since almost all were "Pakistani" and "Muslim". They said that the description "Asian" would put all men with a South Asian appearance under general suspicion and should therefore be more clearly delineated in the discussion.

Investigation of police behavior

In December 2013, the Rochdale Counties report was leaked. It highlighted the results of an internal police investigation, according to which the police officers involved harbored discriminatory attitudes towards the victims. The interviews were carried out by police officers without training in dealing with young victims of sexualised violence, who also had no strategies whatsoever when the victims returned to the perpetrators. As an example, 40 meetings were cited in which protective measures for one of the victims were discussed, but without any documented involvement of the police.

The police investigation also found that there was too little supervision in 2008 and 2009 and, despite formal inquiries, too little support for the investigation. Finally, the police could have questioned the prosecution's decision not to prosecute the Crown Prosecution Service. The report therefore recommended putting in place a system to better monitor the progress of cases and commit to maintaining a specialized team.

Finally, in March 2015, the Greater Manchester Police officially published the results of the Independent Police Complaints Commission's investigation. Thereafter, seven warnings for misconduct were issued. One of the officers escaped disciplinary proceedings by retiring. He would not have been able to demonstrate an investigative strategy, would not have been able to record meetings, and would not have informed his colleagues of the progress of the cases.

One of the victims reacted angrily that the process had taken four years and that none of the police officers were publicly named. The report also stated that she had stated that she did not want to pursue her complaint, which was not true.

BBC series

Three Girls aired in May 2017 . This is a miniseries about the case. Actress Maxine Peake played Sara Rowbotham, the social worker who first raised awareness of patterns of systematic sexual exploitation and fought for authorities to take action.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Police 'sorry' over Rochdale child sex abuse failures . In: BBC News , March 13, 2015. 
2. ↑ ^{a b} James Rodger: This is what happened to Three Girls whistleblower Sara Rowbotham . In: Birmingham Mail . 3rd July 2017.
3. ↑ Senior judge slams lawyers for obstructing Rochdale child sex grooming gang deportation case (en-GB) . In: The Telegraph . Retrieved May 19, 2017. 
4. ↑ Rachel Wearmouth: Rochdale Grooming Scandal Whistleblower Defends Sarah Champion And Slams Austerity . In: HuffPost UK . September 17, 2017. Retrieved November 26, 2018.
5. ↑ Rochdale grooming trial: Nine men jailed . May 9, 2012. 
6. ^ Nazia Parveen: Members of Rochdale grooming gang face deportation to Pakistan (en-GB) . In: The Guardian , February 9, 2017. Retrieved July 18, 2017. 
7. ↑ Chris Jones: Police vow to arrest even more child sex suspects . In: Manchester Evening News , May 23, 2013. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
8. ↑ Ten men charged over Rochdale child abuse claims . In: BBC News , March 2, 2015. Retrieved March 4, 2015. 
9. ↑ Sonia Sodha: How did children's homes become centers of profit-making and abuse? . In: The Guardian , December 29, 2019. Retrieved June 15, 2020. 
10. ↑ Alexandra Rucki: Far-right group North West Infidels stage protest in Rochdale . In: men , April 9, 2016. Retrieved May 19, 2017. 
11. ^ Rajeev Syal: Rochdale sex-grooming gangs able to flourish due to police errors says report . In: The Guardian , December 19, 2013. Retrieved June 15, 2020. 
12. ^ Nigel Bunyan: No officers to be charged over Rochdale child abuse failure, say police . In: The Guardian , March 13, 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2020.