JUST who is in charge in Rochdale? Not the law-abiding majority and not the police. Did you know that you can rape a girl in the UK, get her pregnant and serve only four years in prison? That’s just one example of what went on in Rochdale.
There is another review out on the organised child rape of girls in the town and it makes for grim reading. But then you knew that. As you wade through the depravity it is important to keep in mind that there are real girls, real victims involved.
This is all contained in the ‘Review published into Operation Span and non-recent child sexual exploitation in Rochdale.
The independent assurance review into historic child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Rochdale, published on the 15th of January 2024 has found compelling evidence of widespread organised sexual exploitation of children within Rochdale from 2004 to 2012, and failures by statutory agencies at the time to respond appropriately.’
Let’s take one girl, known as Child 44. She was raped and had an abortion at 13. Pretty good evidence of statutory rape then, you might think. No defence there. No, her rapist was charged with a lesser offence and served only four years in prison.
Girl 44 ultimately gave evidence at a 2012 trial but was ‘particularly distressed’ that the man who impregnated her at 13 was not charged with raping her. He was found guilty only of conspiracy and trafficking for sexual exploitation, sentenced to eight years and released on licence from prison less than four years after he was sentenced.
In what is symbolic of the depravity of what was going at the time, ‘Greater Manchester police (GMP) secretly took the aborted foetus of a 13-year-old grooming victim (this is Girl 44) in order to do a DNA test without telling the girl or her parents. Officers collected the foetus from Rochdale hospital in March 2009 but took no immediate action when the DNA failed to match possible suspects in the investigation at the time.
‘The foetus was then placed in the freezer at Rochdale police station and forgotten about until a “routine property review” some time later. Meanwhile, the girl continued to be exploited for several years and at one point was at risk of being taken to Pakistan by her abusers.’ Of course, she was.
This poor girl found out only in 2011 that the foetus had been taken by police, in the run-up to the trial of men who abused her and others. She told the report’s authors she thought it was ‘disgusting’ that the baby’s remains had been taken without her consent, and that police had ‘robbed’ her.
There is just something so wrong about this, the carelessness of it, the lack of compassion that sums up the entire rotten system and total lack of respect or dignity afforded to these girls who were trafficked and raped around Rochdale with impunity.
Other findings include, ‘When cases did eventually reach court, GMP left the young victims to be harassed and intimidated by the men who had previously abused them, sometimes at gunpoint.’ Also, police took no action in the case of a 15-year-old girl who gave birth to a child of her ‘pimp’.
One child told GMP that her abusers kept girls in cages and ‘made them bark like a dog or dress like a baby’ but took no action once she left Greater Manchester and was put in care elsewhere.
I mean why take action against a group of men that lock girls up in cages and make them bark like dogs? Don’t you know the police have other things to do with their time?
These men, hundreds of them, must have felt confident when they were trafficking and raping girls around Rochdale that they’d never be questioned. They also felt empowered enough to harass and intimate these girls once they did give evidence at a trial. You must really feel in charge if this is what you do. You must feel like you own the town, that no one would touch you and certainly not the police. That tells us a lot about who was really in charge at Rochdale in this time. If only the police policed the rapists as closely they do the gender critical feminists, then you wouldn’t have girls raped and locked in cages.
Then there was ‘Amber’. This is really unbelievable.
We are told, ‘The review has also found that during this operation numerous crimes were reported by a child victim, “Amber”, who disclosed that she had been a victim of sexual exploitation and violent abuse for several years. She was formally designated a victim under Operation Span, but these crimes were not recorded by GMP even though she had provided significant evidence over a six-month period. The report concludes that these perpetrators were potentially left to continue their abuse of other children.
In December 2011 the Crown Prosecution Service, in consultation with GMP, decided to name Amber as a co-conspirator in the sexual exploitation of other children and included her name on the indictment for the trial. This was a legal tactical decision by the prosecution to ensure the jury heard Amber’s critical evidence to the case. But Amber was never informed of this decision and was unable to defend herself against these allegations which she has always denied. No consideration was given to how the decision would affect Amber personally or what the repercussions of the decision might be for her family.
By naming her as a co-conspirator, the review team believe there was a foreseeable risk to her and her family’s personal safety that was either ignored or not considered. The review team regard this failure to protect a vulnerable victim as ‘deplorable’.
What happened to Amber? Well, ‘no further action was taken against Amber, but it would be another two years before the CPS agreed that she should be treated as a victim and witness rather than a suspect. During that period, Amber – by now pregnant and living in a one-room flat – continued to be targeted by the grooming gangs. Although police interviewed a total of 56 men on suspicion of abuse, only a handful were tried. There were therefore many still walking free that had evaded detection.’
Amber was threatened at gunpoint by a man whom she subsequently identified to the police. But nothing happened to him. She told the Guardian in 2022 that ‘Police weren’t arsed with us, really. They weren’t bothered . . . when you’re from a shit home. They don’t give a f*** when you’re not from a wealthy background.’
The Guardian explains that ‘as Amber was named on the indictment in court, she was portrayed by the prosecution and defence as an assistant pimp. Because she was not involved in the trial, and therefore did not give evidence, she had no opportunity to defend herself. She was vilified and nicknamed in the press as the “Honey Monster”. Although a court order prevented her being named, everyone in her local community knew who she was. Later, because Amber didn’t suffer enough, there were also threats that she would lose her children.
Elsewhere in the review we are told, ‘The review covers the period from 2004 to 2013 and considers how specific concerns in respect of child sexual exploitation were handled by the statutory agencies at the time. The report details how the emerging threat of child sexual exploitation was not addressed between 2004 and 2007.
‘In 2007, due to escalating concerns, the Crisis Intervention Team alerted GMP and Rochdale Council to the presence of an alleged organised crime group believed to be dealing in child sexual exploitation in Rochdale and using these children to facilitate the gang’s illicit dealing in Class A drugs. The Crisis Intervention Team identified at least 11 children they believed had been sexually exploited by this gang of Asian men.
‘GMP and Rochdale Council chose not to progress any investigation into these men.’
Do I need to go on? You get the depressing picture. Although this is déjà vu, our outrage should remain. In the past few years, we have seen politicians, celebs and all the rest of them falling over themselves to ‘take the knee’ to protest about the unlawful killing of an African-American man in Minneapolis. We had the media telling us of a rape culture in Parliament because some MP put his hands on some journalist’s knee (she didn’t even care.)
But in Rochdale, England, which if I’m familiar with a map is a lot closer than Minneapolis, girls were raped, impregnated, threated at gunpoint and this went on for years without an adequate police response. ‘One victim was forced to have sex with at least 20 men in one night; another was forced to drink vodka, and was vomiting over the side of the bed while being raped by “countless men”, and you have to wait years for a prosecution and even then it only touches the surface.’
So, ask the footballers, do girls’ lives matter? Ask the politicians, will they be taking a knee in protest at the organised brutal rape of girls Rochdale? Do these girls get their own colourful little flag? Will the streets of London be shut down in protest over this horrific violence against girls?
You know in this world, some victims count, and some victims don’t. If you are a poor working-class white girl from some town in England you are not fashionable and you don’t count. You don’t even get equal protection under the law.
And some bad guys are just badder than your average bad guy. An American police officer who has nothing to do with law enforcement in Britain? He needs to be denounced. Actual rapists and traffickers in class A drugs who clearly run the town of Rochdale? Not bad enough for criminal prosecution unless someone does a BBC documentary on you and there are enough whistle-blowers to get the authorities interested. A statue of a slaver who died a long time ago? Rip it down, throw it into a river and find me a safe space. Men who lock girls in cages and make them bark? Not worthy of a timely prosecution.
The girls were treated the same as the aborted unborn baby and its desperate mother – disposable, forgotten and pretty much trash. It’s barbarism in plain sight.
