Central to the report released today was a letter sent by a twelve year old girl to the leader of Oldham Council and copied to the Mayor of Greater Manchester in November 2019.
The letter contained serious allegations that she was subjected to profound sexual exploitation and that both Oldham Council and Greater Manchester Police had failed in their duty to protect her
The report found that there were significant opportunities missed by child social care to intervene and that there were two specific incidents where there was evidence that she was at risk of significant harm
At the time the chair of the House of Commons Home Affairs select committee raised the issue with Oldham Council but was told that there was little evidence to support allegations of a failure to protect
Sophie alleged that back in 2006 she had been groomed by an offender when she was just twelve years old,believing that a person that she friended on a social media website was eighteen and nice and caring-He turned out to be in this 30’s and serial paedophile.
Sophie told that she had been shopping in Oldham Town Centre with three friends and had ended up in Oldham Parish Church grounds where she was indecency assaulted by an Asian Male
She was told at the police station that she should reattend with an adult when she was not drunk.
At the police station she was then picked up by two males in their ca, one of the men would subsequently rape her.
Later, dropped off in Werneth, she was invited into her a house where she was raped again.Leaving the address she was then picked up by another man who took her to another address where she was then raped by five men.
The residents in that street had repeatedly told the council about a large scale grooming operations where taxis would amass every Wednesday night and children taken into the house in a conveyor belt operation
The report found that in this case there were serious failures by Greater Manchester Police in failing to properly investigate the rape allegations
“There were a number of proportionate and reasonable lines of enquiry available based on Sophie’s interviews to investigate these offences ….While the investigating officer asserts that appropriate enquiries were were conducted…..we have seen no evidence to enable us to provide assurance that this was done
When an offender was found guilty of the rape the following year he named two other men as part of his mitigation involved with the rapes.However Greater Manchester Police failed to follow up the allegations which the authors of the report considered a serious failure
