Investigation II

Finally this abuse is taken seriously

In December 2010 Greater Manchester Police form a specialist team of officers to specifically investigate sexual abuse cases.They call their investigation Operation Span. Even though the police are now willing to listen to victims of sexual abuse, investigators have multiple hurdles.The abused girls have often already been let down once by the police and some are now reluctant to come forward. If and when they do, their accounts are often hampered by the drink and drugs with which they were often plied. And even when facts are recalled, they’re often not actual names but the nicknames by which the abusers called themselves.

Despite this, the police begin to uncover what appears to be a large and complex web of criminal abusers and their multiple victims. “Once police forces…started actively looking for child sexual exploitation, what shocked them was the scale of it.”Adele Gladden, Safeguarding Children’s Consultant.Increasingly, in Rochdale, it looks like the perpetrators are mainly British Pakistani men working in the night time economy.In May 2011, Nazir Afzal becomes the chief prosecutor for the North West of England. He’s keen to see if grooming gangs are operating in his area and within days, his colleagues bring him the case of Girl A. But the initial decision to class her as an unreliable witness against Shabir Ahmed, both her rapist and the alleged ringleader of a larger grooming gang, is a massive impediment to investigating any of the alleged abusers:“…without reversing that decision it would have undermined the cases against all the other men because they could turn round to a jury and say, ‘Well, why am I here when he, alleged ringleader, is not here?’…like a pack of cards, it would have just fallen over.”Nazir Afzal, Former Chief Crown Prosecutor, NW EnglandSo, in June 2011, Nazir Afzal does something very rarely seen. He overturns the original Crown Prosecution Service ruling. Now the Greater Manchester Police have the power to bring charges against eleven members of the gang, including 58 year old Shabir Amend and 24 year old Kabeer Hassan. By the time of their arrests, a sickening 50 young girls, aged between 12 and 16 are believed to have been abused by members of the gang. “One of those was was a girl of 13 who had convinced herself that she was in love with a 42-year-old taxi driver. What was love for her was simply a passport of abuse for him.”Nigel Bunyan, Journalist & Ghostwriter ‘Girl A: My Story’The 50 girls police identify are just the number the police can find. The number of actual victims is thought to be much higher.