Rochdale grooming gang victim bumps into abuser who should have been deported
talkRADIO 15 May 2020
VIDEO DESCRIPTION
A victim of the infamous Rochdale grooming gang recently met her abuser face to face while shopping in ASDA. This was not part of a victim perpetrator meet in order to try and understand crimes.
Adil Khan was jailed for eight years in 2012 after being convicted of trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child, he was released in 2016. He was supposed to have been deported back to Pakistan he appealed against that and lost that appeal in 2018, but still remains in the UK.
Ian Collins speaks to former detective constable Maggie Oliver, who was the lead investigator on the Rochdale child sex abuse ring case for the Greater Manchester Police.
Maggie claims that the convictions made in the Rochdale child sex abuse ring of 9 men in early 2012 barely scratched the surface of what she describes as a "highly organised crime group that numbered hundreds of perpetrators" and countless young victims.
Why did the CPS not prosecute child rapists for rape?
How can the Home Office manage to implement a "Hostile Environment" in which it wrongly deports members of the Windrush Generation but leaves convicted child rapists wandering the streets when the courts ordered them to be deported - and their appeals failed?
The Probation Service omits to inform the victims that their abusers are being let out on parole, and the paedophiles, who should have been deported, are allowed unsupervised access to children because their Licence Conditions of parole have expired??
Just one case like this is bad enough but Maggie Oliver reckons this is not just happening in Rochdale.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
(this is long so might go over more than one post - if it does, it ends when I type END)
IAN COLLINS
Now, a victim of the infamous Rochdale grooming gang has met her abuser face-to-face. But while out shopping in Asda - this was not some kind of victim-perpetrator meet in order to try and understand crimes this should never have happened.
Adil khan was jailed for eight years in 2012 after being convicted of trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child. He was released in 2016. He was supposed to have been deported back to Pakistan. He appealed against that, and lost that appeal, in 2018 but still remains in the UK. How could this happen?
Maggie Oliver is former Greater Manchester police detective, and of course, what you might say, a Whistleblower. Also a consultant on the documentary, or the programme, the drama, that looked at this story, called "Three Girls".
Maggie nice to have you with us, hi.
MAGGIE OLIVER
Hi there Ian, thank you for having me on the show.
IAN COLLINS
Tt's a pleasure. Now, listen, this just seems beyond comprehension, that we would not only have, we'll get into how long it took to even get this case known, and and moving anywhere near a courtroom, in a moment. But how could we be in a place where someone who's guilty of the kind of crimes that I just mentioned there, he's told that after serving a prison sentence will be deported back to Pakistan but he's shopping in Asda and bumps into one of his victims. How could that even be a thing in this world?
MAGGIE OLIVER
Ian, that's a question that I ask myself time and time again. The way you've described it actually I feel under plays the magnitude of this. First of all I'd like to say that this is not a solitary example of this. This is something that I've heard several times from several victims in Rochdale. But the man that you're talking about, the paedophile Adil Khan, he was sentenced in 2012 as a result of having got this particular 13 year old child pregnant at the age of 13. I was a police officer, as you know, and the drama Three Girls covered this story, or part of the story of this particular victim.
He wasn't charged with rape even though we had a foetus, even though we had DNA to prove paternity of that foetus, despite that the CPS chose not to charge him with rape.
The result of that was that this man, and I have to say that he was convicted of sexually abusing other children but not charged with any rapes, as the result of those charges, this man was actually sentenced to eight years but he was out of prison less than four years after the trial. In the middle of 2016 he, together with two other of the abusers, both had dual nationality, and the, in sentencing it was decided that they would be extradited following their prison sentence. They came out of prison and they challenged that decision, based on their human rights that they had a family here and they should not be sent back to Pakistan. After two years and millions of pounds of taxpayers money, they lost that appeal, and that was back in 2018.
Now, a few weeks ago, the girl that this man had got pregnant when she was just 13, was shopping in Asda and she walked around the end of an aisle with her own children and came face to face with the man who got her pregnant when she was 13.
He was in unsupervised contact with another child of about 7 years old, she told me. And she fled from the store in absolute panic. She got outside the door, the firST person she rang was me, saying,"Maggie, Maggie I've just bumped into Billy! He's in Asda, he's in Rochdale."
IAN COLLINS
Billy was the name that he used wasn't it, during this time?
MAGGIE OLIVER
Yeah, his street name. Now, the questions that that raised are many.
First of all, what about the human rights of the child? She is living in Rochdale and she now has to walk around that town everyday thinking that she might bump into this man.
The second thing is that, because this man wasn't charged with rape, he was out of prison in less than four years for horrendous abuse.
Thirdly, probation failed to approach her to even discuss the fact that he was being considered for probation after being in prison for less than four years. The first she knew that he was out and about was when she came face to face with him.
And fourthly, I then referred this through lawyers to the Safeguarding Board, to say, "What is this man doing in unsupervised contact with another child when he's already been convicted of child abuse?" To be told that his License has now expired he's no longer under License and there is nothing that they can do.
So, so you know I know I in a way I sound a bit like a broken record but these these issues are current. This is not just one child that this has happened to. I can tell you of other children in Rochdale, and actually in many other towns or cities around the country where this is going on, and it is hidden. You know, if you go to the Home Office and ask for a statement about this particular case, or even this particular man, they will say, as they have said, you know we don't discuss individual cases.
But this is another national scandal, that you scratch the surface of what is going on and you find these absolute horrific stories, that you know these kids have had their lives destroyed already and, you know, they're hiding behind curtains. They're walking around the streets having done nothing wrong and yet they are still being punished, and still being failed and it just makes my blood boil. And it is, you know, her words to me when she rang me was that her heart just stopped beating.
Now you know, I'd just like your listeners to put themselves in that position and consider how they would feel, and you it's terrifying, and and, is this what Justice is?
IAN COLLINS
And I'm what I suppose Maggie what makes this I mean, as if it could be any more extraordinary and earth-shattering and horrendous, but bearing in mind the shortcomings, the mistakes, the errors and I think we can really say, the cover-ups, the the the curious world, we're talking about all manner of agencies and areas you know people that try to report something and were sent on a racial awareness course because they dared raise their head above the parapet and goodness er all manner of calamitous, horrendous errors that were taking place and evidence that was missed or people speaking up that were ignored. We are all familiar with the outskirts of this story.
You might think, given all of that, that there couldn't be a case where anyone would leave anything to chance at the other end, ie. when these people came out of prison. That those responsible for our legal systems and the judicial system that jails people and sees people release would make sure that every I was dotted and T was crossed. Bearing in mind they were dealing with what could have been the most catastrophic justice breach that we had seen for many years.
But still that didn't happen, despite what had gone before it.
MAGGIE OLIVER
And you know, I came on Julia's show, two or three months ago, there was a previous case. This was this case from 2012. I worked on another big case in 2005, and I won't go into because it's another, but it was called operation Augusta. And I spent 15 years shouting from the treetops about the cover-ups and the fact that Greater Manchester Police had buried that job. And unless 97 potential, not potential, abusers, to walk the streets for 15 years, they have been forced to reopen that case. This is a repeating pattern.
This case that I'm talking about here, this child, that was Operation Spam. And arguably it is the most well known case of on-street grooming, child sexual abuse, whatever you want to call it, it's actually child rape. But this is one of the most high-profile cases in the country. And even on this case, where the public know pretty much what has happened, even on this case, when you scratch the surface, and unfortunately, you know, I'm still here, shouting it from the rooftops, because in every town and city there are children just like this 13 year old, who have to face the same consequences, you know, regularly.
And the establishment, the authorities, do not want the public to know that. They make it very difficult to find out.
IAN COLLINS
What is that? Why is that, Maggie? What is the, what is the reason?
MAGGIE OLIVER
God if I had a pound for every time I've asked that question I'd be a multimillionaire. I don't know because for me, you know, bear in mind I spent 16 years as a
police officer. I joined to make a difference, to protect these children, so it makes no sense on any level.
Why, number one, they don't deal with it properly.
Number two, why it continues to be covered up and what i'm, you know, I'm part of, I'm a co-participant now, on the National Abuse Inquiry and, you know, I'm actually, even in relation to that, they are not including any of the northern towns and cities where predominantly this kind of abuse happens.
IAN COLLINS
Do you think it's about racial sensitivities, is it as blunt as that?
MAGGIE OLIVER
I don't. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and I've gone into, I wrote my own book, called "Survivors", which goes into this but I don't think it is as simple as that. I think that ethnicity is absolutely a part of it but I feel it goes much further than that.
I think this is about attitudes to what are considered kind of an underclass. You know those in the positions of power don't see children living in these communities, who are often from difficult backgrounds and have had, they are, the reason . . .
IAN COLLINS
. . . and that's often been used against them as well, hasn't it, in the past.
MAGGIE OLIVER
100%, you know.
IAN COLLINS
Just, just to interject Maggie, I'm just aware we're on the clock here a little bit, which is, which is a great shame because there's so much more to say.
This man, Adil Khan, legally at the moment is still meant to be deported.
MAGGIE OLIVER
Yes. And I you know, I mean, I thought he had been deported. There's three of them actually that challenged the deportation . . .
IAN COLLINS
. . . and lost the appeal. It's important, they lost the appeal. So they should be, one would have thought, straight from the challenge, where they lost, straight to an airport, you might think?
MAGGIE OLIVER
You would hope so, but clearly two years on that they're just trotting around the middle of Rochdale and . . .
IAN COLLINS
. . . and can walk, and can go shopping in Asda, and bump into one of their victims
Maggie, let's speak again on this, this is, it's so distressing and infuriating and of course, deeply upsetting because of the kind of nature of what we're talking about here.
Maggie Oliver, thank you. Former greater Manchester Police detective, one of the whistleblowers in the Rochdale grooming gang case. And there it is, there you heard the infuriation and the frustration and the upset in her voice, in just relaying some of what happened. The difficulties in getting through an impenetrable system, which I think is what she was alluding to there. And the fact that one of the child abusers, the paedophile Adil Khan, is walking around Asda doing his shopping, with a child, whether his own or somebody in his family, who knows, but not really a good look when you've just been jailed for eight years for child sex offences, you might think.
END