extract
Between 2008 and 2010, a child abuse ring that came to be known as part of the “grooming gang” phenomenon operated in Rochdale,Greater Manchester. Girls aged between 13 and 15 were trafficked, prostituted, raped and assaulted by the gang.
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”.
The perpetrators would pass the girls to their friends, often to settle a debt. The victims, many of whom were from difficult backgrounds and therefore particularly vulnerable, were plied with drugs, alcohol and fast food, and then taken to “chill houses” across the north of England to be abused. One 13-year-old victim became pregnant and had an abortion. Some of the men involved were arrested, tried and found guilty. But not all.
One of the victims – given the fictitious name Amber inThree Girls, the BBC One drama about the abuse – was 14 when she was targeted by gang members. After a troubled upbringing, Amber had been placed on the child protection register as being at risk of sexual and emotional abuse and neglect. Craving love and attention, Amber was lured into a nightmare, subjected to repeated and often violent sexual abuse.
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That nightmare should have ended with the arrest and trial of the perpetrators, but instead the police, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and even social services treated her not as a victim but as a perpetrator.
When we met in a hotel in Rochdale last month, Amber was accompanied byMaggie Oliver, a former police detective who walked out of the job in protest at the way Amber had been treated.
In 2009, when Amber was 16, uniformed officers arrived at her mother’s house, arrested her and took her to the police station.
“[I] can’t remember exactly what they said, but it was something along the lines of being a ‘madam’,” she recalled. “I didn’t know what that meant.” She was held in custody for hours before being released on bail. Her mother was not allowed to be with her during the interview, and there was no mention of an appropriate adult.
Amber had, under pressure from the abusers, taken some of her friends to the takeaway where the ringleaders operated from. She told me: “It wasn’t like a forced thing. It was like a casual, ‘Oh, bring your friends.’” She was a vulnerable child, being sexually abused, controlled and in fear.
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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.
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Without Amber’s initial evidence there might never have been a trial at all. She gave the police a list, at an early stage of Operation Span, with nicknames, telephone numbers and other details relating to offenders. She later went on to positively identify a number of offenders, which enabled charges to be brought against them all.
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But in court, she was portrayed by the prosecution and defenceas 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.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/17/rochdale-victim-i-was-groomed-at-14-then-the-courts-came-for-my-children
Why was there so much interest in placing responsibility on Amber? Yes, the victims of child abuse and repeated rape are groomed into introducing other girls into the horror. We know this. The priority should be identifying and criminalising rapists surely, not schoolgirl victims in denial about being rape victims?