January 2020. Children were raped and abused by up to 100 members of a Manchester grooming gang sixteen years ago – but despite police and social workers knowing what was happening they weren’t stopped. At least 57 young girls are thought to have been exploited by a paedophile network based in south Manchester. They were hooked on drugs, groomed, raped and emotionally broken – one youngster, aged fifteen, died. The disturbing story of the gang’s crimes, the betrayal of the victims, and the scale of institutional neglect is disclosed in a damning two year inquiry into historic failures in the protection of children in Manchester. The review, commissioned by Greater Manchester mayor’s office in 2017 and written by experts Malcolm Newsam and Gary Ridgway, looked at the way authorities have dealt with child sexual exploitation. It was launched on the back of allegations made by former GMP detective Maggie Oliver. At its heart is the death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia, also known as Victoria Byrne, in 2003. Its conclusions lay bare the scale of the abuse she suffered at the hands of men who freely came and went from her care home with the full knowledge of the authorities – also revealing she had repeatedly told social workers she was being injected with drugs and raped. It finds no action was taken to protect her. After her death a police investigation, Operation Augusta, was set up to see if there was a wider problem of child sexual exploitation in south Manchester. Officers managed to quickly identify a network of nearly 100 Asian men potentially involved in the abuse of scores of girls via takeaways in and around Rusholme, but the operation was shut down shortly afterwards due to resources, ‘rather than a sound understanding’ of whether lines of inquiry had been exhausted. Barely any charges were made against the men identified by the operation. Eight of them later went on to commit serious sexual crimes, including the rape of a child, the rape of a young woman, sexual assault and sexual activity with a child. Council files reviewed by the inquiry show a number of children in care at the same time as Victoria had reported ‘harrowing’ abuse to social services, including one ‘very young’ girl who described being restrained by a man in his 20s, before being subjected to ‘an extremely serious and distressing sexual act’. This is a Scandal and Many Heads need to Roll. There has to be Justice, Convictions need to follow.
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