A recently released report commissioned by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham found that the city’s police force allowed nearly 100 pedophiles to go free, resulting in 57 young girls being groomed. The report revealed the criminals were allowed to go free because the police department was afraid to go after the men because they were Asian.
The Daily Mail reported that former Greater Manchester Police (GMP) detective Maggie Oliver now has called for GMP chiefs to be charged for their role in the disaster.
“GMP detectives launched Operation Augusta in 2004 after the death of a 15-year-old girl called Victoria Agoglia who previously told carers she had been raped and injected with heroin by an Asian man,” the outlet reported. “But the probe was shelved a year later despite the force uncovering almost 100 paedophiles in south Manchester who later went on to rape and abuse dozens of young girls in the areas.”
Oliver said after the report was released that for “Fifteen years – the perpetrators that we knew on Operation Augusta were abusing generations of children were allowed to walk free.”
“The kids themselves that I spoke to – I was on Operation Augusta, I wrote the report – those children were just cast to the wind, left to their own devices. Nobody cared about them,” she continued. “And I am talking about the people at the top of the police and at social services. The chief constable, assistant chief constables, head of social services, the people who knew the facts, who knew the truth and they chose to bury the truth. That, in my opinion, is unforgivable.”
The report found that officers worried arresting the pedophiles would result in “the incitement of racial hatred,” the Mail reported.
The Telegraph added that the report quoted an unnamed GMP detective constable who had arrested a child sex offender who was not Asian.
“What had a massive input was the offending target group were predominantly Asian males and we were told to try and get other ethnicities,” the detective said.
Part of what the discontinued Operation Augusta found was “the systematic exploitation of looked after children mainly in the care system in the city of Manchester and around the Rochdale area,” the Telegraph reported.
The report released Tuesday was written by child protection specialist Malcolm Newsam and former senior police officer Gary Ridgway, launched thanks in part to Oliver’s whistleblowing.
“I want the law changing so there can be retrospective accountability for people whose duty it is to protect the vulnerable. It’s knowing and deliberate neglection of duty…[those who were involved] should be charged with gross misconduct – it’s criminal – where is the accountability?” Oliver told the Telegraph.
The GMP has now sent a referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, a British police watchdog, to investigate whether any officer’s conduct needed to be investigated.
Assistant Chief Constable Mabs Hussain, head of Specialist Crime for Greater Manchester Police, told the Telegraph that “Children should be able to expect those responsible for their care will do all they can to keep them safe and I want to apologise to all those vulnerable children who were let down.”
He said police are still looking into Agoglia’s death.