Rochdale paedophile ring victim tells how she was raped by three men with a razor blade held at her throat in a shocking BBC documentary
A ROCHDALE sex abuse victim has told how she was raped by one man as another held a razor blade to her throat and a third forced her into oral sex.
The unnamed girl, who was 14 when she was repeatedly abused by the grooming ring who were convicted in 2012, spoke out in the BBC documentary The Betrayed Girls, which airs tonight.
She said: “I was in a house in Rochdale. I was drunk. There was a lock on the door and they locked it. They were laughing at me because I was throwing up over the side of the bed.
“There was a guy with a razor blade who came up to me and said, ‘I'm going to cut you. Do you want me to cut you?’ and another guy said, ‘just lay down’ and I did.
“The guy with the razor blade kept coming up to me and holding it to my throat, telling me he was going to slit my throat. He was laughing. One of them pulled my trousers down while I was being sick and inserted himself while the guy with the razor blade had it up to my throat.
“The other guy was stood watching and he said to the guy with the razor blade ‘just hold it there’ and he kept trying to put himself in my mouth.
“The whole time I had the guy at the bottom of the bed raping me. I actually thought I was going to get my throat slit.”
The teenager was one of 47 potential victims of the Asian sex gang who preyed on girls as young as ten.
In 2012 nine men, including ring leader Shabir Ahmed, were convicted of the string of offences including rape and were jailed for up to 22 years.
But the trial exposed huge failings by Greater Manchester Police and the social services who had ignored evidence of the abuse over a period of eight years.
Sarah Rowbotham, the manager of the Rochdale Crisis Intervention Team, began documenting the abuse of girls who came to the centre as early as 2004 and says she called police and social services 181 TIMES about the crimes.
She said: “There were often girls waiting outside at 8.30 in the morning. They’d been up all night were really smelly, dishevelled, and really frightened.
“There was one girl who’d been dumped on the moors and she’d walked six miles to get to our building. She’d been raped and thrown out of a car and there were a number of men who had had intercourse with her.
“We called the police every time. We were told 'We can’t do anything unless we have a victim and we only have a victim if they are prepared to make a statement'.
“Often the children couldn’t articulate that and they were really frightened of the consequences.”
In the shocking BBC programme, former Detective Constable Margaret Oliver, told how she was given the green light to head up an investigation into the grooming in 2005 called Operation Augusta.
She compiled a report after a letter from 13-year-old victim Victoria Agoglia, who tragically died of an overdose, detailed her abuse at the hands of older men.
But after a three month break to look after her terminally ill husband she found that the investigation had been quietly shelved.
She said: “I couldn’t believe it.
“This was systematic, organised, sexual abuse. They were not picking kids at random. They were targeted and it was like a production line.
“So what was happening to all these children now? Who was dealing with this kind of crime? Nobody. It was being buried.”
She also revealed that even after the arrest and conviction of the nine men, allegations made by one victim over a series of interviews, had disappeared from the database.
She said: “When one child tells the police she has been raped by up to 30 men and GMP choose not to make a record of any of those allegations, that is out and out neglect.
“That is your basic role as a police officer to record the evidence, you don’t make a snap judgement about whether you believe it.
“There is no record that that child disclosed those offences … the consequence of that is that those men might be abusing other children.”
The harrowing documentary reveals the extent that these crimes, and similar around the country, were brushed under the carpet with Keighley MP Ann Cryer revealing she was branded “racist” by fellow MPs for raising the issue.
The father of one victim, known as Girl A, speaks out about shock and anger after his daughter’s multiple rape case was dropped, despite substantial evidence.
He said: “She told them she’d been raped several times and the policeman said, ‘for what it’s worth I believe you. We’ve heard of this before’.
“I was totally in shock. There’s no other way to describe it, you’re a father, you’re supposed to look after your children. It’s your duty to look after your children and protect them. I tried and I failed."
He said he put his “faith and trust” in the police but added: “A few months down the line they decided they weren’t going to pursue it any more.
“I knew that knickers had been recovered and that DNA evidence had been recovered and that basically the semen of one of these animals was in her knickers. It’s a smoking gun, that’s red-handed. I don’t think any sane human being could disagree.
“The CPS dropped it because they said my daughter wouldn’t be believed. I was devastated.”
One victim said: “I felt totally alone. There was nobody to help me, no one to listen so it just went on.
“One time I was at a house in Oldham and I was drinking, doing speed and getting off my trolley. When I came round, I didn’t know where I was, I couldn’t move. I was on a single bed, there was a double bed next to me.
“There were just men coming in and out, it seemed like one after the other. They were all laughing and joking, pleasing themselves with my useless body I couldn’t move.
“I could see what was going on and feel what was going on. A couple of guys came in with another girl, she done it willingly.
“She turned round and looked at me and said: ‘You’ll get used to it. We all do.’”
Another victim, whose abuse started at the age of 13, revealed how one of the men made her feel wanted.
She said: “He’d ring you saying ‘I’ve not seen you for ages. I’ve missed you’ and that little bit of attention, you get excited off it, the feeling that you’re wanted.
“He took me to London, Huddersfield, Bradford, Birmingham, places like that. I’ve woke up in a house, a derelict building with a bed in it. I woke up not knowing where I am or how I got there, with no clothes on, freezing cold with them nowhere to be seen.”
When the cases were finally reopened in 2010, Margaret Oliver was once more charged with persuading the girls to give evidence, this time with assurances they would be listened to.
She was horrified when the testimony of one of the victims was dropped, once again, after Margaret had won her trust.
She said: “I had put my heart and soul into bringing these children on board with absolute guarantees and assurances there would not be a repeat of what happened on Operation Augusta.
“There I was back in the same place but on this occasion it wasn’t just one interview this child had given, but six months of her life. I thought it was immoral inhuman, unprofessional. I couldn’t believe it.”
The victim said: “I was 14 when the abuse started. It went on for about 4 years, I was raped by about 50 men, maybe more, I’ve lost count.
“I was disgusted with myself that I’ve had sex with that many men. I kept it in a box, locked away. To open that box and tell Maggie everything that happened was really hard.”
Margaret believes there are still hundreds of paedophile operating similar rings today and says they should have acted in 2005.
She said: "If Greater Manchester Police had followed what we knew to be happening back in 2005 I know 100 per cent that this kind of crime would not have escalated to the proportions we now see.
"As a community and country we are trying to play catch up with a crime which has reached frighteningly epidemic proportions.
"I’m heartbroken about the kids in the middle of it who have been let down."
The Betrayed Girls is on BBC1 tonight at 8.30pm.