Heartbreaking letter by 13-year-old Rochdale paedo gang victim detailing her sex abuse ordeal was ignored by cops

A SCRIBBLED note by a 13-year-old victim detailing her sex abuse ordeal should have sounded the alarm on paedophile activity in Rochdale.

Shockingly, it was ignored by police who had been urged to investigate crimes against children in the town.

The note, titled “Things I’ve done in the past”, was written in 2003 by Victoria Agoglia and passed to cops by social services.

In it, she describes her torment saying: “I am only 13 . . . I have slept with people older than me. Half of them I don’t even know their names. I am a slag.”

She went on: “I think I did it just to impress the boys and they treated me like s***. All the things I lost just for drugs . . .  boys . . . my family . . . I lost all of that.”

Victoria, who had sought help from her local NHS crisis intervention team, was described by sexual health worker Sara Rowbotham as “bright, funny and engaging”.

Ms Rowbotham revealed how - during her career as a sexual health worker - she has met more than 100 girls who have been groomed, trafficked and raped.

She even contacted police a staggering 181 times while managing Rochdale's Crisis Intervention Team to report the shocking abuse - but action was not taken until 2012.

In a new interview, she said: "I kept being told the police can’t do anything unless you have a victim. You only have a victim if the victim is prepared to make a statement."

She added: “It got to the point where we thought ‘is somebody going to have to die before anything is done’?”

Just months after scrawling her cry for help in the handwritten note, Victoria was found dead from a suspected heroin overdose after she went missing from a Rochdale care home.

In 2005 her letter appeared on the first page of a Greater Manchester Police report pleading for an investigation into the sexual abuse of girls by older men.

But astonishingly, the harrowing report — which was part of Operation Augusta and identified 26 potential victims and 97 suspects — was never acted on.

Former Detective Constable Maggie Oliver said: “I personally wrote the report. I started it with the photo of Victoria and her letter.

“Anyone who read that report had to see the picture of that beautiful girl and read that letter.

“She was 13 years old and she was talking about being abused by so many men that she couldn’t count them. She loved her family and felt she’d done things to let them down.

“She died of a drug overdose but we knew she had been abused on a massive scale.

“I wanted a powerful message to go to senior officers that the human consequences of not addressing this massive problem could lead, and would lead, to other children being in Victoria’s position.”

Maggie told how Operation Augusta began six years before Operation Span, which saw nine beasts jailed in 2012 after they were found guilty of running a sex exploitation ring, also in Rochdale.

The men, who exploited girls as young as 13, were given sentences ranging from four to 19 years.

But Maggie pointed out that the crimes detailed by Operation Span were the same as those she had identified years earlier.

She went on: “The Operation Augusta report and the findings of Operation Span were identical.

“The make-up of the victims was the same, the make-up of the offenders was the same and the way they operated was the same.

“As we dug deeper in 2004, it became abundantly clear that systematic sexual abuse was being inflicted on young, white girls by predominantly Pakistani men.

“I spoke to dozens of girls, some of whom took me to the locations where what they called ‘sex parties’ had happened, and even pointed out their abusers.”

In July 2005 Maggie delivered her report to the Assistant Chief Constable, who agreed there was a problem and assigned a major incident team to investigate.

The details she had gathered were entered into the Home System — a police database that is only used to collate information from major operations.

But just three months later she was horrified to discover the operation had been quietly shut down.

She said: “Everything was ready to go after I had delivered the report.

“But when I returned from a three month break it was as if nothing had ever happened. No action had been taken, there were no lines of enquiry, no arrests had been made.

“I now know that the last entry on the Home System regarding the investigation was logged on July 6, just a few days after I presented the report to the ACC.

“The investigation had been formally closed in September. I tried over and over again to find out what had happened.

“But the only answer I could get was that they had ‘insufficient evidence’.

“I knew that wasn’t true after months of speaking to the girls.

“In fact, the senior members of the police force had turned a blind eye to what was happening.

“All of those victims had been thrown on the bonfire. Meanwhile, their abusers were free to target a new generation of vulnerable girls.”

Her words come as new BBC documentary The Betrayed Girls reveals how sex abuse in Rochdale was buried by the authorities for fear of stirring up political conflict.

It follows the channel’s acclaimed drama Three Girls —  starring  Lesley Sharp as Maggie Oliver   — based on the true stories of the Rochdale sex abuse victims.

After the collapse of Operation Augusta, the vile grooming of girls in the Greater Manchester area continued unchecked for five years.

It was not until 2010 that police chiefs arrested nine men on suspicion of rape and sexual offences, and launched Operation Span to investigate the crimes committed.

Five months later, Chief Prosecutor Nazir Afzal ordered the CPS to build a case around Girl A, who had told cops she was being abused in 2008.

The case against her attacker was dropped amid fears that the troubled youngster would not be a credible witness.

But four years on, her evidence proved crucial in securing the convictions of nine paedophiles.

They included ringleader Shabir Ahmed, 64, aka “Daddy”, who got 19 years in jail for rape, sex assault, trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child.

After the trial, Assistant Chief Constable Steve Haywood was seen praising the victims’ bravery as he described them as “the most vulnerable in our society”.

But Maggie, who resigned from the police in 2012, said: “As I watched Steve Haywood give that statement I was thinking, ‘You were in charge of operations at the time of Augusta. You saw Victoria’s photo, you read her letter and my report. And you were one of the ones who stopped the investigation’.

“There were clear failings at that time and criminals were allowed to escape. Yet no one has ever been held accountable.

“The police are charged with protecting young people and yet they deliberately and knowingly turned a blind eye for years.

“That can never be allowed to happen again.”

Greater Manchester Police were unavailable for comment last night.

• The Betrayed Girls is on BBC One tomorrow at 8.30pm