Oldham Grooming Failures Exposed

Oldham’s long-running child sexual exploitation scandal has returned to the spotlight, and it’s not because the town suddenly forgot what happened. It’s because years of warnings, flawed practice and fear of inflaming racial tension left many young victims abandoned by the very systems meant to protect them. Council officer Ruth Baldwin told colleagues in 2006 that the problem went far beyond teenage romances: girls were being targeted by adult men. The council set up Operation Messenger — a partnership with police, health services and Barnardo’s — which won early plaudits and an award. Yet a safeguarding review published in 2022 concluded the day-to-day casework was often poor, with agencies failing to trigger proper child-protection procedures even when children were clearly at risk. The row flared again on New Year’s Day 2025 after reports that the government would not fund a statutory local inquiry into Oldham. A high-profile reaction on X from Elon Musk, saying the minister should be jailed, provoked controversy but also helped push ministers to launch a national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs across England and Wales. Oldham will be a central focus, including how ethnicity, religion or culture influenced responses. Operation Messenger investigated alleged perpetrators from different backgrounds, and white men were among those examined. But the case files show British Asian men — particularly of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage — accounted for a substantial portion of the caseload. That reality, officials feared, risked fuelling far-right backlash in a town still scarred by the 2001 riots, and documents from police at the time express anxiety about community “demonisation” and the potential for demonstrations. The human cost is devastating. Samantha Walker-Roberts, seized from a police station in 2006 while trying to report an assault, was trafficked around Oldham and says she was raped at the home of Shakil Chowdhury. Only Chowdhury was convicted. Forensic material that might have identified others was destroyed or returned, and leads named at trial were not followed up, the review found. Police say current standards would be different and that historical investigations are ongoing. Other cases uncovered show a pattern of children repeatedly targeted, sometimes arrested themselves rather than treated as victims. A boy and girl prosecuted in separate trials saw light penalties or supervision orders, and a 12-year-old known as Child X later told how she was abused by hundreds of men after she began skipping school. Perhaps the clearest failure was not only to catch offenders but to recognise and listen to those being hurt. Many victims entered care already vulnerable because of family abuse. As Walker-Roberts puts it, professionals too often labelled victims as troublemakers rather than as children in need of protection — a culture the forthcoming inquiry must confront. --- Managing your business finances? TaxAce provides smart online accountancy services for UK businesses with flexible monthly plans. Image and reporting: https://www.theguardian.com | Read original article