Child Rape Gang Police Whistleblower: Child Sex Abuse is ‘Going on Everywhere’ in the UK

police
West Yorkshire Police
Kurt Zindulka

Former detective turned grooming gang whistleblower Maggie Oliver said that the apologies offered in the lastest review to child rape victims in Bradford are “pointless” and that the scourge of rape gangs persists “everywhere” in the UK.

An independent review into five child grooming cases in Bradford, West Yorkshire since 2001 found that “children suffered abuse no child should have to experience”.

The review repeated the oft-heard refrain from such findings that the Bradford Partnership “fully accepts more needs to be done”.

“We want to apologise to the young people identified in this report and any others where the actions of agencies in Bradford has failed to protect them from child sexual exploitation.”

One of the victims highlighted in the report, referred to as Anna, was placed into the care of foster parents whose son was her abuser.

Anna was then forced into an Islamic wedding with her abuser after becoming pregnant at the age of fifteen, all of which, she claimed, was sanctioned by Bradford authorities.

“While in the ‘care’ of these adults, she was subjected to further sexual abuse and exploitation, domestic abuse, including assaults and coercion and what we would now recognise as domestic slavery,” the report revealed.

Anna said that the agencies “just ignored the abuse”, destroying her childhood.

Anti-abuse campaigner Maggie Oliver, who quit the Greater Manchester Police in 2012 in order to expose the grooming scandal in Rochdale, said of the review: “It’s another apology where they say lessons will be learned and all the rest of it.”

“We’re now 15 years on and as a result of what I learned after resigning, I started the Maggie Oliver Foundation where we help survivors and victims of child abuse every single day,” she told GB News.

“I can tell you that in the last six months, we are dealing with 31 cases from West Yorkshire, alone.

“Bradford is just another case, this is going on everywhere. What we’re finding in the foundation is that the worst cases that we are aware of are West Yorkshire and in [Greater Manchester]”.

Another victim cited in the latest review, Fiona Goddard — who waived her life-long right to anonymity — said that the Bradford police and council had many opportunities to stop her abuse and “nip it in the bud” but they “never did”.

Goddard, who was the victim of sexual abuse by the 2008 Bradford grooming gangs, said: “I reported it multiple times – physical abuse, sexual abuse or rapes – and they were never followed up on.”

In 2019, nine Bradford men, Basharat Khaliq, Saeed Akhtar, Naveed Akhtar, Parvaze Ahmed, Zeeshan Ali, Fahim Iqbal, Izar Hussain, Mohammed Usman and Kieran Harris were convicted of rape and inciting child prostitution against girls as young as fourteen years old starting in 2008.

The jury in the trial heard that local authorities were aware that at least one of the girl victims in the case was “being picked up by multiple Asian males in smart cars”.

One of the victims in the case told the court: “I struggle to leave the house due to anxiety which prevents me from living a full life, and have spent my adult life on medication,” adding that “the drug and alcohol misuse has had a large effect on my health, such as abnormal liver function.”

Maggie Oliver said that the survivors of grooming gangs and other child abuse crimes feel as if they have no one to turn to, saying: “They’re being blamed, they’re being ignored. There are cover-ups and there is a lack of concern.

“These children are in care they are taken away from homes because they are deemed to be at risk. I would argue that they are being put into situations that are even more risky than when they’re in their own home”

“It destroys lives and it’s about time that we did something as a country to address it.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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