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Why police ignored the grooming gangs, with Maggie Oliver
2.9k Plays3 months ago
In the last month, the grooming gangs scandal has gone from being the UK’s worst-kept secret to its greatest source of national shame. From at least the 1990s, and likely long before then, criminal networks comprised almost entirely of Pakistani Muslim men prostituted, raped and tortured thousands of young girls in towns and cities across the UK. And the authorities, despite being aware of what was happening, did very little to intervene. UK citizens, and indeed the world, quite rightly want to know why.
To help Will understand, he is joined by Maggie Oliver. Maggie is a former detective who resigned from Greater Manchester Police in 2012 and blew the whistle on the failure to tackle grooming gangs in Rochdale. She wrote about her battle to expose the gangs, and seek justice for the victims, in her book ‘Survivors’, which was adapted for the screen in the BBC drama ‘Three Girls’. The Maggie Oliver Foundation supports survivors and those at risk of childhood sexual abuse and exploitation.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
Support The Maggie Oliver Foundation here.
Buy Maggie's book here.
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Transcript
Introduction and Scandal Overview
00:00:21
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will from The Spectator Australia, a safe space for dangerous conversations. I'm Will Kingston. In the last month, the grooming or rape gang scandal has gone from being the UK's worst kept secret to its greatest source of national shame.
00:00:39
Speaker
From at least the 1990s, and likely long before then, criminal networks comprised almost entirely of Pakistani Muslim men, prostituted, raped, and tortured thousands of young girls in towns and cities across the yeah UK. And the authorities, despite being aware of what was happening, did very little to intervene. UK citizens, and indeed the world, quite rightly, want to know why.
00:01:06
Speaker
To help
Meet Maggie Oliver: Whistleblower
00:01:07
Speaker
me understand, I am joined by the inspirational Maggie Oliver. Maggie is a former detective who resigned from the Greater Manchester Police in 2012 and blew the whistle on the failure to tackle grooming gangs in Rochdale. She wrote about her battle to expose the gangs and seek justice for the victims in her book Survivors, which was adapted for the screen in the BBC drama Three Girls.
00:01:30
Speaker
The Foundation, the Maggie Oliver Foundation, supports survivors and those at risk of childhood sexual abuse and exploitation. Maggie, welcome to Fire
Motivations and Early Aspirations
00:01:39
Speaker
at Will. Thank you. Thanks very much for having me, Will. Yeah, it's a real pleasure to have you on. We will get to some of the more recent developments in this scandal as it's come to prominence around the world in the last month.
00:01:53
Speaker
But I want to start with your story first, because I think in many ways what's a microcosm of of what we've seen across the UK. And it also, I think, will help us understand the human dimension involved here, both for victims, for the authorities. And your story, I guess, as a detective was a bit unusual, wasn't it? Because you came to policing relatively late compared to some people.
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah, I was getting on a bit when I joined the police. um I had, I was married when I was in my twenties. I had four children. I was at home with my kids for a few years, more or less a full-time mom. And then at the age of 37, I went to do a full-time honors degree at university. And in my final year, I was going to teach, but I decided to, you know, if I didn't get into teaching, what could I do? For some unknown reason, I thought,
00:02:42
Speaker
I will apply to join Greater Manchester Police. I got in both but I ended up deferring my entry for teaching for one year and and joining GMP. The day I swore my oath of attestation, I was actually 42 years old, which was extremely rare in those days. I still think it is, but I was probably, there were quite a few guys who had come from the forces, you know, army and, and, and they would do like 20 years. And then they joined the police as another uniform service when they were like 38, 39. But I think I was 15 years older than the the, the, the nearest woman in age to me.
00:03:19
Speaker
So right from day one I think I had a very
Challenging Police Inaction
00:03:23
Speaker
different outlook, a very, some would say, overdeveloped sense of what's right and what's wrong, but I Wanted to do good, you know, I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to put the bad guys away and children have always been very close to my heart. I think we have a duty to look after children to give them a good childhood. And so when I first joined, I thought I would go into our protection, but I did a.
00:03:53
Speaker
I think a six-month attachment and realize very quickly that it actually wasn't for me because you were mainly dealing with the offenders and I'm very good with vulnerable people. So I went into serious crime and I i mainly worked on murders, I did witness protection, I did a couple of kidnappings, gang-related shootings. I became a family liaison officer as well as a detective and I worked in the major incident team.
00:04:22
Speaker
So, but I always believed in justice when, when you join the police, anybody who joins the police swears an oath of attestation. I'm not going to read it all, but you, you, you solemnly and sincerely declare that you will serve that it was the queen then with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights.
00:04:49
Speaker
and according equal respect to all people and that you will do that according to the law. So I always refer to that because when I joined the police, that's what I promised to do. and I didn't promise to do as I was told. I didn't promise to be quiet about things that I saw when they were clearly, the law was was not being used to prosecute.
00:05:16
Speaker
Serial child abusers that were destroying young lives and yet I was put in a position where I knew that these children were being failed and yet I was being told by the powers that be that it was not my business to challenge them ah in fact what I was actually told wo was that you know senior officers make decisions.
00:05:38
Speaker
And if you can't do as you're told maybe you're in the wrong job so it it was a very very difficult journey for about two years but i started off at that point in two thousand and ten eleven. I resigned in two thousand and twelve.
00:05:54
Speaker
very, very naive, actually, believing that it was one lazy officer on the Rochdale case that didn't want to do his job. You know, I'm 15, you know, 13 years on from that now. And I can clearly see, and I know that I was just naive that there was ah an intent, that there was a deliberate attempt or determination to turn away from these children, to not prosecute the abusers and to allow them to continue to abuse other children. It
Operation Augusta's Closure
00:06:27
Speaker
was very much swept under the carpet and hidden. And and it made, it changed the course of my life forever, Will. It made me very, very ill. And I feel really that I was exploited. I was 16 years in the police.
00:06:42
Speaker
And I believed I was joining an organization that was there to uphold the law. What I believe now is very different. Yeah. And we'll get to why there are those systemic problems in the police force. It's not just one bad apple or or one lazy officer. It is a systemic problem. But before we do, let's, let's look at this chronologically. Let's go to the first time that you were exposed to the problem of grooming gangs.
00:07:10
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, that would take you back to 2004 and I was approached and asked whether I would join a very small team. It was three P three officers. Originally. We had a little girl called Victoria Agolia, who had been given a drugs overdose and had died. It was also very clear. She lived in, um, in care, which wasn't care, but in a children's home, her mom had died.
00:07:38
Speaker
all the children have been separated and she had gone from ah a bright lively happy eight-year-old to a child who really was being raped on on a on an industrial scale and despite her pleas for help which were ignored the gang continued to exploit her and abuse her and one of her abusers gave her an overdose of drugs from which she died.
00:08:07
Speaker
I was asked to join that case because what I didn't know then was that in the background, there was a documentary team that had followed a social services team in Yorkshire, and in a town called Kiethly. And that documentary team had uncovered an identical problem with very vulnerable young white children who were being targeted, exploited, and raped by a gang of Pakistani Muslim men.
00:08:37
Speaker
No i didn't know about that program at the time but what i now believe and and i think every i think history will show. That when Victoria died the police in Yorkshire and under the association of chief police officers they got an injunction out to prevent that program from being transmitted i didn't know this at the time.
00:09:00
Speaker
But I know now, or I believe that alongside that, they knew that we had a problem in Manchester. And so they wanted to be able to say when, when this, if this did go out, this program, and there was, they expected public outrage.
00:09:16
Speaker
And they, the the press and the media would come to Manchester and say, you know, have you got a similar problem? I now believe that they wanted to be able to say, well, we have, but we're we're looking at it. We're not sure, but we've got a team looking at this problem but and it's an ongoing investigation. That's what I believe. What happened was.
00:09:37
Speaker
The program was delayed, but when it did go out, I was on that, the that case, the the investigation became known as Operation Augusta. And when that program did go out, there wasn't the outcry that was expected. And so I know now that the, the top, the the top echelon within greater Manchester police.
00:10:02
Speaker
including the chief constable, head of child protection, head of serious crime. They made a decision that they would close that job down because they wouldn't put the resources into investigating. Now at that point, when they made that decision, we had a hundred named identified pedophiles that we knew were raping children. We had about three dozen children that we knew were being abused from the age of 11.
00:10:27
Speaker
It turns out now that there were well over 70 children that were that were involved, and my husband was terminally ill, and we had everything there. We had names, addresses, locations where these sex parties would happen, social workers who were begging and pleading with the police to do something about it.
00:10:50
Speaker
But my husband at that point was terminally ill and i went off work in his last few weeks to look after him he died on july the fifth two thousand and five. When i came back to work a couple of months later thinking that that job would have led to serious charges of rape and we have you know many men charge i came back.
00:11:12
Speaker
To find that the whole case, the whole investigation had been completely closed down. Not one of those men was charged with rape or any effect, any sexual offenses. They were just allowed to carry on as though nothing had happened.
Systemic Police Failures
00:11:25
Speaker
And the children were just abandoned to their own devices.
00:11:29
Speaker
Now I could not get my head around it. I could not make any sense of how that could possibly happen because I knew that these children were being raped. I knew as the horrors that they were experiencing and I couldn't get over it. So I tried to get somebody to listen and try to get answers. What's going on? But I was just told that there was insufficient evidence kind of go away and carry on with, with your, with your job.
00:11:58
Speaker
But what you got to remember is that I'd been off work. I came back. I didn't have one single piece of paperwork. I couldn't access the database because it had been closed down. And, and and you know, I'm going back 20 years. I couldn't believe that somebody was capable of just turning a blind eye to all that abuse. What did the other detectives on that task force say at the time? How did they feel about it?
00:12:23
Speaker
The guy who led it day to day was very close to his retirement, to be honest. And I felt from day one that he didn't have any interest, that there was no real determination. And I think now with hindsight, you know,
00:12:39
Speaker
the The attitude of the authorities at the top was that we don't want to rock this boat. We don't want to cause outrage. or I mean, I'm always asked about the racial aspects and I do think that race and religion was part of why they've turned away for so long. But I always say, I think that the class, the the the judgment and the the class dynamics of the children is equally important because the children are definitely the children that were involved in operational vista. I think every single one was living in and in the care of social services so they had no families that really would fight that corner they were from a very troubled background.
00:13:24
Speaker
Nobody was going to fight their corner. And I always say, you know, if that was Keir Starmer's daughter or Boris Johnson's daughter, they would not have turned away. But who was going to fight for these kids? You know, everybody wanted to cover up what was going on. Also, I think it's fair to say that my husband died on the 5th of July, 2005.
00:13:46
Speaker
That job, that Operation Augusta, was a fully fledged major incident within GMP right up to the night of the 6th of July 2005. And five and the the database, which is a very specialized database for major incidents, the last entry on that database went on it on the night of the 6th of July. So it was still a fully fledged major incident then. There was a full team on it, maybe 30, 40 officers. The morning of the 7th of July, we had the London bombing. Not one more entry went on that database. And I find that too much of a coincidence, not to believe that right at the top of government, there was a decision that we're not going to rock this boat. There was a a lot of.
00:14:35
Speaker
discussions about not you know about fear of Islamophobia, about not wishing to upset local ah community cohesion. So I think that that was another factor in the decision to close down that job.
00:14:50
Speaker
I'm trying to put myself in your shoes at that time. And when you have very senior members of the police force telling you things like, well, actually we don't have enough evidence. Actually, we don't think this is prosecutable. Did you ever waver? Did you ever for a moment feel?
00:15:06
Speaker
Never, never for one single moment. And um one i own I only was able to meet one of the children, no, one of the children, but many of the social workers and going in the care homes. Um, and that one girl who I'm still in contact with today, I wasn't for many years, but when I started speaking out publicly, she came and approached me and I vividly remember her taking me and showing me where the abuse happened.
00:15:32
Speaker
Give me a lot of detail actually saying that two of her abusers were actually serving police officers and i know that we actually drove past that this abuse car. um When i checked the registration of but of the vehicle she identified to me it was a certain police officer so i. I knew.
00:15:54
Speaker
way back then that what I was seeing was wrong. I didn't appreciate that that the dis that the determination not to investigate these crimes came from the top I at that point thought it it was a lazy officer or, you know, that, that it was not being investigated because there was not the determination to do it. But it's haunted me for 20 years because I, I continued, I went back to my normal day to day job, Will, in, in major crime. Never forgot it. And when, when subsequently I began to speak publicly after my resignation,
00:16:35
Speaker
I brought operational Augusta into every conversation. Nobody even knew it existed because none of the rates had been recorded. There was, you know, there was no tangible evidence that that investigation had ever been in existence. And so I was talking about it all the time together with my horror ah of Rochdale.
00:16:57
Speaker
And the police and crime commissioner andy bernham heard me and this is his words and he decided he was going to put together an independent review to look at augusta and to look into the rochdale case. so the The investigation into augusta formally reported in january 2020 that i was absolutely right that that.
00:17:22
Speaker
That investigation have been deliberately closed down the official finding was because the senior the most senior the gold command group in gmp made the decision that they would not put resources into that case. And they just left everybody all all the abuse were left to abuse all the children which is left where they were.
00:17:44
Speaker
In 2020, they were forced to reopen that case. But I have to say that five years later, we have still not had a single charge. And again, the question in my mind is why, you know? Yeah.
Operation Span and Resignation
00:17:58
Speaker
And I think this is why you're seeing this seething anger across the UK today, because this still is not justice.
00:18:04
Speaker
What I would say to that is that I feel the country is catching up to where I was maybe 12, 13 years ago. And I have been shouting about this for all of that time, but you know, I always sort of feel a little bit ahead of the game with it, but I was outraged from day one. And what I can't understand is how.
00:18:29
Speaker
Senior public servants could ever think it was okay to do nothing about the, the, the, the, you know, monumental rape of, of very vulnerable children. It could never be right. And you don't need to be a police officer to learn that, you know. Yeah, we'll park that just for a moment because I do want to try and understand those motivations because I think that is so central to this whole so saga. But before we do, there is obviously a second investigation. a second yeah investigation So you go back to your yeah normal day-to-day police job.
00:19:04
Speaker
I go back into major crime ands in the major crime team and I worked mainly um on your murders and gang related shootings and but I say kidnappings, witness protection, and then roll forward to 2010. Bear in mind, I'd lost my husband, so I was a single parent with four children. Roll forward to 2010. About five years after that first investigation.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah, about five years later or five years after it was closed, I was called in to speak to um a senior officer and said, Maggie, we we were starting or we started um another um investigation, which is called Operation Spam. And it's in Rochdale and it's i pretty much identical to Operation Augusta.
00:19:52
Speaker
the the What's happened though is that there has been a routine property review within GMP property system and they discovered a fetus that had been seized without the knowledge or consent of the little girl or her mom or a family and it had kind of been locked away in a freezer for two years.
00:20:12
Speaker
So a routine property review had revealed this and when they dug into it, it was seized and a little girl had a termination and the police social services had had seized it without even speaking to her and it had come to light. So that had reopened this case in Rochdale, which had actually been looked at two years previously, but nothing had been done. So I was asked by a senior officer.
00:20:36
Speaker
Whether I would join operation span, even though I didn't work in child protection. And, and it wasn't my team that we're dealing with it, but I was very good and still am good with vulnerable people. It's just my natural kind of, I can empathize with people who are, you know, who need help. So ah alongside that.
00:20:59
Speaker
the The sister of that little girl had also been arrested about two years previously as a ah young girl, since she was 15 by that time on suspicion of being a madam. Now the reality was that she was a victim of this gang, raped on a daily basis, threatened at gunpoint.
00:21:18
Speaker
and You know take into houses where i remember vividly her telling me that you know they took her off the street and they took it to this house where there was big iron gates and took her in into the first set of gates and locked the door behind her then a metal gate then a door and she's in this house trapped with her abusers so the fear and that the horror and but she's been arrested nothing had happened.
00:21:42
Speaker
But because she'd been arrested, the top lawyer in the complex case unit in the, crime in the CPS, in the, uh, Crown prosecution service had to scrutinize what had happened to absolutely rubber stamp that there was no, no debate around the fact that she was a victim before I was allowed to speak to her. So the senior, the SIO senior investigating officer said, Maggie, we would like you to join this job.
00:22:08
Speaker
and gain the trust of these two children and others but predominantly those two because we need them for this investigation but i promise you and that there will be no repeat of what happened on august and i was given. Policy documents and cast iron guarantees and together with this commitment from and the head of the complex case unit in the cps.
00:22:33
Speaker
I felt reassured that there wouldn't be a repeat of what I'd seen five years previously. like And despite the horror I still felt about Op Augusta, I felt that these men who were doing this, it was a different gang.
00:22:48
Speaker
that these men deserved to go away to prison for a long time. And I believe that if anybody could turn these children around who were by this time really hostile towards the police because as they should be yeah because of the way the police had treated them, you know, when, and it was Ruby and Amber out of the drama, I'll refer to them.
00:23:10
Speaker
ah But you know when i was locked up they wouldn't even let a mom go and see her she'd never been in please custody she was terrified out of which she didn't even know what the term. Madam meant but i was asked to bring them on board and after thinking about it i decided that yeah i believe the commitments and that they're giving this time and i will do my best so i i joined operation spanning rochdale.
00:23:39
Speaker
And over the course of the next seven or eight months, I managed to gain the trust of those children and the family and that they're still really like my kids today because they put their trust in me and I gave them commitments that came from way above my rank in the police that if they told me.
00:24:00
Speaker
what had happened to them, we would support them all the way through to a trial. What I see seven months later, it was a one Friday afternoon, there was a meeting and it was the first meeting with the barrister who was, and I was not allowed into that meeting, which should never have happened.
00:24:20
Speaker
ah But i was informed afterwards that they've been a decision made in that meeting that once again they had changed their mind about about amber. Despite the commitment from the top lawyer in the cps they were no longer going to use her as a witness or a victim but you know.
Exploitation Methods of Grooming Gangs
00:24:38
Speaker
Calm down mac it was still gonna use ruby well i seen that coming over a period of a few weeks actually and i tried to address it with the bosses cuz i could see a change in atmosphere that the original the the original boss had been moved off the job that brought somebody else in and the whole.
00:24:59
Speaker
Feel on that investigation began to change i mean i'm buried giving me a long list of the names of her abusers. The phone numbers where they live should show me all the premises weather these abuse parties would would go on and she actually done the first of three planned i did parades.
00:25:21
Speaker
But but the the action of officers, a couple of officers up to then just led me to believe that things were werere changing. And so when I was told that news, I walked off that job and I never went back on it. In the end, the the man who who made Ruby pregnant. I mean, he was raping her from when she was 12. There was a file like that in which she'd been speaking to ah other professionals over a period of a couple of years where there were names and registration numbers, but we had a fetus. We had DNA. We knew who was responsible for making her pregnant when she was just 13. But she also had a statement of special educational needs. So she was even more vulnerable.
00:26:08
Speaker
Even with all of that and evidence, factual and undeniable, even that man was not charged with rape. He was charged with such conspiracy to commit sexual activity with a child. He was sentenced to four years. he was out ah Sorry, he was sentenced to eight years, but he was out of prison in less than four and I was horrified. Amber When they got very close to the trial date, the barrister clearly got ahead around all the evidence and realized that in order for the trial to run, they needed Amber's evidence in the trial because the identity of many of the abuses came from her list in in her in her interview. By that time, it was too late to bring her back as ah as a victim, and so the only way
00:27:01
Speaker
to get evidence into court in Britain is you either have to be a witness or you have to be an offender. Otherwise it's third third party and it's inadmissible. So in order to get her evidence into court, they made the tactical decision, and that's their words, not mine. They made the tactical decision that they would add Amber onto the indictment as one of the gang of pedophiles in order to get her evidence into court. They didn't charge her.
00:27:31
Speaker
But nor did they tell her they didn't caution her. They never interviewed her. They never gave a legal representation because any lawyer worth their salt would have had that thrown out at the first instant. Cause you know, you've got a commitment there from the top lawyer in the CPS saying this child is a victim.
00:27:50
Speaker
So how can you go from that decision at the highest level? Suddenly, no, you're one of the gang and ah nothing would change because the abuse had finished two years previously. like So they added her onto that indictment, portrayed it as an older madam who was recruiting all these children for this gang. But anybody who understands how grooming gangs operate will know that children are vulnerable and they go with each other because they don't want to be alone.
00:28:17
Speaker
Well, that's who I think I've got to say, like there are so many things about this story that just make you quite sick. And that's one of them. That's it. Before we get to the outcome of that trial and then your attempts to actually bring this story into the spotlight. It's ah the the point that you made around how grooming gangs actually operate is an important thing for us to discuss. Give me an overview of how do these grooming gangs operate? How do they target people? What's the the commercial model? If for want of a better term, paint a picture for me.
00:28:47
Speaker
Well,
Community Awareness vs. Police Inaction
00:28:48
Speaker
the way that they pedophiles come in all shapes and sizes, you know, whether it's a, you know, a priest, you know, look, we just had the Archbishop of Canterbury resigned, haven't we? We've had, you know, abuse in the Catholic church. We've had Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein. that There's abuse everywhere in football, in sports coaching, and what an abuser does, they will spot vulnerability wherever that is.
00:29:14
Speaker
And with the grooming gangs, they would target children who, I mean, on Augusta, all those children were living in care homes. So they were starved of affection. You know, they didn't really have anybody that loved them. They were, you know, there were a series of staff, you know, come on shift and go off shift who aren't even allowed to give a child a hug.
00:29:39
Speaker
So you get an 11 year old child that is desperate for some affection, for some love, for, you know, maybe somebody to buy them a bit of a trinket or take them for a pizza, pick them up in a fancy car. That's how it starts, you know? And then they see, initially it might be quite, you know, it might be a boyfriend. It might be ah an 18 year old boy with a 12 year old.
00:30:02
Speaker
girl and they think it's flattering, somebody cares about me. That then often will come that they'll have sex with that first contact, if you like. But the they're not old enough to understand that that is a means to draw them in.
00:30:21
Speaker
then once they are in the clutches of, of that, that, but that man, he will then say, you know, we're going to meet my mates and then he'll pass this child to his mates. And because the child doesn't want to lose the affection of the boyfriend, she goes along, they give them drinks, they may give them drugs. And then by the time that, that child realizes that they don't want to do this.
00:30:48
Speaker
They are ashamed. They are feel obligated. They then tell anybody else what's going on because of the embarrassment or the fear of being judged. And these men, then it becomes worse and worse. They take them to different locations or drive them. But often by this time, the child is using, he's been given loads of alcohol to help numb the pain.
00:31:14
Speaker
But they just think deeper and deeper into a place where they don't know how they're gonna get out so on augusta those kids were very vulnerable because they were living in children's homes and. They would go missing and when i was a police officer in the early days i would often go and take missing from home reports.
00:31:33
Speaker
But yeah that it was a, you know, for me with fall kiss, it was just a clear red
Exposing Police Failures: A Lone Fight
00:31:38
Speaker
flag. They'd go missing for two, three days. They'd come back. They'd be, you know, completely out of it. they'd beat And you'd see a child that, you know, might originally be.
00:31:50
Speaker
I'd like to see them descending to this horror on on the rotshdale case it was different because those children were not living in care homes that were mainly living in in their family homes. But they were very vulnerable still for different reasons i mean i go into it in my book.
00:32:10
Speaker
Amber and Ruby, they their mom had had um a nervous breakdown. They'd had a ah brother that had been sexually abused at Knoll View where Cyril Smith operated and abused countless children.
00:32:26
Speaker
and one of the abusers ah that that this the The boy who was abused when he was a bit older, He was walking around the street and he bumped into one of his abusers that was postman and he went home and he he died of a drug overdose and Amber actually, I think Amber and Ruby actually found him so that their, their life was filled with, with tragedy and with, you know, for little children, the kind that they needed help. They didn't, so they were vulnerable in that they were really.
00:33:00
Speaker
you know, fending for themselves in so many ways. And that's what ah a grooming gang will target. its i think Nowadays, that there is there are also different ways of drawing kids in and the internet has become one of the tools of choice because it's more it's easier to escape being found. you know in In Augusta, the the cars of abusers were set across the road in a car from the children's home and just wait for them to come in out to come out and they've got a new
00:33:33
Speaker
group of children to abuse every few months as the kids come in and go, another one had come, they've got a you know and and never they've got a ah conveyor belt of new victims. I think now the internet is used far more widely, but it still happens in the way you know the that I've said and as well.
00:33:54
Speaker
You said that in the the children in that second investigation weren't coming from care homes. They were largely living in homes, albeit it sounds like quite troubled homes. It makes me wonder, in these communities, and particularly in Rochdale, what was the level of awareness from people on the street living in the community that this stuff was going on?
00:34:13
Speaker
I think the there was there was absolute awareness back then, and there is still absolute awareness now. But if you if you if you connect that with the fact that there was also awareness that the police were not acting, it leaves those children and those communities helpless.
00:34:33
Speaker
You know, and actually on the rare occasion that anything was done, the children themselves were being blamed. You know, I mean, you must have heard, but you know, there it was often said they're making a lifestyle choice. They're a child prostitute. No, they're not. They are children. And as a civilized society and with me as a police officer, I've never doubted that my duty was to protect those children, not to attack them.
00:35:03
Speaker
I mean, violence against women and girls in general, women and and men to some extent who were abused tend to be blamed. There's always that question of had you been drinking, you know, you were wearing a short skirt, you you you you know, even if you're out and you you meet somebody and you you caught on CCTV, maybe in a kebab shop with somebody. If they rape you afterwards, it's really difficult to bring a prosecution because there's still an attitude of of blame.
00:35:32
Speaker
And that's bad enough in an adult but when you've got children who are eleven twelve thirteen. but They are just so deeply ah just so way out of that debt that for the authorities to take that attitude is inhumane to me.
00:35:48
Speaker
And it goes against everything that I promised to do when I joined the police. And what I kind of couldn't get my head around, and and I still don't to some extent, was why was it only me that was shouting about it?
Institutional Cover-ups and Resistance
00:36:04
Speaker
When i resigned in october twenty twelve i actually spent eighteen months nearly eighteen months trying to. Be heard because i still thought it was a lazy officer so i went to the head of public protection as a serving place to the head of public protection to the head of serious crime to the chief constable.
00:36:28
Speaker
To the eye of the independent office for police condo to the children's commission and to the home office and nobody would listen nobody wanted to hear it made me very very ill because i couldn't understand why you know why is it just me and then i resigned whichever way i turned.
00:36:48
Speaker
For me, it was wrong. And I think, I mean, I, I, I, I often say this, but I remember sitting at home, you know, on my own in a mess. And what was on the TV was Hillsborough and all those families who had lost their loved ones 30 years before and had been blamed and had been told that their loved ones were, you know, drunken louts, that they caused the problem, that they were responsible for their own deaths.
00:37:17
Speaker
And as I'm watching the telling, finally they've been heard. And what had been the propaganda that had been pumped out was lies. And I knew that what I had seen was wrong and nothing that anybody said to me would ever have changed that, that opinion. But what I didn't want, Will, was for my kids to put the telly on in 30 years when I'm not here.
00:37:45
Speaker
And suddenly it's all over the tv about the horrors of rochdale and the horrors of augusta and my kids would be saying, well, why did my mom not say anything? She worked on those jobs. And so that for me was a light bulb moment. And I made the decision that whatever it took, I was going to tell the truth. And when I told the senior officers in, in GMP that I was going to speak out if they didn't do anything.
00:38:11
Speaker
they told me, um, in very threatening terms that, you know, what I knew was confidential, that I could go to prison, that I was not allowed to say anything. I went to lawyers and in the end I resigned to go public. But even when I went public, the, there there was, I did a file on four in March, 2013. And thirteen and um when I went public,
00:38:37
Speaker
They gave the chief constable a right of reply. It was Peter Farhi who I had tried repeatedly to I'd sent him written document, you know, detailing what I was saying. I'd been, I'd had two, three hour meeting with the head of ah public protection and he wouldn't meet me. you He gave me basically a four line response saying, you know, can you go away silly little girl? If if lessons have to be learned, they'll be learned.
00:39:05
Speaker
But when I went public and final four play played the um the program, he had a right of reply and rather than even then acknowledge what he clearly knew was true. And this was 2013. He said that I was a woman who had been bereaved.
00:39:23
Speaker
I had become far too emotionally involved it met me on many occasions you have many conversations with me which is a lie to this day is still never had a conversation and. and that That was a fantastic job the roshdale prosecution now it took me ten years until twenty twenty two.
00:39:42
Speaker
When I finally took some of the Rochdale survivors to a personal meeting with the new chief constable, where he apologized to them, it it will never undo the harm, but he apologized to them in relation to Amber. He informed her that she was officially classified as a victim, that all her rates were now recorded. And if she wished to pursue a prosecution, she could.
00:40:10
Speaker
And also he acknowledged publicly that the handling of that Rochdale case was borderline incompetent. Now it took me 12 years of my life to prove what I knew on day one. So, you know, without the persistence and facing the fear of prison, I lost my home. I lost my career. I lost my, my job that I loved. And I thought I was losing my marbles at one point, but now.
00:40:39
Speaker
I think that, that, you know, history will show that I was speaking with truth all along and the two independent reviews that, and it doesn't give me any satisfaction. that You know, I'm not saying it to, to shout blow my own trumpet. I'm just saying how long it took for the truth to finally be heard. And it's not for want of trying because I have said these things. I can't even remember how many times.
Judicial Failures and Accountability
00:41:05
Speaker
Well, you posed the million dollar question yourself and that is you've you've wondered why you were the only one speaking out. So as you've had more time to reflect over these years, what do you put that institutional cover up in the police force down to? What are the reasons that that that are behind that?
00:41:25
Speaker
As, as I've said, I think that the children themselves were dismissed as unimportant, you know, who, in fact, I said, I've said previously and I've mentioned it in my book. I remember challenging one of the senior officers on the Rochdale case when action wasn't being taken that I felt was critical to take. And I remember him and I got all worked up and, you know, because I care, you know, I wasn't emotionally involved, but I care.
00:41:54
Speaker
And I remember basically kicking off and him saying, listen, Maggie, calm down, calm down. Let's be right. What are these children ever going to contribute to society? They should have been drowned at birth. Now I was sick to my stomach and you know, that kind of mindset obviously runs.
00:42:17
Speaker
along with with many of those at the top of the organization, because if it didn't, they would not have allowed this to happen. I imagine a lot of the police force would themselves be coming from working class backgrounds. That's why it surprises me.
00:42:32
Speaker
i don't i mean i I always say there are many, many good police officers, but when they i mean I think maybe the difference was I joined at 42. I was very set in what I believed and what I believed was right. If you're 18, 19, 20 and you join an organization where they're telling you senior officers make decisions and you do as you're told it and and you're dismissed, I think you get into the mindset that it's not my responsibility. This is what my role is. you know the The responsibility lies up the ranks. For me, I never saw it that way. you know I'm responsible for my own actions but
00:43:19
Speaker
But alongside that will, you know, I lost everything and through, yeah I should not have had to resign in order for action to be taken. But I know that I'd had that because I know I'm approached by many other police officers, whistleblowers who are terrified because if you step outside of the status quo,
00:43:44
Speaker
And you are going to rattle cages in an organization that's primary aim is to protect that organization. Then you become the enemy. And and I know that if I had not resigned, they would have probably made my life a misery. They would have got some kind of trumped up charges against me. And I probably would have been subject to an internal review and lost my job through some kind of accusation that wouldn't have been true.
00:44:14
Speaker
So for somebody to take that leap like i did you know you got two or three you know you've got a couple of kids you got a mortgage you got a young family like you're going to walk away from everything you've you've you've worked for and so you know silence.
00:44:32
Speaker
often becomes the only option. And, you know, there are so many changes that are needed within not only the police, but within all public services. So that somebody like me, who actually I didn't want it to cause trouble.
00:44:48
Speaker
I truly believe that the chief constable and you know the home office didn't know what was going on. that I just wanted somebody to take a grip of this case and prosecute the abusers. I didn't realize then that you know I was the problem because I was telling the truth and they didn't want that truth out there. And I do believe had I not gone public and got the the attention that I did, I do think they would have tried to to take you know to prosecute me.
00:45:17
Speaker
But because i'd spoken out and i've spoken the truth and also ah alongside me in my first well through the whole journey alongside me have been the victims from rochdale who have you know we've worked together on this they've had it's their voice that i've been sharing i don't speak instead of them they can speak for themselves but You know, I started my own charity, the Maggie Oliver Foundation. So whereas it was always said these are problems of the past, everything's great now. You know, we get cases every day, not just grooming gang cases, but all kinds of sexual violence, whether it's against a girl or a boy.
00:46:01
Speaker
And we give emotional support to victims and survivors if they don't get engaged previously with the criminal justice system or they don't want to will help them to recover. On the other side we have a legal advocacy service whereby we will fight alongside a victim who isn't being heard who is being.
00:46:22
Speaker
blame who is even being criminalized, we will fight their corner. But the system is broken. There is no accountability. The complaint system is completely unfit for purpose. It's police marking their own homework. The IOPC, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, is not independent. Last year, they had 80,000 complaints that What was sent to them but they don't get the complaints they go directly back to the police force of those 80,000 complaints they actually only looked at 3,000 and their 3,000 where the police force Invites them to have a look at it the other 77,000 never went anywhere near any independent scrutiny so we don't have Scrutiny we don't have independence. We don't have accountability and until we do
00:47:17
Speaker
Things will remain hidden, but I want to try and get the minutes of the meeting where I formally. disclosed everything that I've said to you today. And can you believe that those minutes have gone astray? Nobody can find them. The minutes of the meeting where the chief constable, head of child protection, head of serious crime made the decision in their gold group meeting to close down Operation Augusta deliberately because they wouldn't put resources in those minutes have gone astray.
00:47:51
Speaker
So you've got power in the hands of those people who don't want the troops to come out. And, you know, it's it's an abusive power, but until we have true accountability, it's going it's very difficult to force through change. But I do think that the public I think their eyes are open now. Mine were opened 10 years ago, but I do, I've tried to bring the country along. You know, I worked on the drama ah three girls for four years. It didn't go nearly far enough. It explained grooming and and it it did a brilliant job of showing the pain and the trauma of the children involved.
00:48:30
Speaker
What it didn't do was expose the failures of the CPS in relation to that treatment of victims to the charges that they brought to the sentences that were given and and it absolutely did not show. The failures of the police and expose all of that, but it was still a really good step on this journey to enlightenment for the public, really.
00:48:51
Speaker
yeah You just mentioned the judicial system there, and let's look at accountability when it comes to the judicial system. The elephant in the room is Kistama. He was the director of public prosecutions as a lot of this stuff was going on. Do you think Kistama should shoulder personal responsibility for the failure judicial failures with regard to the grooming gangs?
00:49:11
Speaker
I absolutely do. I think that, you know, for me, the book always stops at the top. And I've said publicly before now that I know that there is a dispute around it now, but I heard from Nazir Afsa in a BBC radio interview he did back in 2018. He disclosed publicly that in 2008, when kissed armor was the director of public prosecutions, an email went round all police forces informing, and and you can see it online. You can get the the full wording online.
00:49:42
Speaker
that police forces were told that they shouldn't investigate these kinds of crimes because the children themselves were complicit in their abuse basically. Now, Piers Dahmer was the director of public prosecution then. And I find it inconceivable that he wouldn't know that it was allegedly circulated by the home office, according to Nazir Afzal.
00:50:02
Speaker
But even taking that out of the equation, I worked on the Rochdale case. those chart and and it It's been lauded as a fantastic, a fun you know ah great success for British justice, which I have never agreed with.
00:50:16
Speaker
But again, kissed armor was direct to public prosecutions. And I find it unbelievable that he wouldn't be all over that investigation and part of the decision-making process on what charges to bring. And when you know that the man who got a 13 year old child pregnant, where we had a fetus and had DNA, and he was a 43 year old married man of three to not charge him with rape for me.
00:50:43
Speaker
Is neglect to do and so i do and and the message from the top filters down and if that message comes and charging decisions from those who are leaving on these cases. Then the message that goes out to the abusers is well if this guy you got a a thirteen year old child with special educational needs it's not a prison in less than four years.
Critique of the Judicial System
00:51:08
Speaker
It's not that big a deal so i do my responsibility at his door and what i seen you know i was involved outside. Call it a non institutional call participant in the national abuse inquiry i wasn't allowed to give evidence my official statement prepared with my full legal team.
00:51:27
Speaker
was censored from 52 pages to 18 without any conversation with me. it's hit And I wasn't the only one. The organized network st strand, the grooming gang part, they didn't include a single town and city where these gangs had operated. It was a complete and utter whitewash. We don't collect ethnicity um or occupation or of statistics around sexual abuse.
00:51:54
Speaker
I don't just mean in these cases, I mean in every sexual crime of the victim and of the perpetrators. And it's only when we get those facts that we can really uncover the truth. You know, in my charity, ah we don't yeah know I made the decision when I started it in 2019 that I would not take a penny from the state.
00:52:14
Speaker
from the police and crime commission because i want to tell the truth i don't want that we've only got we got three full time members of staff i've got two part time and i've got thirty volunteer ambassadors who. Run the emotional support side which is fantastic but i don't want somebody's livelihood dependent on me towing the line on what i can say so we've been funded and support we're only here because of public support and i would rather than my charity doesn't exist.
00:52:42
Speaker
than have to compromise the truth. I will always tell the truth to the best of my ability. And I see all, that this isn't a party political, I'm not a party political person. I've seen failures with Keir Starmer. I mean, you know, the extra inquiry, there were 20 recommendations and that was two years before the current government came into power. They're all as bad as each other for me, but the twenty recommendations even they weren't implemented so last week i've i've submitted to the government what's it called a pre-action protocol that i'm going to take them to a judicial review unless they give a clear timeline of when they're going to implement those twenty recommendations and i want to see a record recording of all ethnicity at all occupations all
00:53:35
Speaker
and ah various data for victims and for abusers. I think that is absolutely basic to understanding what we are facing and without understanding it fully, how can we possibly prevent it happening to future generations of children?
00:53:51
Speaker
Well, this this raises the the question of ah whether a national inquiry is needed. So the government initially said that they were not going to pursue a national inquiry. They said that basically local inquiries are sufficient. They've kind of backtracked a bit. Are you satisfied with with the proposal for a national inquiry that they put forward? And if not, what needs to happen?
00:54:14
Speaker
You know, it's it's hot air on words. It's pointless. I mean, these, I've been involved in in numerous inquiries now, Rochdale, Augusta, the National Abuse Inquiry, on the peripheries of Oldham, but I never worked in Oldham, but on the peripheries of a Center for Social Justice. They're a truthless tiger, you know? A national, the word, a national inquiry means nothing unless you know, what is it going to, you know, what are its powers?
00:54:44
Speaker
Who is going to lead it? And I don't trust the establishment here. You know, all this Ferrari has blown up because Elon Musk brought international attention to it. And even a week before, I mean, I submitted that a pre-action protocol letter. It was hand delivered to Yvette Cooper on Wednesday afternoon. And then on Thursday morning, Yvette Cooper said she was going to make a public statement because, you know, she's been forced into that position. But a week before then.
00:55:13
Speaker
I have to be in a statement to say that she was considering implementing three of them so what's changed in a week there is no real believe that is needed there is a major reaction to ah an international public outcry.
00:55:29
Speaker
but I still believe that their intention is to cover up the truth what is needed is the real voices of victims survivors. People like me who have got no vested interest parents against child exploitation the center for misjustice all these people who are outside of the institutions.
00:55:48
Speaker
Who in the national abuse inquiry, what I saw, it was 10, it was 10 days. I saw a whole series of institutional voices paraded out to say what a great job they're now doing, which was not true. And there was one victim allowed about two hours to speak. It was.
00:56:09
Speaker
it was awful it it was actually embarrassing and brutal she wasn't even allowed to go to the toilet because i was listening that is not what is needed we do not need another platform to chief constables and all these people who have failed children to be allowed to come out and say what a fabulous job they're doing because they're not so i don't actually know what kind of action inquiry is needed. But I do know that the Exa inquiry, the national abuse inquiry that I was part of, failed
00:56:42
Speaker
failed pathetically to even scratch the surface of grooming gangs. And for me, it was a deliberate attempt to push this away and hide it, but it's come back to haunt them. You know, there was a lot of faith put in that national abuse inquiry, Nixa. And I, I did go into it hoping, I always say, I hope for the best and expect the worst.
00:57:04
Speaker
But I did hope that because Alexis J knew about Rotherham, that she would insist that the truth came out, but that is absolutely not what happened. It really was a whitewash. And so, you know, I've been there, I've put my faith in things and I have learned the hard way that words can, you know, empty words mean nothing. So the devil is always in the detail. And so we will have to wait and see, but I think, you know, I'm happy that my lawyers have submitted this call for a judicial review. That's just the starting gun for me. We need action. We need change. We need statistics. We need facts and we need somebody who really wants to drive change because I do believe and you know, unless we address this now, it is just going to get worse because the message that goes out and I
00:57:59
Speaker
yeah I'm talking about all all victims of sexual abuse, not just the grooming gangs. you know i mean we the the The conversation has been around that, but it's not just those victims who are being failed. It's many, many victims in our criminal justice system. And for me, criminal accountability for those at the top who have been guilty of misconduct in a public office is a big part of what we need. I think without that, you know somebody will come in and they won't They won't accept that there is a personal responsibility for them and if they don't step up to the mark, they could lose their pension and everything else. As it is now, you know they retire quickly when when the heat's on. They get the pension and then they can't be compelled to be interviewed. So the whole system is corrupt to me.
Conclusion and Subscription Pitch
00:58:49
Speaker
Maggie, you said earlier, hope for the best, prepare for the worst. and and
00:58:54
Speaker
I do think that finally in the UK, there is a change in the mood and that this is finally getting some momentum behind it. That does give me hope. Thank you so much for all of the work that you've done and and thank you for coming on today. My pleasure. Thank you. Well, thanks.
00:59:11
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of Far at Will. If you enjoyed the show, why not consider a subscription to The Spectator Australia. The magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis, and unrivalled books and arts reviews.
00:59:26
Speaker
A subscription gets you all of the content from the British edition of the magazine, as well as the best Australian political commentary. Subscribe today for just $2 a week for a year. No, I'm not joking. $2 a week for an entire year. A link is in the show notes.