hubs are andy burnham. seconding hubs are su orted andy burnham. seconding hubs are suworted by _ andy burnham. seconding hubs are suworted by gmp _ andy burnham. seconding hubs are supported by gmp cse _ andy burnham. seconding hubs are supported by gmp cse major - supported by gmp cse major investigations team. this corporate resource which comprises 107 dedicated officers. the expansion of this team owes much to be direct support of the mayor and deputy mayor for which support of the mayor and deputy mayorfor which i am grateful. those working on the hubs or as part of the cse met our highly specialist officers who are trained to an exacting standard. gmp strategic approach to cse is effectively governed, this governance encompasses all aspects of training, professional practice and development as well as practical case management. woven into the very fabric of our response to cse are a number of external agencies and third sector organisations. such as

the national association for people abused in childhood. we are survivors, manchester rape crisis. st marys sark. and as has already been outlined, maggie's foundation. these agencies are here to help gmp, to provide challenge, to advise, and to provide challenge, to advise, and to give voice to vulnerable people. our practice is informed by operation hydrant on behalf of the couege operation hydrant on behalf of the college of policing which produces authorised professional practice for our senior investigating officers. and they are inspected directly by his majesties inspectorate of constabulary and indirectly by 0fsted to assess our partnership arrangements. in short, i am confident that gmp and our partners now have the capacity and the

capability to meet the highest of standards sustainably. and to dynamically adopt different approaches for necessary, to reflect further organisational learning, amendments to national best practice and to pay for it very quickly to recover life situations when we get things wrong. it remains a source of profound regret that we cannot turn back the clock. and undo all of the damage done to innocent young lives. i do however want to reassure both victims and the public that we remain determined to do all that we can to bring offenders to justice. since operation span and the nine men then convicted in rochdale alone, a further 135 arrests have

been made, 432 charges have been laid and 32 conviction is obtained which have resulted in 355 years imprisonment for offenders who might have thought that they had escaped justice. last year, operation litton resulted in the conviction of a further five offenders for a further 22 offences and these men were sentenced to 71.5 years imprisonment. as of today, we have another 3a individuals who are currently charged and are due to stand trial during this year and next. in addition to operation litton which continues, there are currently a further seven live cse investigation is taking place in rochdale. with reference to the 7a

children which malcolm referred to, gmp has directly engaged with 72 of them. there are sound risk assessed reasons for not engaging with two of the 74 reasons for not engaging with two of the 7a but nonetheless, are victims that responses to date reflect what they are asking for. for perfectly understandable reasons, including a reluctance to reopen old trauma, a majority of the 72 who are of course now adults, engaged with by the force field unable to provide evidence to support a traditional criminaljustice outcome. for some, proceduraljustice is just as important or indeed more so than criminaljustice and we are supportive of survivor informed choice. 26 of the 72 have however

reported specific offences and half or supporting prosecutions. we will continue to engage with all of these survivors and to shape or responses to the requests and preferences. from a policing perspective and forever possible, we are of course keen to mount criminal prosecutions such that offenders can be properly brought to justice and held to account. the tour will remain ever open to survivors of cse and we will work at a pace that reflects their needs. we would encourage all victims of cse was to come forward and access to care and support that we are keen to offer. the gmp that i lead will pursue all reasonable

lines of inquiry relentlessly and without fear or favour. i lines of inquiry relentlessly and without fear orfavour. i know lines of inquiry relentlessly and without fear or favour. i know that something might have thought that they had got away with these dreadful crimes are now living in fear that a reckoning is coming. my message to these people is that you are right to be fearful. and you may be the next person that we arrest. no matter the passage of time, we will continue to develop the evidence to fit you away. this is the least that we can do for those whom we have let down and whose experiences have so galvanised my officers to embody the improvement that the contents of this report demands. thank you.

good morning. iam good morning. i am councillor neil, the current leader of rochdale council for the last two and a half years since 2021. i want to start today by repeating what rochdale borough council has set many times in the past. that the council is truly sorry that those people who were at the council at the time between 2004 and 2013, like many other places across the country and in other parts of greater manchester, did not recognise what was happening and felt to take necessary and appropriate action. i know that no amount of apology or contrition can ever repair the awful damage that was done to the lives of

the victims and survivors or indeed to the lone voices fighting to be heard against callous organisational indifference. whilst many perpetrators have been brought to justice and some are still being brought tojustice, it justice and some are still being brought to justice, it truly begs the question as to whether the survivors will ever feel a sense of justice? however. iwill say survivors will ever feel a sense of justice? however. i will say it again today so that nobody can be in any doubt. rochdale council is truly sorry. next, ithink any doubt. rochdale council is truly sorry. next, i think it's only right that i thank the mayor andy burnham for commissioning this report in 2017. and also to malcolm mason and gary and the rest of the team for their diligent work in investigating and compiling this report. there were however some people who did put

their heads above the parapet at that dreadful time. and they had the conviction and the courage to alert the appropriate authorities. but who were sadly ignored at not taken seriously. one such person was maggie oliver who worked on operation augusta and manchester and then on operation spam for gmp in rochdale. and that was thanks to maggie that many of the victims gained the confidence to come forward and give evidence against the criminals who perpetrated those dreadful crimes. and maggie continues her work to this day to support survivors and victims of sexual exploitation through her foundation. i want to pay special tribute to sara rowbotham who with

her colleagues worked in the crisis intervention team. they fought like tigers to protect vulnerable children while so many others turned their backs on them. ignore them. and did not take the referrals of child sexual exploitation seriously. 181 referrals. she stands out as a beacon of integrity during that awful period. and ifor one will never accept nor countenance any criticism of her actions. she and her colleagues at the crisis intervention team were told by so—called professionals that those abused children had made a lifestyle choice. i want to say to you today those kind of words, that kind of language, used by so—called professionals to describe

vulnerable, abused and traumatised children, frankly makes me feel both physically sick and extremely i write in equal measure. i think it's only right to mention today that there was one rochdale councillor who raised the issue of child sexual exploitation during that terrible period. and that was the mother of sara rowbotham, boring. she raised theissue sara rowbotham, boring. she raised the issue with the appropriate council officers and like her daughter and her team, st maureen was ignored and not taken seriously. as the current leader of rochdale council, i wish to assure the public that for more rigourous practices are in place today to protect vulnerable children. for the past several years, the council has

supported those survivors who are now adults who wanted our help and we will continue to do so. and we have also helped the police to bring more perpetrators to justice and i know those operations and investigations are continuing. back investigations are continuing. back in 2012, the council looked at the actions of staff involved in these cases, going back to 2005. those responsible for the failings were reported to the regulatory body and internal disciplinary action was taken against those that had not already left the council. none of them have worked in rochdale since. nor will they ever do so again. they are gone and there are long gone.

since then, rochdale has overhauled and invested heavily in our services. and we have shared our learning with other councils from across the united kingdom. including most recently delegations from northern ireland and the isle of man. we have educated schools, taxi drivers, off—licences, take barbers, licensed premises and local residents and in particular those involved in the night—time economy about the science of child sexual exploitation and what to do about it. rochdale has contributed to several other reviews and helped to strengthen services across the region and the rest of the country. our multiagency sunrise team which

works to prevent, detect and prosecute child sexual exploitation while supporting those affected, is staffed with dedicated, caring professionals who are committed to the protection of children. in 2021, the protection of children. in 2021, the sunrise team won the public sector children steam the children and young people now annual awards. the team has been instrumental in trying to rebuild public confidence in child protection services in our borough. but please be aware that the team is not complacent and that it is constantly looking for ways to improve and enhance the protection of children. i must say very clearly to everyone, we will be ever vigilant in our efforts to ensure that these awful systemic failures

do not happen again and that children will be protected. so finally, once more, i would like to apologise on behalf of rochdale council to the survivors of those terrible, abusive crimes that take place from 2004 up to 2013 and also to apologise to those dedicated individuals who were ignored and not taken seriously when they had the courage to raise the alarm. thank you. i'm just going to get some water.

big day. i would like to thank the office of the mayor for paying attention. i don't want to cry. i would like to thank malcolm and carrie for their diligence and independence. —— gary. i met victoria, she was a lovely girl, when she died i cut her picture added the paper and i put her picture on the office wall as a testament and reminder of the importance of what we were trying to do and the consequences for those young women we were working with if we failed to protect them. i have also been in all of young people who have the strength to come forward to share their evidence with police and go through the hell of a judicial process and those young people who share their experiences with the

crisis team worker at the time they were being violated. it's often said the survivors of expectation were children who were not loved so i want to acknowledge the trauma that parents, carers and otherfamily members when three fun they were trying to protect the children and had little or no support and the devil at the door was too powerful. i would like to thank sinha, simon lewis, philippa lauton, nicole tyler, matt baker and henry singer for dramatising and documenting this appalling series of events. how many more times will attack a drama documentary and the ensuing public outcry to call people and organisations to account? crisis intervention team, the team of women i worked with were highly skilled. they were tenacious and committed to the young people will work with and

for. i thought i was good at working with young people but these women have skills well beyond mine. it's disgusting that we were disbelieved. scrutinised. misrepresented. scapegoated and then publicly and nationally discredited by both the police and local authority. never blamed and they said it was my fault. the team worked so hard, we had to share horrendous things will write about young people and we tried every strategy to try and change things, only then to have our professionalism and qualifications questioned in a review. all we were trying to do was to get protective services to do the job, that's disgusting. i was described as being difficult to work with, what did you expect? children were being raped

every day, both the police and children services and rochdale told me it had nothing to do with them. the number of young people we successfully engaged with and the information they felt able to share with us is clear in this report. no one has ever asked me how we were able to do this. these were voluntary relationships, young people came to us, they even brought their friends. people came to us, they even brought theirfriends. they people came to us, they even brought their friends. they felt safe enough to tell us even though they knew we would breach the confidentiality and they even came back to us whenever services let them down. i can lessons be learnt if no one ever asked us how we did that? since 2004, all the evidence was given to greater manchester police and social care at the time and it's now being used to support new prosecutions. even now, once they are celebrating

successful convictions, greater manchester police failed to acknowledge the role of crisis intervention team in providing them with contemporaneous notes and evidence. everything that is being done now should have been done then. it's not like you are waiting for a new bit of tech to make it possible, all it would have taken was the right people actually giving a dan! after operations ban overturned by pennine care foundation trust, our employers to draw a line under it. when they knew we had dozens of other cases that needed investigating. we had names, addresses, telephone numbers and very detailed accounts of serious sexual assaults against children. alongside greater manchester police,, i'm sorry, alongside greater manchester police they only spent time and effort questioning

our numbers, the bank numbers, they were real children. we now know from the report that this was a decision made by those organisations, not to investigate. why would they do that? that is disgusting. asking us to draw a line was beyond belief. we could not believe that no one wanted to protect the young people or to track down and prosecute perpetrators. this make me ill. it made the whole team. i also want to say shame on every individual who was asked to give evidence to this inquiry but refused to do so. were paid by the public when you make those decisions to lie about me and my team in a serious case review, when you felt to take appropriate action to protect children or you failed to investigate crimes. shame on you. clearly, it was easier to

discredit, diminish and dismiss the fact that children were being manipulated, poisoned and raped. shame on those who only recently set we have nothing to learn from this inquiry. we have already reviewed what went wrong. we are so much better now. shame on you! there's a lot of people at the moment being asked whether that track finally being acknowledged make things better. it doesn't and it definitely does not in this case help the dozens of young people who suffered a horrendous abuse detailed in this report. the scale of abuse was known to protective services at the time and i chose not to take appropriate action. someone needs to explain why. it's tiring to continually hear organisations talking about learning

lessons from past injustice and appalling practice. i cannot applaud the fact that services are better now. because survey should be. —— because so they should be. first of all, can ijust first of all, can i just say that i agree with every single word you said there, sarah. i don't really know where to start because like sara, this has been 20 years of my life and it has almost destroyed my life and it has almost destroyed my life but what i want to start with this festival saying thank you to mr burnham and my heartfelt thanks to gary and malcolm who i have the

greatest respect for because every page of this report has taken blood, sweat and tears on their behalf to get to the truth. this report took me four hours to meet on friday. and if any of you take the time to read it, you will see that this report was commissioned in 2017. that was nothing short from greater manchester police or from rochdale council until the end of 2021 because they were pushing back and pretending these things had not happened. they did not want the track to come out but it's down to the determination of gary and malcolm and the persistence and i have to say, i cannot say very much good about the as mr watson knows that there was a slight change in attitude when you came in and that there is communication on perhaps

not enough of a leather but it is certainly better than your predecessor. what i would say though is that i take great exception with the speech that read today. it has been prepared for you by a very powerful organisation, a pr department that texan fan ever poured like this is published and pretends that these are failures of the past. this report talks about the past. this report talks about the past. this report talks about the past. but what i want to do is bring it from the past into the present and into the future because my work in the late maggie oliver foundation means that i have current information about what is going on today and i would say categorically and i am sorry, mr watson, today and i would say categorically and i am sorry, mrwatson, but today and i would say categorically and i am sorry, mr watson, but the failure of that happened and are still happening now. we have more communication for sure. still happening now. we have more communication forsure. but still happening now. we have more communication for sure. but we do

not have a system that supports victims, that listens to their voices. and when they don't challenge the system, unfortunately, the organisation closes ranks. it protects the organisation. institutional protection and covering up what is really going on is what i am hearing today. i'm hearing those at the top of these organisations saying that things are now better before we are currently supporting in the foundation, over 371 victims today who say they are still being felt by gmp and their voices are silenced. we support them now to try and be heard, to go into the system and make a complaint. they will go to professional standards, and as i repeatedly say, it is police marking their own

homework. they then go to vaio pc but any complaint that they make goes directly back into the police force against whom the complaint is made. very often the eye or pc are not aware of the complaint that has been made. we support the survivors and very often, we come to the media to share those cases because those complaints fall on deaf ears and what i'm saying today is that it's ok to have a report like this but i want to change from this report! i don't want in ten years time to be standing here again with another report about failures. amber, for instance, was criminalised. as a child victim of abuse. and until two years ago, the organisation that was greater manchester police insisted that was the right thing to do. to

this day, the crown prosecution service still maintained they did nothing wrong, they have still not apologised to her, they still believe that tactical option was a tool that they were entitled to use. what this report does not cover is the ten years since the terms of reference ended, the terms of reference ended, the terms of reference for this report for 2013, we are now in 2024 and there is a big gap in what happened then and where we are now and reading this report and i'm back in the place i was in 12 years ago, i cannot sleep at night, i'm wondering what i could have done differently, i'm thinking about the girls who are like my kids, i was talking to robert yesterday. china three, she is out of the country, or she would have been here but i think about those girls, what happened to them. —— i was talking to robbie. i do not want

the same things to happen again. that is very much about the past. we are now in the present and i am seeing what is going on today. far too often, we have the same things happening and i listen to all the numbers you court, mr watson, the departments that you talk about. —— ruby. i have to say that in the last month alone we have a former serving greater manchester police officer who worked in that very department that you talk about. specialist in child sex no expectation that officer could happen me 12 years ago. she had been hanging on doors, she has been desperately trying to get a very serious case for many children are being abused, taken seriously. she was unable to get anybody to listen, her complaints or falling on deaf ears, the resources

are not being that case to ensure that children are not being protected and that this would happen on operation span, resources were not put into it, victims were ring fenced, a tiny number, dozens and dozens of other victims were left to their own devices. i have to take this back to operation augusta. i was extremely grateful to andy burnham for cutting phase one into announcing the first stage of the series of reviews. that independent review, done by gary malcolm, is something i never thought i would ever read. a damning truth about how those children had been failed. a young girl who had died. and the officialfinding of that report was that the reason that happened is because gmp would not

put resources into investigating that case.