Police admit failing child sex victims in Rochdale but no officers will be disciplined

Assistant Chief Constable Dawn Copley

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has admitted a "complete lack of understanding" of child sex abuse (CSE) in Rochdale and a failure to recognise the "scale of abuse", and acknowledged that "victims were let down".

A review, conducted by the police with supervision from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), examined police misconduct and found that officers were more interested in examining victims' credibility than investigating the sex abuse they had endured. Police were "distracted" by achieving targets on burglary and other crime, the report said.

The report took four years to complete and was twice rejected by the IPCC. It was due to be published last summer, but was withdrawn after Rochdale Council expressed concerns that victims might be identified. The report was redacted to protect victims' identities but it took a further 10 months to do so.

The conduct of 13 officers between 2008 and 2010 was examined and seven were served misconduct notices but no police officer will be disciplined over the failure to tackle the sexual abuse. One detective inspector was found to have warranted disciplinary action but he retired. The other six officers were given “words of advice” and "offered further training".

Assistant Chief Constable Dawn Copley said: “Officers have to account for their actions, and if they have misconducted themselves professionally then they ought to face misconduct proceedings. Very often, if they’ve misconducted themselves, it’s because they’ve acted in bad faith or have been willingly neglectful.

“But if they’ve made genuine mistakes, if they’ve simply misunderstood what they’ve been dealing with, that is not necessarily misconduct. It is probably more of a performance issue, and the organisation has already acknowledged through the serious case review that organisationally GMP did not recognise this (crime) for what it was.”

GMP found more than 40 vulnerable girls across Rochdale and Heywood were subjected to grooming by a network of men and finally in 2012 nine Asian men who were part of a child sex exploitation ring that targeted vulnerable young girls in Rochdale were jailed.

Assistant Chief Constable Copley apologised to victims: "We apologise to the victims and we give them our assurance that lessons have been learned, changes have been made and we are determined to use this to continue making improvements."