Silhouette of an unknown girl with Maggie Oliver (Image: Getty Mirrorpix)
A police force that failed to bring charges in a major child sex grooming case after two investigations branded one of the survivors “attention seeking” and accused her of “choosing the lifestyle” it has emerged.
Humberside Police apologised to the woman, now aged in her 20s, for “victim blaming” over observations made by officers involved in the first investigation.
The revelation came after the force last week closed its second probe into an alleged grooming gang centred around takeaways and taxi drivers in Hull.
It followed an almost four-year investigation which identified 44 potential suspects after the case, first highlighted by the Sunday Express, was reopened in August 2022.
Victims of the gang, accused of targeting schoolgirls in the city, expressed dismay at no outcome after seven years in total.
The woman who complained had disclosed being raped by at least 22 men from 2017, including one in his 30s said to have taken her to a hotel while in her school uniform aged 16 and considered as vulnerable while under a social services protection plan.
She discovered the views of some of the officers after obtaining case files from the force, in which she was at times referred to as “enabling” offenders.
She said: “There was a lot of victim blaming in my records saying stuff like I was attention seeking and choosing the lifestyle. I’m not surprised by the outcome with attitudes like that.
“To find out it was closed was very disappointing. Although I didn’t have much hope the men would all get charged I did think we would at least get some charges and justice.”
A written apology from an inspector said the force was “very sorry”.
It added: “The content is not acceptable and not of a standard which I would expect officers in this force to communicate. Some of the content is victim blaming. These entries do not reflect the values of this force.”
Scandals of how police forces treated mainly white working class victims of child sex grooming gangs abused by men, often of Pakistani heritage and Muslim faith, first emerged in the Rotherham and Rochdale cases when girls were being abused from at least the late 1990s.
A 2012 Serious Case Review commissioned by the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board after the May 2012 convictions of a grooming gang, revealed shocking failures by police and social workers to protect vulnerable children, highlighting that victims were treated as “making choices” and “child prostitutes.”
Former Greater Manchester Police detective Maggie Oliver resigned from the force in 2012 over its handling of such investigations to become a key whistleblower.
She said it was appalling that the same attitudes were appearing in investigations nearly a decade later.
She said: “They talk the talk but only walk the walk when it hits the media. This sort of attitude only compounds the damage of the abuse a million times over. We keep hearing lessons have been learned, but they haven’t and it is more than just mistakes, it is incompetence.”
Former police officer Maggie Oliver, who brought to justice grooming gangs in the North West (Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)
Ms Oliver took some of the Hull victims to meet Baroness Anne Longfield, chair of the National Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs, which has just started, as part of a consultation group in February.
She is now fighting for the cases from Hull to have one of the local inquiries that will be part of the overall one.
The Sunday Express first broke the story of Hull grooming gangs in October 2019 after a social worker, working for the city council, alleged the girl’s allegations were not being treated seriously enough by police and social services.
Within a few weeks of our first contact with Humberside Police it made six arrests, with a further 28 arrests made over following months.
In November 2020, after no charges had followed, we sent a series of detailed questions to the force and social services departments involved.
It led to the then-Assistant Chief Constable Chris Noble and then-Head of Legal and Democratic Services at East Riding of Yorkshire Council Mathew Buckley writing separate letters urging for nothing to be published in case it compromised investigations.
However, the investigation was dropped eight months later leading us to publish a special report detailing three girl’s harrowing ordeals in July 2021.
One disclosed being raped by more than 100 men, including some who filmed her in balaclavas, from the age of 13.
The Sunday Express broke the story about the Hull grooming gang in July 2021 (Image: Express)
A Humberside Police spokesperson said of the closure of the latest probe: “As is required for all investigations of this nature, a conclusion must be made to determine whether enquiries have met the evidential threshold to be formally referred to the CPS for a charging decision
“Following a thorough and detailed review of all available evidence in relation to this investigation, no charges could be brought against the suspects in this case.”
Regarding the apology, they added: “Since the complaint was received we have taken clear and direct action to improve awareness and professional standards across the organisation.
“We have introduced bespoke training which includes detailed guidance on the use of victim-blaming language, both in the way officers speak with victims and how they record information.
“A formal apology was issued to the victim concerned. We recognise the impact that such language can have, and we are clear that this falls short of the standards we expect.”