Rochdale grooming trial: Victim ‘let down’ by police and prosecutors

A VICTIM of a child sexual exploitation ring said she was “let down” by police and the Crown Prosecution Service because the issue of Asian gangs grooming young white girls was “unheard of” at the time.

The girl, who was 15 when she was targeted by the gang, reported the abuse to police in August 2008, but the CPS decided not to prosecute because they did not believe a jury would find her “credible”.

After reporting the abuse she suffered for four more months at the hands of the gang and continued to be forced into having sex by her “friend” – a teenage girl who was acting as a pimp for the men. She said the problem got worse after she told the police.

“I felt let down. But I know that they [the police] believed me, but because they said to me at the end that something should have been done, but the CPS just would not – what’s the word? – prosecute is it?

“It’s like, then, in 2008 it weren’t really heard of – Asian men with white girls. It was just unheard of. I’ve never heard of it. Now it’s going on everywhere. You think of Muslim men as religious and family-minded and just nice people. You don’t think … I don’t know … you just don’t think they’d do things like that.”

The girl, now 20, escaped the gang in December 2008, when she fell pregnant and moved away. She was then made to wait until August 2009 for the CPS decision.

She said: “Towards the end it was like, it could be up to five different men in a day, sometimes every day, at least four or five times a week.”

Asked how she felt about her cry for help being ignored, she said: “It just started again with different men and more men, and that’s when it started becoming up to five men a day.”

She said: “At first I felt really bad and dirty and ashamed, but after a while it had been going on for so long and so many different men and that it just became like… I didn’t feel anything towards it any more. It weren’t me any more. It became like something I had to do and I just couldn’t get out of it. Like once you’re in it you’re trapped.”

Asked if she thought it was a “cultural thing”, she responded: “In my situation it was all the men were Asian and all the girls were white, young schoolgirls.”