Rochdale child sex abuse ring

The Rochdale child sex abuse ring involved underage teenage girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Nine men were convicted of sex trafficking and other offences including rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child in May 2012. This resulted in Greater Manchester Police launching Operation Doublet and other operations to investigate further claims of abuse. As of January 2024 a total of 42 men had been convicted resulting in jail sentences totalling 432 years. Forty-seven girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation during the initial police investigation. The men were British Pakistanis, which led to discussion on whether the failure to investigate them was linked to the authorities' fear of being accused of racial prejudice. The girls were mainly White British.

There have been several reviews and reports written about the Rochdale child sexual abuses cases, including a Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) report that was published in 2013. The events have also been widely covered in the media and portrayed in a BBC television drama, Three Girls, in 2017.

In March 2015, Greater Manchester Police apologised for its failure to investigate the child sexual exploitation allegations more thoroughly between 2008 and 2010. Sara Rowbotham, the sexual health worker who first recognised patterns of child abuse in the community and fought to bring these crimes to police attention, was made redundant in 2014. A former detective constable who was investigating the grooming gangs, Margaret Oliver, resigned in 2012 in disgust of the handling of the cases by the police force and spoke out as a whistleblower to inform the public.

A 2024 report on child sex exploitation in Rochdale from 2004 to 2013 found that there was "compelling evidence" of widespread abuse, and that Greater Manchester Police and Rochdale Council had failed to properly investigate these cases, leaving girls "at the mercy of their abusers". While there were successful prosecutions, the report said that the investigations only "scraped the surface" of what had happened, and that many abusers had gone unpunished. Provided by Wikipedia