Do You Know Who I Am? Part Three.

Children were raped and abused by up to 100 members of a Manchester grooming gang sixteen years ago - but despite police and social workers knowing what was happening they weren’t stopped.

At least 57 young girls are thought to have been exploited by a paedophile network based in south Manchester. They were hooked on drugs, groomed, raped and emotionally broken - one youngster, aged fifteen, died.

The disturbing story of the gang's crimes, the betrayal of the victims, and the scale of institutional neglect is disclosed in a damning two year inquiry into historic failures in the protection of children in Manchester.

The report, commissioned by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, found:

- Social workers knew that one 15-year-old girl, Victoria Agoglia, was being forcibly injected with heroin, but failed to act. She died two months later.

- Abusers were allowed to freely pick up and have sex with Victoria and other children from city care homes, ‘in plain sight’ of officials.

- Greater Manchester Police dropped an operation that identified up to 97 potential suspects and at least 57 potential victims. Eight of the men went on to later assault or rape girls.

- As recently as August 2018, the Chief Constable refused to reopen the dropped operation.

At its heart is the death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia, also known as Victoria Byrne, in 2003.

Its conclusions lay bare the scale of the abuse she suffered at the hands of men who freely came and went from her care home with the full knowledge of the authorities - also revealing she had repeatedly told social workers she was being injected with drugs and raped. It finds no action was taken to protect her.

After her death a police investigation, Operation Augusta, was set up to see if there was a wider problem of child sexual exploitation in south Manchester. Officers managed to quickly identify a network of nearly 100 Asian men potentially involved in the abuse of scores of girls via takeaways in and around Rusholme, but the operation was shut down shortly afterwards due to resources, ‘rather than a sound understanding’ of whether lines of inquiry had been exhausted.

Barely any charges were made against the men identified by the operation. Eight of them later went on to commit serious sexual crimes, including the rape of a child, the rape of a young woman, sexual assault and sexual activity with a child. 

Council files reviewed by the inquiry show a number of children in care at the same time as Victoria had

reported ‘harrowing’ abuse to social services, including one ‘very young’ girl who described being restrained by a man in his 20s, before being subjected to ‘an extremely serious and distressing sexual act’.

The report looked in detail at the files of 26 such potential victims identified by the police in 2004 and finds: “Most of the children we have considered were failed by police and children's services.”

It concludes: “The authorities knew that many were being subjected to the most profound abuse and exploitation but did not protect them from the perpetrators.

"This is a depressingly familiar picture and has been seen in many other towns and cities across the country.

"However, familiarity makes it no less painful for the survivors involved, and it should in no way detract from the need for them to be given the opportunity to ask that the crimes committed against them now be fully investigated.

"We would also apply the same expectation to the family of Victoria Agoglia, who have been asking for her abuse to be investigated since her tragic death in 2003.”

Five days later, on September 29, 2003, she died in hospital.

The review found that the authorities were well aware of the abuse she had been subjected to, but failed to act.

Files showed that as long as two years before her death, Victoria had reported been ‘repeatedly threatened, assaulted, returned intoxicated and in distress’, that she ‘gave information that she was involved in sexual exploitation, alleged rape and sexual assault requiring medical attention’ and that she had become involved in the criminal justice system, as well as having several pregnancy scares.

Her ‘boyfriend’ had been allowed to visit her in the care home she lived in.

While the inquiry found ‘some evidence’ of multi-agency meetings set up to discuss the situation, not one of them resulted in a child protection investigation designed to protect her from significant harm. 

“Manchester City Council had parental responsibility for Victoria throughout this difficult period and due to poor professional practice and an absence of the most basic statutory child protection processes failed to protect her,” it concludes.

All of the above is taken from the Manchester Evening News, you can read the full article for yourself.

Painful to read? Try been one of these children.

All this and more were allowed to happen by all who should have protected them, but nothing was done as no one didn’t want to be accused of racism!

Do you know who I am?

These girls are, “Someone’s Daughter…..” We’re not gonna sit in silence, You Are The Voice, a song by John Farnham, but I can add to that, they are not just someone’s Daughter, they are someone’s Niece, someone’s Cousin, someone’s Auntie, someone’s Sister, someone’s Grand Daughter, and should they grow up and have children of their own, someone’s Grandmother.  

What does the future hold for some of these young women? Some will end up in psychiatric homes, some will have eating habits like anorexia, some will grow up to hate the country of origin the men came from, some will self-harm. Hopefully with counselling and compensation some with still end up having a good life, despite their years of horrors.

On September 29th 2003 Victoria Agoglia died age just 15.

RIP.