Main victim of Rochdale grooming gangs scandal should be first winner of anonymous honour, says prosecutor Nazir Afzal who brought the paedophiles to justice
- Mr Afzal said Girl A should be recognised in the Queen’s Platinum Honours’ List
- Girl A gave harrowing evidence during the trial at Liverpool Crown Court in 2012
- It saw nine men convicted of sex trafficking and serial abuse of underage girls
The main victim of the Rochdale grooming gangs scandal should become the first recipient of an anonymous honour, for changing the perception of child sexual abuse in Britain, the former prosecutor who brought the paedophiles to justice has said.
Nazir Afzal, the former chief prosecutor for the north of England, has suggested Girl A – who as a rape sex abuse victim has lifelong anonymity – should be recognised in the Queen’s Platinum Honours’ List.
A decade on from the trial, Mr Afzal said: ‘I think it would be fitting. She’s owed a debt of gratitude and it would be an easy thing to do – and without in any way jeopardising her life-long right to anonymity.’
Girl A gave harrowing evidence during the trial at Liverpool Crown Court in a trial which saw nine men convicted of sex trafficking and the serial abuse of underage girls.
Nazir Afzal (above), the former chief prosecutor for the north of England, has suggested Girl A – who as a rape sex abuse victim has lifelong anonymity – should be recognised in the Queen’s Platinum Honours’ List
Girl A background
Girl A was 15 when police arrested her for smashing the counter of an Indian takeaway in Heywood, near Rochdale, Greater Manchester, in August 2008.
She told detectives she had lashed out because Shabir Ahmed, the gang’s leader, had raped her days earlier in a dingy bedroom above the premises.
But despite the teenager giving investigators the underwear she’d had on at the time, the case against Ahmed was shelved on the grounds that his victim’s account would not be believed by a jury.
Girl A was effectively abandoned and within weeks reclaimed by other members of the gang. They then trafficked her to other sexual predators around the north of England, threatening to burn down her family home if she resisted.
At one stage members of the gang – predominantly British Pakistanis – demanded that she bring a younger sister to them, but she refused.
It would take another four years, and a major re-think by both GMP and the Crown Prosecution Service, for the teenager to finally get justice. By then she had made repeated attempts on her life.
Girl A gave harrowing evidence during the trial at Liverpool Crown Court. At the end of it the jury returned guilty verdicts on every one of the counts involving her abuse.
‘The reality is that the case wouldn’t have got anywhere without Girl A’s testimony, and I think it’s time to honour that,’ said Mr Afzal.
‘Sadly, I think some have forgotten just how significant a contribution she made to our whole understanding of child sexual exploitation.
‘The success of that single case led directly to Savile, to Yewtree and to every other child sexual offender case that followed on from the changes we made.
‘Gary Glitter, Stuart Hall, Rolf Harris – all of those, and others, followed on from Rochdale. The courage of this one girl played a massive part in remedying the failings of our systems.’
Six of the nine defendants at Liverpool Crown Court made history by becoming the first in Britain ever to be convicted of sex trafficking.
Mr Afzal said the Rochdale case amounted to a sea change in the way child sexual exploitation was viewed and prosecuted.
‘Both police and social workers had a really blinkered attitude towards these children. To them they were “difficult” and “troubled”. They preferred to focus on the easy cases.
‘And of course the perpetrators knew that. They became pretty aware that the police weren’t interested in them, that the state wasn’t interested in them. So they escalated their abuse.’
He went on: ‘For years there was a perception that these girls had made a life choice to be abused. The attitude was “Well, my daughter wouldn’t get herself with these bad guys”. And as a result of that, it was the girls themselves who police would often investigate, rather than their traffickers and rapists.
‘The new approach was to stop doubting and ignoring the girls, and instead listen to them and try to corroborate what they were saying. Once we’d got over that roadblock it became so much easier to bring the prosecution.’
Mr Afzal said an award to Girl A would send a clear message ‘to all the other victims of grooming – past, present and future – that they will actually be listened to’.
He added: ‘It would also make it crystal clear to the perpetrators that society at large won’t tolerate the misery they inflict.’
Girl A was portrayed as Holly by Molly Windsor in the BBC drama Three Girls.
While other victims have received compensation and an apology from Greater Manchester Police, Girl A is still to receive either.
FIRST PERSON PIECE BY NAZIR AFZAL, THE FORMER CPS LAWYER WHO PROSECUTED THE ROCHDALE GROOMING GANG
It’s now 10 years since nine members of an Asian grooming gang were finally brought to justice at the end of a landmark trial.
Six of those men made history by becoming the first in Britain to ever be convicted of sex trafficking.
My own elation was matched by that of the rest of the prosecution team who had poured over thousands of pages of evidence and listened to the heart-breaking accounts of the victims.
The case was rightly lauded as a landmark because we’d finally broken through a legal ‘roadblock’ – and in doing so had given a voice to a generation of broken, abandoned girls.
Previously, hundreds of vulnerable teenagers had been routinely let down by police and social workers.
Rather than go to the trouble of investigating the perpetrators, the authorities turned their gaze on the victims.
If a girl complained, it was she who was seen as the problem rather than the men – predominantly British Pakistanis – who had violated her at so-called ‘parties’ in seedy flats or houses.
Detectives and prosecutors alike were all too likely to dismiss her as ‘flaky’ and ‘unreliable’. Just not the sort of girl that members of a jury were likely to believe.
The sea change achieved by the Rochdale trial was that we turned perceptions on their heads.
Firstly, we levelled with the jury by admitting we’d botched earlier investigations. And secondly, we convinced them that these ‘lost’ girls really were to be believed.
But a decade on, I’m horrified to say that I think we’ve gone backwards. Things are as bad now as they were in the dark days of 2011.
True, there is a new generation of police and safeguarding specialists who know how and where to look for the tell-tale signs of child sexual exploitation.
But behind that façade there’s a failure by the authorities to properly engage. The hard truth is that we’re no longer policing the issue, nor prosecuting it, as well as we were five years ago.
Too many experienced people have left either the police or children’s services, and too many of those who remain have become complacent. They’ve thought ‘Well, we’ve dealt with the bad guys’, rather than thinking ‘No, actually we haven’t, we need to keep going’.
What’s happening is exactly what happened in 2008 when Girl A – later to become the star witness of the Rochdale trial – came forward as a victim.
Like her, the new generation of victims are seeing their cases put on hold while their suspected abusers roam free on bail. In some cases that can be for three years, four years, even five years.
It’s become a perfect storm of poor messaging, inadequate resources, and the authorities being burdened with other priorities like adult rape, terrorism and even Covid policing.
On top of that we’ve got the Government’s failure to do what it promised – to deport the men it said it would deport back in 2012.
The abusers aren’t stupid. They realise no one is taking it seriously and so they’re finding new victims even while they’re on bail. And the men around them see that and think they can do likewise.
The government could have completed the deportation process in months if they’d properly resourced it and prioritised it. Yet even now it’s not too late – and that’s what I’d urge the Home Office to finally do.
That way they can convince the victims that they didn’t suffer in vain. That their trial wasn’t simply something we ticked off as a job done. That as a society we won’t put up with the scourge of child sexual exploitation.
I think Girl A in particular deserves recognition for her role in remedying the failings of our systems. Some have forgotten just how significant her contribution has been to the whole understanding of CSE.
But the fact is that the Rochdale case wouldn’t have got anywhere without her. And the success of that case led to all the other landmarks in the sick catalogue of child sexual exploitation.
Jimmy Savile and Operation Yewtree, for starters. And the likes of Gary Glitter, Stuart Hall, Rolf Harris. All of those followed on from Rochdale and therefore, to a large degree, from the bravery of Girl A.
I find it astonishing that to this day she’s never had a personal apology from Greater Manchester Police – even though its chief constable issued a very public one, along with compensation, to three other victims last month.
The BBC’s Three Girls drama largely centred on Girl A (portrayed as Holly by actress Molly Windsor), and yet now the entire narrative around CSE seems to have almost erased her from history. The fact that she’s been ignored in that GMP apology shocks and upsets me, and it should upset everyone else too.
It’s almost going back to the way she was treated in 2008/2009. She was ignored then, and she’s being ignored now.
For me this is the perfect time for the government both to atone and to recognise her bravery. The Prime Minister can do that by nominating her for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Honours List.
It wouldn’t matter that her guarantee of lifelong anonymity means she couldn’t be named.
But it would send the clearest of messages to all the past victims of CSE and all the future ones. That they WILL be listened to. And their suffering WILL be recognised.
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