Rochdale abuse scandal: Inside the team fighting child sexual exploitation

Members of the Sunrise Team are educating hotel staff about how to spot and report signs of abuse

For 15 years the Rochdale grooming scandal has cast a long shadow - not only over the town but also the agencies which failed to protect so many of its most vulnerable people. Girls as young as 13 who were horrifically abused were branded "child prostitutes" - judged, blamed and disbelieved. Sometimes they were even arrested themselves.

In the wake of shocking failures exposed in a string of damning inquiries, a specialist multi-agency unit called the Sunrise Team was set up, with the mantra Never Again.

"I don't think any police officer - be it at my level or on the streets - wants that to ever happen again," said Det Ch Insp Stuart Round, head of vulnerability and safeguarding for Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in Rochdale.

"I think we've massively changed," he told BBC North West. "I think the culture's changed, I think society is much more aware of [child sexual exploitation] because of these high-profile cases.

"People are much more willing to report these matters to us and we're much more aware of recognising victims.

"With a child dealing drugs or in possession of a firearm for example, rather than immediately thinking they're a perpetrator and arresting them and sending them to jail we need to be thinking: 'Are they a victim?'

"We need to think beyond the obvious and that's what we're getting much better at."

Whistleblower Maggie Oliver quit Greater Manchester Police after saying abuse victims were being let down

But Maggie Oliver, a former GMP detective who resigned in 2012 over the poor handling of the Rochdale abuse cases and went on to establish a foundation to support victims, said: "I am telling you that the failures I saw in Rochdale back in 2011 and 2012 are still happening today.

"Lack of victim care, lack of adequate resourcing, lack of prioritising these kinds of very complex cases. We are going to be in the same position, exactly, in another 10 years with different victims unless the leadership get a grip of the system that is not working.

"Things haven't changed. In far too many ways victims are still being failed in Rochdale and in many other areas."

Ms Oliver told the BBC that, in the past four months, her foundation had been approached by young children whose families said were being exploited in Rochdale but had not been able to get the police to take action.

She warned the "woefully inadequate" response meant abusers were "still confident that the chances of them being arrested, prosecuted [and] convicted are so tiny that it's worth taking the chance".

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When asked if she felt young victims still had no-one to turn to and were still not being believed, Ms Oliver replied: "I don't feel that - I know that. I see it every day.

"There is still an attitude somehow that these children are 'asking for it'. And that is still very widespread."

GMP said it met the Maggie Oliver Foundation monthly and senior officers were able to ensure urgent action was taken before providing updates at the next meeting.

Det Ch Insp Round said he was "absolutely confident" children or families who came to his team for help would be believed and supported.

"We're raising that awareness to be professionally curious when dealing with missing children," he told the BBC. "Is there something going on behind the scenes that we're not aware of?

"When we have had reports of victims or potential victims, we've moved rapidly to arrest perpetrators and gather evidence.

"That sends a clear message not only to victims, not only to perpetrators but to our partners that if you report things to us we will deal with it and we will deal with it robustly.

"We can't not acknowledge what happened in the past but that's not what I experience today."

'Raising awareness'

Agencies historically failed to work together effectively and did not share information about children at risk of exploitation.

Now the multi-disciplinary Sunrise Team - including detectives, children's services, NHS staff, housing workers and psychologists - sits together at Rochdale police station.

Members go out together on operations - a model that has won national awards and is being copied elsewhere.

Det Ch Insp Round said that while the team acted quickly on information it received, it had to do more.

"We look at what each agency knows about that child, have we already worked with them? Do we know the parents? We share information. It's massively different.

"But for me that's not enough. We need to be going out into the community, raising awareness about what we do and targeting people who we think will exploit children."

Det Ch Insp Stuart Round, head of vulnerability and safeguarding for Greater Manchester Police

Since June, the team has been visiting hotels to raise awareness among staff of the signs of child sexual exploitation.

Under Operation Cobalt, undercover officers and children have been used to try to book hotel rooms.

"We're being proactive because although we don't think it's a massive issue in Rochdale we know it probably goes on in hotels," said Det Con Chris Davies.

"We want to stop it happening before it happens. We're speaking to staff, educating them… handing out leaflets so they can show they can spot the signs of exploitation."

Vapes are being used as "a big tool for sexual and criminal exploitation" of children, police say

More than a decade ago, ringleaders of the Rochdale grooming gang operated from takeaways in the town, often plying their victims with alcohol.

Now, GMP says some e-cigarette shops have become honeypots for vulnerable children with vapes "a big tool for sexual and criminal exploitation".

Shopkeepers are asking young girls for sexual favours in return for vapes, while drug dealers have given them to boys to sell as a test to see whether they can be manipulated into selling drugs.

In December, under Operation Vigilant, the team joined forces with trading standards officers and seized nearly 2,000 illegal, super-strength vapes to stop them getting into the hands of children.

"We have a number of proactive operations that aren't one-offs, they aren't gimmicks," said Det Ch Insp Round. "We do them once a month and they're really innovative as well."

The Sunrise Team is keen to talk about its successes, and its boss Det Ch Insp Round said he had a personal goal: "What I want to able to do in 15 or 20 years when I retire is say that we did everything that we possibly could to make sure there isn't child exploitation."

But he and his team have much still to do to convince the likes of Ms Oliver.

"There needs to be honesty about what is wrong and if we don't get that honesty there is no scrutiny of where the mistakes and failures are and we will not improve and get it right," she said.

"It very much is doable but by pretending that things are now better when in fact they are not you are doing a disservice to the victims and you are allowing abusers to continue to abuse knowing that there is very little chance they will be apprehended or prosecuted."