The curry mile, where the gang operated
When they were finally reopened, the social services records told the story.
For more than 15 years, the harrowing details of child abuse suffered by girls in Manchester council’s care had lain on file, no real action taken.
One child had ‘begged’ carers to get her out of the city, telling them she was 'too involved' with Asian men. A man known by only his nickname ‘made her do things she didn’t want to do’.
Social workers recorded how girls were paid for sex, moved from premise to premise. One ‘very young’ child had told them how she had been ‘restrained by a man in his mid-20s, who then seriously assaulted her and committed an extremely serious and distressing sexual act’.
These accounts and more had been sitting there, waiting to be taken seriously, since at least 2004.
The stories of children as young as 12 had been told at the time - but council workers and care home staff working for the city did not protect them, today’s damning report into child sexual exploitation in south Manchester concluded.
The gang of Asian men abusing these girls in takeaways in and around the curry mile did little to hide their activities, because they didn’t need to.
According to the report: “Perpetrators appeared to be operating in “plain sight”, hanging around in cars outside care homes and foster homes and returning young people to their care addresses.”
In some cases the care workers would complain about the activities of the children, but appeared to have done little about it.
Tragic Victoria Agoglia, for example, whose relationship - aged 13 - with a man in his 20s ‘appears to have been condoned by social services’, according to the report.
“Residential care staff complained that Victoria’s “boyfriend”, who they described as her “pimp”, was supplying her with drugs on his visits to see her,” it says, but not that they did anything to stop it from happening.
Even though at one stage she was placed in a secure unit ‘because of the risks he presented to her’, once back in her care home he ‘was subsequently allowed to visit her placement on a supervised basis’.
“No attempts appear to have been made to establish his identity or background, or to validate his age or address, by either Manchester social services or Greater Manchester Police,” it adds.