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  • It was called Operation Augusta, an innocuous name for a police investigation that's raised many more questions than it ever answered.

  • It began with Victoria Goglia, a child groomed and raped while in care should be 32 this year.

  • She's been dead longer than she lived.

  • He died and they let it go.

  • Let me go.

  • They're not something you know what happened?

  • How can they be solving?

  • No, nothing else on it?

  • Yeah, it's the whole system needs.

  • Since her granddaughter's death, Joan has refused to accept the official version, and she's right.

  • Those meant to protect her granddaughter did know what was happening.

  • They knew Victoria was being raped.

  • They knew other girls in care were being raped, too.

  • But the investigation triggered by Victoria's death was closed down.

  • Its resources pulled.

  • So the abuse carried on today with the police whistle blower who exposed the failings next to her.

  • The new official version was revealed.

  • Our report has established that most of the Children we considered were failed by Greater Manchester police on Manchester City Council.

  • The authorities knew that many would be in subjected to the most profound abuse and exploitation, but did not protect them.

  • This is a depressingly familiar picture seen in many other towns and cities across the country, many other places and thousands more Children.

  • For years, the girls with this Mrs troublemakers, social workers and police who spoke out were ignored.

  • The investigation in Manchester was one of the first officer's identified dozens of victims and close to 100 potential suspects.

  • But then it was stopped, and senior officers decided to pull all its resources.

  • This wasn't a mistake by senior police officers.

  • This was a deliberate it closing down of a live investigation because forever reason they couldn't be bothered.

  • They left those kids to their own devices.

  • They let the men continue to abuse Children.

  • They will not have stopped for May.

  • There should be accountability now.

  • Makis, the only person here today who's used the word cover up, do any of the rest of you think this is a cover up?

  • But I heard Mikey say that this has been abruptly closed.

  • I wanted to know the reason why, and that's what I asked Malcolm and Gary to find.

  • What what was the reason for this being terminated?

  • So, um, probably on the records say it was a question off resources.

  • Tonight they're called for a new inquest into Victoria ago.

  • Leah's death, the original verdict said there was no suggestion it should have been foreseen, even though her support workers knew where man had been injecting her with heroin.

  • While police say there's now a new investigation, I want to apologize to all of those vulnerable Children who were let down in 2004 when Greater Manchester police did not thoroughly investigate the abhorrent offenses that are being committed against them.

  • I want to say that I'm personally disgusted that these Children were not cared for and the awful abuse they suffered.

  • I'm committed to doing all that we can to ensure that they receive the justice today that they were denied 15 years ago.

  • She told your check.

  • She lost the only fault everybody makes book.

  • I loved her well today.

  • Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said that this case should have been a wake up call, but instead the investigation was closed abruptly and that was wrong.

  • The report, published today does not name the police officers said to have been involved in making that decision, but this evening channel four news can reveal that one of those senior police officers was Dave Thompson, who is now the chief constable of West Midlands Police, one of biggest police forces in the country.

  • He has confirmed that to us this evening, but he is also distancing himself from the decision making.

  • In a statement, he says that he was a district commander with Greater Manchester police at the time and not in charge of criminal investigations.

  • He said he was never involved in the Operation Augusta investigation.

  • He says that he acknowledges report does identify him of having been at a meeting on having made the decision about resources.

  • But he says that it wouldn't have been for a police officer of his role to make that kind decision.

  • He goes on to say that he would not have made that decision with that kind of investigation.

  • But he also apologizes because he was working for the Greater Manchester police at that point in time for failings within the investigation.

  • So Dave Thompson, chief constable of West Midlands Police, confirming to us this evening that he was involved in the report that was published, a highlighting failings in this case, Claire Fallon reporting from Magister.

  • But thanks.

  • John.

  • Well, Nausea Afzal is the former chief crown prosecutor for the northwest of England On had a responsibility for prosecutions, including those off the roach tail grooming gang.

  • He joins us now from Cardiff.

  • NASA also would have rather room.

  • We've had rocks stale with her.

  • Telford, Oxford.

  • Now the scale of the Manchester grooming scandal.

  • Can this happen again?

  • Is it happening again now?

  • Undoubtedly, the decisions taken in Augusta in the early two thousands were a choice.

  • You know when people say resources where it was under resourced?

  • Well, that's a choice.

  • When you say it's a low priority, that's a choice on.

  • So those who were engaged in safeguarding Children in the first decade of the century, I made a choice.

  • The Children who are being sexually abused, being raped would not be protected by the system.

  • Well, that is extraordinary and ridiculous.

  • But the same time has to be said that in the last, Whilst there was massive progress in the first half of the last decade, rots tell you mentioned rather than another, others were slipping backwards.

  • We're sitting backwards because there are fewer police officers.

  • There are fewer experts for your specialist.

  • Fewer people in child service is fewer prosecutors.

  • So I'm not as confident as I was four or five years ago that we're getting on top of this subject.

  • And, yes, we're getting cases coming through the court pretty much routinely.

  • But the reality, of course, is that victims from 15 years ago didn't get justice.

  • So the chances of you getting justice right now are a CZ limited, as they could be.

  • Well, and what should happen to the people responsible for failing victims here?

  • I mean, should they be charged with gross misconduct, misconduct in public office, what should happen to them?

  • But that I mean, obviously, I don't know the circumstances of the decision making.

  • I've seen something in the report that talks about people saying the Children should have managed their own behaviors as if somehow the Children were responsible for what happened to them.

  • It talks about the perpetrators being allowed to get on with it and then ultimately re offending those.

  • Those are terrible outcomes on Yes, there ought to be accountability.

  • I'm very strongly in favor off people being held to account, but I have to put this in perspective.

  • Greater Monster is not a stand alone.

  • There would be probably 43 Chief Constable's 43 senior management teams up and down the country who would have similar cases who simply either turned a blind eye or decided it wasn't their priority.

  • And so we would have a situation if we held everybody to account where hundreds of people would be held to account.

  • And you always have to remember this.

  • A few months ago, the prime minister said that dealing with tackling trial sexual abuse was like staffing money up a wall.

  • The reality is, the police officers and chief police officer around the country agreed with him.

  • They made a choice.

  • They decided it was something they were not going to spend their money on.

  • As a result, hundreds if not thousands, of young people, particularly women, have been abused and continue to be abused on offenders of being able to walk around the streets, not of greater minister of everywhere.

  • I'd be able to do so with impunity.

  • I'm one of the reasons, the report suggests, quoting an unnamed Greater Manchester police detective.

  • Is that that that the quote from report what had a massive input was the offending target group were predominantly Asian males on, we were told to try and get other ethnicities.

  • In your view.

  • How bigger part did political correctness play in Just this, this investigation being dull down.

  • I mean, obviously, I wasn't around in Greater Manchester at the time.

  • But when you read this and you realize that pretty much every offender that they were dealing with was from a British, Pakistani or British racing background, well, yes, the perception will be that something like political correctness or some issue around their ethnicity played a part.

  • I've always said the ethnicity is an issue is not the issue.

  • The issue is that victims, women and girls have simply been allowed to suffer without being listened to and being left behind.

  • That's the issue, but the ethnicity of the perpetrators.

  • You cannot get away from the disproportionately.

  • They have bean involved in this type, this model off sexual abuse.

  • But let's make this very clear.

  • Today, the U.

  • N s announced that there are three million people in this country who have been sexually abused as Children, one in 20.

It was called Operation Augusta, an innocuous name for a police investigation that's raised many more questions than it ever answered.

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