Two extraordinarily brave survivors have emerged from two decades of institutional indifference, public gaslighting, and abject police failure, only for Rochdale to immediately start preparing to move on and pretend it never happened, again.
The women, referred to in court as Girl A and Girl B, spent years being ignored, dismissed, and misfiled under “probably lying,” before finally getting justice. Seven men were sentenced to a combined 174 years in prison this week for 50 offences committed in the early 2000s, back when Nokia phones were the height of technology and Greater Manchester Police were at the peak of their inability to care.
“I finally feel like I can live my life,” said one survivor, presumably while waiting for the next Daily Mail comment section to accuse her of being part of a woke conspiracy against kebab shop owners.
The police, in an uncharacteristically lucid moment, admitted that their previous approach to child sex abuse investigations in Rochdale was “somewhere between negligent and criminally useless.” Assistant Chief Constable Steph Parker assured the public that GMP’s “victim-centred approach” now includes the radical step of actually listening to victims. No word yet on whether this will catch on elsewhere in the justice system.
Operation Lytton, the investigation sparked when someone in the force accidentally gave a toss in 2015, has now led to 12 convictions with 20 more men awaiting trial. A new internal GMP initiative, Operation Try Not To Ignore People This Time—has been launched with a surprisingly low bar for success.
Local councillors have praised the courage of the women who spoke out, before returning to their regular duties of not funding support services and quietly pretending they were never in charge when all this first went wrong.
Down the M62, where the Rochdale Times makes its spiritual home, local cynics have begun a sweepstake on how long it’ll take for the next “lessons have been learned” press conference, followed by the traditional forgetting, funding cuts, and the awarding of OBE medals for “services to looking shocked after the fact.”
Anyone affected by these issues is encouraged to contact a Sexual Assault Referral Centre, where professionals not trained by the Met might actually help you. Unlike your local councillor, who’s currently at a ribbon-cutting for a dog statue.
In the meantime, the brave survivors who spoke out are quietly getting on with their lives. Because unlike the people who failed them, they’ve actually got something worth doing.
