Police need to be prosecuted for child sex abuse failures, says campaigner

Maggie Oliver calls for radical overhaul to end a national problem and accused police of cover-ups

CAMPAIGNER Maggie Oliver has blasted police and local authorities over their handling of the Rotherham abuse scandal saying they need to be held to account.

Oliver, a former Greater Manchester Police Detective Constable, said officers were guilty of a 25-year record of failure. 

She added that child protection services nationally need a radical overhaul after a report in to the sex abuse scandal failed to hold anyone to account for the abuse of over 1,400 girls.

And she said a fear of being accused of being racist by investigating the cases, most of which were carried out by men of Pakistani heritage, was a poor excuse.

She told GB News: “I would remind people that if they don’t call out what they are doing, they are allowing further generations of children to be abused and have their lives destroyed.

“It is the truth. Sometimes the truth is a difficult truth but we have skirted around this issue for I will say 25 years.

“Anne Cryer [MP] was calling out in Keithley in the 1990s within the community, she was going into the mosques and they didn’t wish to address it.

“25 years later, we are still not recording the numbers of men within those communities who are convicted of rape.”

Speaking during Breakfast with Eamonn and Isabel on GB News, she added: “We need a radical overhaul.

“And when senior police officers, and I’m talking about chief constables, don’t deal with this problem, they need to be held to account.

“I feel that until they are held legally to account in a criminal case, I don’t really think that we will see the changes that we need.

“And it is a national problem. It’s predominantly in the north of England because that is where these communities predominantly are, but we do need to address it.

“And if we don’t, we are failing our children. Abuse is horrendous.”

Ms Oliver went on to relate a story about one girl who had been sexually abused and discovered that police had covered up for 15 years the fact that they knew the identity of her attacker but failed to investigate.

“That is what is happening time and time again,” she said. “Even when I was highlighting these failures in 2011 and 2012 as a serving police officer, the grievance procedure covered up for the organisation.

“…it doesn’t take brains of Britain to see what’s wrong here. What we need is people to grab hold of it and say what is wrong and deal with it, not talk about it.”

She compared police cover-ups to the inaction within the Catholic church against the widespread problem of priests abusing children.

Ms Oliver said: “I’m not saying that sexual abuse and rape of children is only within this community but this is the only community where we skirt around it.

“We have to understand why it’s going on. We have to open up a dialogue.

“We have to go into those communities and we have to address it.”