Sex attacks on young girls by Asian grooming gangs were ignored by police for fear of stoking racial tensions, a damning report has ruled.
A chief inspector from Rotherham was found to have admitted South Yorkshire Police force turned a blind eye to the harrowing cases of abuse, which he referred to as ‘P*** shagging’.
This was despite acknowledging the horrors against underage white girls had been happening for three decades.
The unnamed senior police officer said: ‘With it being Asians, we can’t afford for this to come out,’ according to the Times, which has seen an advanced copy of the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s five-year investigation.
The horrific crimes of Asian grooming gangs were laid bare in a 2018 trial when six men were jailed for a total 101 years after sexually exploiting five vulnerable teenage girls. Iqlak Yousaf (left) got a 20-year jail term. Salah Ahmed El-Hakam (right) got 15 years
One of the victims told a trial how she was made to have sex with ‘at least 100 Asian men’. Asif Ali and Tanweer Ali (right) got terms of terms of 10 years and 14 years respectively
Nabeel Kurshid and Mohammed Imran Ali Akhtar (right) are among a sex gang from Rotherham jailed for a combined 101 years this afternoon
The probe, code-named Operation Linden, upholds six complaints against South Yorkshire Police from one of the child victims of sexual exploitation.
Her father told the newspaper: ‘She’d been missing for weeks and he [the chief inspector] was talking as though she was an adult doing it of her own free will.
‘He said it had been going on for 30 years and that in his day they used to call them ‘P*** shaggers’. I told him she was a child and this was child abuse.’
Between 1997 and 2013, more than 1,400 youngsters in the Rotherham area were abused by gangs of males, who were almost all of Pakistani heritage.
The report into South Yorkshire’s failings comes at the end of a week in which Manchester police chiefs are faced scrutiny for dropping their investigation into Asian grooming gangs.
Greater Manchester Police detectives launched Operation Augusta in 2004 after the death of a 15-year-old girl, who previously told carers she had been raped and injected with heroin by an Asian man.
Whistleblowing former detective Maggie Oliver (pictured) has said Greater Manchester Police chiefs should face charges after a damning new report revealed they left 97 men free to groom 57 young girls by dropping their investigation into Asian grooming gangs
But the probe was mothballed a year later despite the force uncovering almost 100 paedophiles in south Manchester who later went on to rape and abuse dozens of young girls in the areas.
Former detective-turned-whistleblower Maggie Oliver lambasted the officers in charge for dropping the the investigation, which the report revealed left 97 men free to groom 57 young girls.
The horrific crimes of Asian grooming gangs were laid bare in a 2018 trial when six men were jailed for a total 101 years after sexually exploiting five vulnerable teenage girls.
The men targeted girls who were ‘easy to exploit because they wanted to be loved’ – sexually abusing them in parks, abandoned buildings and secluded locations.
The offences were committed against five girls under 16 in the Rotherham area between 1998 and 2005.
One of the victims told a trial how she was made to have sex with ‘at least 100 Asian men’ by the time she was 16 and another described how she was gang-raped in a forest and threatened with being abandoned there.
A South Yorkshire Police spokeswoman said: ‘South Yorkshire Police recognises the failings of its past and accepts the findings of the IOPC.
‘It is unfortunate no individual officer has been identified by the IOPC as this is not something we tolerate in today’s Force.
‘The themes within this report have been understood by South Yorkshire Police for some time, and the identified learning has already been embedded within our organisation.
‘Since the Jay Report was published in 2014 South Yorkshire Police has developed a far deeper understanding of child sexual exploitation.
‘We are not deterred from pursuing justice due the characteristics of the offender. This is demonstrated in the many convictions we have secured in relation to CSE in recent years.’
IOPC director of major investigations Steve Noonan said: ‘We are continuing to make significant progress with Operation Linden and we have completed more than 90 per cent of the enquiries we have identified so far.
‘A small number of investigation reports still need to be completed and our investigation into the actions of the former senior command team at South Yorkshire Police during the period of our investigation continues and is progressing well.
‘Our priority throughout the investigation has, and always will be, the welfare of the many survivors of child sexual abuse we have been engaging with. As their individual cases conclude we provide them with a personal update on our findings.
‘At the conclusion of all of our investigations we intend to publish an over-arching report covering all of the findings, outcomes and learning from our work on Operation Linden.’
Dead at 15: Victim regularly injected with heroin by older man
Victoria Agoglia’s family have been asking for her abuse to be investigated ever since her death in Rochdale in 2003.
Victoria, who had been in care since the age of eight, disclosed two months before her death to her social worker and a substance misuse worker that an older man was injecting her with heroin, a new report into the police and council operation triggered by her death found.
‘No formal action was taken to investigate this matter or prevent it occurring again,’ the report said.
‘Within two months of this revelation, Victoria died.’
Pictured: Victoria Agoglia, who died in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, aged just 15 in 2003
Following an inquest into her death in 2007, coroner Simon Nelson, as part of a narrative verdict, said ‘no inferences can be made that the events from the 24 September [when Victoria was injected] were reasonably foreseeable’, the report said.
A review has now said it was ‘unclear’ how the coroner could have concluded that.
Victoria, who was known as Vicky and used her stepfather’s surname of Byrne, spent time in care homes across Greater Manchester.
She had ambitions of becoming a hairdresser and a model.
In the two years before her death, the report found Victoria was repeatedly ‘threatened, assaulted and returned to her residential unit intoxicated’.
Distressed, the report said she disclosed she was involved in sexual exploitation and alleged rape and sexual assault.
‘While we found evidence of multi-agency meetings, not one of these occasions resulted in a child protection investigation to protect Victoria from significant harm,’ the report added.
‘Although Victoria was cared for by Manchester City Council, a man who had been previously identified as her so-called ‘pimp’ was given permission to visit her in her accommodation three times a week.’