I was raped over 100 times from age of 12 by grooming gang…cops secretly took my aborted baby away – I was let down
A GROOMING gang victim who was raped more than 100 times from the age of 12 has revealed how police secretly took her aborted baby away.
The victim, named only as Ruby, says she was “let down” by cops after she was targeted by Asian gang predators in Rochdale.
She also revealed how police took her aborted foetus away for DNA testing when she was aged just 13 without telling her.
Ruby has bravely decided to speak out against the horror abuse after a damning report last month found police left children in the city at the “mercy” of grooming gangs.
She told BBC Newsnight she was raped “possibly over a hundred [times]” by men “from all over the country” for four years.
The abuse started when she was 12 after she and a friend were invited to a flat for a takeaway by a group of older men.
Ruby said at first nothing would happen but after a few weeks, she was plied with a litre of straight vodka and cigarettes before being led drunk into a room full of people.
She said she was raped “continuously” by up to 40 men, adding: “One would finish [raping me] and then the other one would come in and it was just like that all night.”
Ruby said the gang threatened her and she felt there was “no way out”.
They would show up at the victim’s school and near her home before taking her away to different cities where she was repeatedly attacked.
Ruby said: “I feel like I just became numb to it.”
In 2008, she went to a sexual health clinic for help but was just given condoms and sent away.
Ruby also says she tried to raise the ordeal with school and social services but nothing ever happened.
It was only in 2009 that she was placed on a child protection plan and the police were made aware of the situation.
But instead of protecting Ruby, officers from Greater Manchester Police took her aborted baby from hospital without telling her.
They then placed the foetus in a freezer at a police station after DNA tests failed to match possible suspects in the grooming gang investigation.
The baby lay forgotten until a “routine property review” several years later, while the girl continued to be abused.
She was left to fend for herself while being threatened by gang members after bravely coming forward to report her abuser.
Ruby’s story is just one of dozens revealed in a shocking report into the scandal, which saw hundreds of vulnerable young girls exploited by Asian men in Rochdale.
I want every child who goes through the doors of the police station and reports sexual abuse to feel listened to and heard.
Victim Ruby
One victim told officers she was kept in a cage and “made to bark like a dog or dress like a baby” but GMP took no action once she left the region and was put in care elsewhere.
If any cases did reach court, young victims were left by officers to be “harassed and intimidated by the men who had previously abused them” – sometimes at gunpoint, the report found.
Ruby herself was forced to come face-to-face with one of her attackers while in a local shop.
He had been released from jail halfway through his sentence but the victim was not informed.
Ruby said: “At first I double looked because I didn’t really believe what I’d seen. Then, when it hit me he’s there, I ran.
“Then I just went home and I didn’t leave the house for like three months after that.”
The report was authored by Mr Newsam and Gary Ridgeway, a former detective superintendent, following allegations by whistleblowers Sara Rowbotham and Maggie Oliver.
The pair’s battle to bring abusers to justice and expose their horrific crimes was revealed in BBC TV documentary The Betrayed Girls.
Mr Newsham and Mr Ridgeway found they were “lone voices” who had flagged the clear evidence of “prolific serial rape of countless children in Rochdale”.
Let down - what the Rochdale report revealed
Co-author of the report Malcolm Newsam CBE found Ruby’s story was just one in a string of “deplorable” failings by GMP and council bosses.
The 173-page report, which covers 2004 to 2013, identified 96 men still deemed a potential risk to children – but most of these are yet to be prosecuted.
It warned the number is “only a proportion” of those involved in the horror.
There were also at least 74 children being sexually exploited – and in 48 of those cases there were serious failures to protect the child
On some occasions, no action was taken against grooming gang members – including one who left a 15-year-old girl pregnant.
In one particularly shocking finding, a victim known as Amber was arrested then bailed to live with a man who had already been held on suspicion of child sexual exploitation.
The Crown Prosecution Service, in consultation with GMP, decided to name Amber as a co-conspirator in a trial involving her abusers.
The report found this was “deplorable further abuse of a CSE survivor” and “an “incredible example of poor practice”.
It also detailed other examples that showed “compelling evidence” of widespread, organised sexual abuse of children in Rochdale from as early as 2004 onwards.
There was a “serious failure” to protect the children, who were often vulnerable and from poorer backgrounds.
The authorities even identified ringleaders of the gang but did not investigate further because the children were too frightened to assist, the report found.
Some police operations – including one into two takeaway shops that involved 30 adult male suspects – was aborted prematurely because police bosses failed to resource it properly.
The CPS also deemed the main child victim was an unreliable witness.
It wasn’t until 2010 – more than two years later – that GMP finally launched Operation Span into the abuse claims.
Nine men were convicted in 2012 after plying girls as young as 12 with alcohol and drugs before they gang-raped them.
But while police and council bosses presented the verdict as having “resolved” grooming in the town, the reality was that it had “only scraped the surface”.
GMP has since apologised and said similar cases are handled very differently now.
But Ruby says more needs to be done to help victims of sexual assault – including offering them psychological help after police interviews.
She added: “I want every child who goes through the doors of the police station and reports sexual abuse to feel listened to and heard.
“I feel that there’s a lot of emotions going on. Instead of taking it home with them and just having to figure it out on [their] own [they should be] put in a room with a professional, so they can speak about the trauma.”
Rochdale Borough Council said: “We are deeply sorry that the people who were at Rochdale Council during the period 2004 to 2013, like many other areas of the country, did not recognise or acknowledge what was happening and failed to take the necessary action to protect children from abuse.
“Far more rigorous practices are in place today and we are determined to ensure these terrible failures do not happen again.”
- Ruby’s story will feature on BBC Newsnight on BBC2 at 10.30pm and on BBC iPlayer
