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The victims of an Asian sex gang were abused under the noses of officials who missed a string of warning signs, a damning report said today.

It accused police, social workers, health workers and the Crown Prosecution Service of being “colour blind” to the racial element of the grooming of teenage white girls by the older perverts.

The Serious Case Review also claimed the authorities “struggled to empathise” with the victims, partly because they were from poor backgrounds.

Nine men, aged 24 to 59, were last year jailed for up to 19 years each for assaulting the girls, some just 13, in ­Rochdale, Gtr Manchester.

The SCR said police could have stepped in sooner if they questioned why older Asian men were in relationships with vulnerable white teenage girls.

One girl of 15 was repeatedly raped.

But social workers told her parents that she was a prostitute.

Greater Manchester Police hief Constable Sir Peter Fahy accepted the force let the girls down and added: “The welfare of these victims should now be at the very forefront of everything we do.”

Meanwhile five other men who sexually exploited a 15-year-old Rochdale girl have been jailed for up to eight and a half years.

Freddie Kendakumana was guilty of rape, Abdul Huk, 37, and Mohammed Rafiq Abubaker, 25, of sex with a child.

Chola Chansa, 33, had admitted sex with a child.