Last week, a devastating report revealed how scores of vulnerable children were left to be abused and raped by a south Manchester-based grooming gang 15 years ago.

The review, which looked at an abandoned police operation called Augusta - and the inaction of social services at the time - found girls and boys living in children’s homes, most of them looked after by Manchester council, had been failed by the agencies that were meant to protect them.

It outlined harrowing abuse suffered by children as young as 12 at the hands of a network of up to 97 Asian men based around Rusholme, who would pick them up from homes ‘in plain sight’ before abusing them in houses and above restaurants on the Curry Mile.

Barely any of those men were charged before the operation was shut down, despite police and the council having detailed information about who they were. At least eight went on to commit sex offences against children.

Now, one woman who was abused by a gang at the time has come forward to tell her story.

Kelly, not her real name, still remembers the first time she went to the Curry Mile with the friends she had just made in her new children’s home.

Aged 13, she was ‘pretty innocent, pretty timid’ and - she recollects now - ‘not streetwise at all’.

Two girls, one of them even younger than her and also living in the same home, had befriended her. And she wanted to fit in.

“We went to a place called Rusholme - I had never been there before,” remembers Kelly, now in her 30s.

“As a child, I could see all the restaurants. There were so many lights around, so many people.

“I felt that I had made friends. I wanted to impress them, I wanted to seem streetwise.

“One of the girls knew everyone she came across in Rusholme and had met up with a man who she called her boyfriend. This was the first Asian Pakistani man I had ever met. I looked at him and thought to myself that he was so much older than the girl he called his girlfriend.”

From there, they were invited to a flat above a restaurant on the Curry Mile, which she can still identify.

“They were giving us food and drink,” she remembers.

“There were so many people - men - there, but they were all really friendly to me. They seemed nice. I wasn’t afraid and, after all, I had my new friends with me.”

Already Kelly had been scarred by the behaviour of those with power over her. She had entered the care system around a year earlier, due to abuse within her family.

When she looked in the mirror, she says, ‘I could not stand the reflection I could see staring back at me’.

“I was disgusted at what I was looking at.”

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

So the apparent kindness of these new men, as well as her new friends, felt like a safety blanket.

“I just wanted someone to be nice to me,” she recalls. “I hated myself. All I could feel was pain - I hated myself so much and these girls took some of this pain away.

“I started going out with them more, and every night I started absconding from the children's home.”

And that was how it all began.

“One night, I went out with the two girls. They said we were going to a house party. We went to a house in Rusholme. When we got there, I was given vodka - this was one of the first times I had drunk alcohol.

“Everyone, including the girls, were giving me more and more. My head was spinning and I was dizzy. I felt so sick.

“I remember being in one of the bedrooms upstairs and one of the men who was my friend came in. I wasn’t scared - he was my friend.

“Then he was hurting me. He got on top of me. I told him no: please stop. I was still a virgin. He didn’t listen - this friendly man was so horrid, with evil in his eyes. He did what he wanted that night.”

From that point on, she says, ‘he was always there when I walked out of the children’s home’.

Kelly remembers the private homes she had lived in previously as being ‘happy’. But, for reasons she never understood, Manchester council then started moving her around.

It was from there that she says things went ‘downward’. The more Kelly went out in Rusholme, the more she was punished for her behaviour by staff. But nothing was ever done about the men themselves. Instead, she remembers, staff would take her out and buy her things and then take them from her room if she ran away.

“While in this children's home I stopped going to school,” she adds. “I learned that the only way to get attention from the staff and social workers was to misbehave.”

That was despite the fact they could see exactly what was happening.

“I would see his car, or he would be waiting on the corner,” she remembers of the man who had first raped her.

“I told the staff at the children's home he was a bad man, but no one would listen - they told me that I was just fabricating and it was a part of my behavioural problems.

“By this point, we were picked up at the children's home door by the man and were taken to lots of different house parties with so many older Pakistani men.

“They weren't friendly no more. They were horrid, they did what they wanted: plied me with alcohol. At this point in my life I believed that maybe this was what I was put on this earth to do.

“I was here for men to just do what they wanted.”

She was no more than 14.

The men were ‘blatant’, she says. They would drive right up to the door, beeping their horns. She says this was happening ‘every night’.

(Image: GMP)

This would have been around the time that Victoria Agoglia, a teenager also in the care of Manchester social services, died after being forcibly injected with heroin, aged 15.

An inquest later ruled that her death could not have been foreseen, referring to her propensity to ‘provide sexual favours’. But last week’s report revealed she had in fact repeatedly reported being raped, threatened and abused to care home staff. Just a couple of months before her death, Victoria had told her social worker that she had been injected with heroin. Nothing was done to protect her.

Kelly remembers a lot of the girls at the Rusholme 'parties', including Victoria, although only as someone she saw around.

“Sometimes there’d be only a couple of girls there,” she says. “If it was only a couple, you’d know it would be a bad night. You’d know you were going to be there for quite a while.

“It sounds sick, but the more girls there was, the less you knew you were going to...so you wanted more girls to be there. It’s a bit twisted but you wanted...and a lot of the girls were on drugs, but I refused.”

Kelly’s mother, she stresses, tried to protect her. She was still in touch with her mum and when she found out what was happening, she took down registration plates, names, phone numbers, raised hell.

Nobody listened, she says. But eventually she was moved to a different home, and then another, and then another. Dozens of places.

“I moved around to so many homes. They always found me, and I was still hanging out with the two girls and in Rusholme.

“They would pick me up from the homes. At one point I was placed in a home even closer to the place where they were - there was no way I could live there without them knowing.

“They already had me, it didn’t matter where I was living.”

She was running away for days, weeks, even months on end, she says. Sometimes she would be taken by men to a house in an area she didn't know and she would ring the police begging them to help, but they would tell her to make her own way back to the children's home.

And then, when she was 14 or 15, they did come round.

“I remember the day,” she says. “The staff kept telling me to get dressed and I was like no, I’m not getting dressed. It’s Saturday, I’m not getting dressed.

“They threw me in the car and said ‘we won’t be long’. They didn’t tell me where I was going.

“I remember falling asleep and waking up and I’m thinking: where the hell am I?”

She was being taken to a home hundreds of miles away. When she eventually arrived back in a home in Manchester, she says social services saw her as ‘wild’.

“They thought that I was just a badly-behaved child,” she says of the council. “They didn't want to have to deal with me.”

And then she met a lad aged around 18. He seemed like a proper boyfriend. They went on dates. He would pick her up in his car from the home. They seemed to be having a genuine relationship. “He was so nice to me,” she remembers.

“One day, he said we were going to his friend's party. I was so excited.

“We pulled up at a house. It was so familiar to me. And there it was: his friend, the same man who I met with those girls years before. The blood drained from my body.

“I didn’t understand. This cool, funny, good-looking boy I met - how could this be his friend, his family?

“I was here for men to just do what they wanted.”

“He recognized me straight away. The tears started running down my face. My boyfriend, who I had spent so much time with, told me that I belonged to everyone.”

One night, he got her drunk and took her to a house in Rusholme, leading her upstairs. There was a mattress in the middle of the floor.

“And there was dozens of men there, all waiting. So they were all assaulting me. I was there for hours, one by one.

“And as I was coming out, there was another girl being led up the stairs.”

She says that over the years, she came across ‘hundreds’ of these men. And there always seemed to be a link. It was ‘weird’, she says.

“You always seemed to go somewhere and know somebody. You’d see a lot of new faces, but you always recognised somebody in the room.”

Only one person ever tried to help her, she says: the manager of one of her last homes. This woman would physically try to pull her out of the cars, put her in a ‘wrist lock’, ground her.

“Out of the people responsible for me during my time in care, she was the only one who tried to keep me safe. So many homes, so many social workers, and only one tried to help me.”

At one stage, Kelly spoke directly the police about what she was experiencing, passing on details of the men, names, number plates, like many of the girls referenced in last week’s report. But she says she never heard from them again.

All these years later, she is glad that the reality of what happened at the time to her and other children is seeing the light of day, which is why she asked us to tell her story in full.

Articulate and determined, she went into training after leaving care and went on to have a career. But the failures of those who were meant to protect her have scarred Kelly for life, not just emotionally but physically.

She believes last week’s report only scratched the surface.

“I thought it was a light version. They didn’t cook their toast properly, did they?” she says. “They just stuck it in and pulled it back out.

“The social services, I feel like that report’s very light on them, because they had the power.

“They were the most responsible, the ones who were supposed to be looking after you on a daily basis. The police, they didn’t give a crap anyway.

“They used to come to the doors, these men. They knew who the men were, their names, contact numbers, registration plates, yet they did nothing.

“And nothing they do now will, or can, make what happened to me go away.”

(Image: Manchester Evening News)

What the council says

Joanne Roney OBE, chief executive of Manchester City Council, said: "The experiences described are horrific and we are deeply sorry that anyone went through them. We recognise that some of the social work practice at the time concerned was simply not good enough and fell below the high standards we now expect.

"The passage of time does not diminish traumatic experiences but the whole way the crime of child sexual exploitation is tackled has improved significantly in the 15 years since. We would encourage Kelly to come forward to the police and us if she has not already done so.

“We will listen to survivors, both to ensure that they receive the support they need and to ensure we continue to learn and do everything we can to keep improving child protection."

(Image: MEN)

What the police say

GMP did not comment but referred us to the statement the force issued when the mayor's review was first published earlier this month, noting that a new operation, Green Jacket, has now been launched.

Assistant Chief Constable Mabs Hussain, Head of Specialist Crime for Greater Manchester Police, said: “We accept that authorities fell short of doing all they could to protect and support the child victims of sexual exploitation identified under Operation Augusta in 2004.

“Children should be able to expect those responsible for their care will do all they can to keep them safe and I want to apologise to all those vulnerable children who were let down. I can only imagine the pain and distress they must have gone through, which would have only been made worse by these failings. I am sorry they were let down and I am sorry they were not protected from harm.

“Many of the children were subject to the most profound abuse and, although the review team acknowledged there was much in Operation Augusta and the work carried out by the investigation team to be commended, we agree the overall operation was not to the standard rightfully expected from victims. We have made a voluntary referral to the Independent Office for Police Conduct so that they can carry out an independent assessment to determine if there are any conduct matters that should be investigated.

“We and our partners at Manchester City Council have personally contacted all but one victim featured in the report to offer them any support we can ahead of it being published. Each contact was carefully planned with care professionals to ensure we were as sensitive as possible and further specialist support was offered.

“Of course back in early 2000s, the priorities for forces across the UK were very different. This has completely changed and today safeguarding the vulnerable is our absolute priority.

“After taking learnings from the Operation Span investigation in Rochdale and the significant convictions secured in 2013, we have worked closely with partners across Greater Manchester to develop a consistent standard in addressing the exploitation of young people. This approach puts the victim at the centre of everything we do, which ensures that proper support is provided by the right agencies and any safeguarding concerns are addressed.

“With this support from partners, it provides a stronger footing for police to prevent, disrupt and investigate these crimes. The work of these specialised teams under Project Phoenix has been recognised nationally as showing excellent working practice in tackling child sexual exploitation across Greater Manchester.

(Image: MEN)

“Our work initially focused on child sexual exploitation. We have continued to learn and develop these principles with partners over the last six years. As a result we have made further improvements to our whole approach to tackling the abuse and exploitation of young people.

“These improvements include the introduction of specialist co-located multi-agency ‘Complex Safeguarding Teams’ in every district across Greater Manchester. These focus on all aspects of exploitation including CSE, criminal exploitation and modern slavery.

“A Major Incident Team has been established under Operation Green Jacket. This dedicated multi-agency team has already carried out a significant amount of disruption actions, as well as numerous safeguarding visits.

“We have been reviewing all the information available and now a full investigation has been launched. To date, this investigation has resulted in one man being arrested and another interviewed under caution in September 2019 in connection with the abuse of Victoria Agoglia. The men have been released under investigation and we have provided an update to Victoria’s grandmother on the progress of our enquiries.

“This remains an ongoing investigation and I would encourage anyone who was involved in the original operation as a victim, potential victim or witness to please come forward and contact us so that we and partner agencies can provide you with any support we can.

“We will continue to do all that we can to safeguard children within our communities. Greater Manchester Police will investigate any report of child exploitation that is made.”

If you have been affected by this case and wish to speak to police, or if you believe you have information that can assist the investigation team, they can be contacted via opgreenjacket@gmp.police.uk

If you have been affected by this case and would like to seek support from specialist agencies but do not wish to speak to police, then Victim Support can be contacted on 08081689024