Greater Manchester police are investigating more than 1,000 grooming gang suspects, as a new report found the force was “trying to provide a better service to those who have experienced sexual exploitation”.
The force has made “significant improvements” in how it investigates grooming gangs and other types of child sexual abuse offences, according to the report by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services.
The report looks at the way grooming gangs and other child sexual offences are handled by the police, health bodies and the 10 councils across Greater Manchester.
It said police had live investigations into “multi-victim, multi-offender” child sexual exploitation cases involving 714 victims and survivors and 1,099 suspects.
“We found that since 2019, when Greater Manchester police started to review its non-recent child sexual exploitation investigations, the force has improved its understanding and approach to investigating allegations of child criminal and sexual exploitation,” the inspector of constabulary for the northern region, Michelle Skeer, said.
“It is clear that the force has, for many years, been trying to provide a better service to those who have or may have experienced sexual exploitation.
“But for some, trust and confidence in the police had been lost, and the force would not be able to rectify their experiences.
“It is vital that improvements are led by victims’ experiences, and if they do come forward, they are supported, protected and taken seriously.”
At a press conference, GMP’s chief constable, Sir Stephen Watson, said those who had failed victims in the past “should face justice like anyone else”.
He continued: “To those who are responsible for these repugnant crimes – as is now very apparent – we will pursue you relentlessly.”
The chief constable said the role ethnicity played in grooming gang offending was a “legitimate question” and may be explored in a future national inquiry.
A recent report by Louise Casey found that Asian men were significantly over-represented as suspects in grooming gangs in Greater Manchester, saying authorities were in “denial”, and that more needed to be done to understand why this was the case.
GMP is the only force in the country to set up a dedicated team to investigate grooming gangs, which it did in 2021, now called the child sexual exploitation major investigation team (CSE MIT), with about 100 staff and a ringfenced budget.
The force approaches child sexual exploitation as it does serious and organised crime gangs, using specialist tactics.
The report identified improvements that could be made in order to better address the issue and progress investigations. These included data sharing, with local councils sometimes not willing to provide detectives with information, leading to “significant delays in investigations”.
The report said intelligence provided by Manchester city council took months to arrive and “was so heavily redacted that some pages contained only a few words”.
So far the CSE MIT and the earlier grooming gang investigations have resulted in 42 convictions, with offenders imprisoned for a total of more than 430 years.
Other investigations are ongoing, with several more trials scheduled.
In a statement, Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, said: “I am confident in my view that the Greater Manchester system is in a demonstrably different and far stronger place today than it was when the failings happened.”
He added: “The effect of the assurance review I commissioned has been to usher in widespread culture change across all GM bodies. Never again will any child here be labelled or dismissed when they come forward to report concerns.
“Now the national inquiry is being put in place, we must allow victims the space and the right climate to have their voices heard, allow the actual truth to be established and accountability delivered.”
