'Three Girls', Cyril Smith and Knowl View - Why did Predators have Free Rein in Rochdale?

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse made a damning assessment of institutional attitudes in the town, going back decades.

By Damon Wilkinson

‘Birthplace of co-operation’ proclaims a sign on a railway bridge as you enter Rochdale.

It’s a proud heritage; a key role in the Labour movement, testimony to the town’s industrial heyday.

But over the last forty years, the close-knit communities that make up Rochdale have been rocked by a string of child sexual abuse scandals.

‘Three Girls’. Satanic Abuse. Cyril Smith and Knowl View.

At times it seems abusers have had free rein in the town. Why? Has there been a series of conspiracies and cover-ups as some believe?

Or merely a perfect storm of disregard - the toxic mix of paedophile networks, self-serving politicians, small-town poverty and government neglect?

On Thursday a long-awaited report lifted the lid on the widespread sexual abuse carried out by former Rochdale MP Cyril Smith and several other predatory paedophiles.

Monsters loomed in places where children were supposed to be protected - at Cambridge House, a boys’ hostel, and Knowl View, a residential school for boys with learning and behavioural difficulties, from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Public places became playgrounds for perverts too; the bus station, the Smith Street public toilet - in view of council’s offices - where lads of primary school age were prostituted for just a few pence.

It’s a chilling precedent of the the town’s most recent abuse scandal - in which young girls were molested by much older men under the nose of the authorities.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse did not look at that most recent child grooming scandal. But it made a damning assessment of institutional attitudes in the town, going back decades.

Based on the harrowing testimony of dozens of victims of abuse at Knowl View, Cambridge House and Smith Street toilets, plus evidence from social workers, teachers, politicians and council officers, the IICSA’s findings lay bare how young, often vulnerable victims were let down time and time again by the very people who were supposed to be protecting them.

But how was this allowed to happen?

Certainly Cyril Smith has cast a shadow over the town. 29 stone (400+ lbs) at his heaviest, he was long celebrated as a political giant. How distressing must that reputation have been to his victims, who knew what he was really capable of?

Stories have abounded in Rochdale that Smith had local police ‘in his pocket’ - using political influence to quash investigations that he was a serial molester of boys.

Former Rochdale MP Cyril Smith

In 1970 a Lancashire constabulary probe into Smith was dropped on the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who felt the allegations concerned - which dated from Cambridge House in the mid 60s - were ‘stale’, lacked corroboration, and the ‘character of the complainants would likely render their evidence suspect’.

But while Smith, then a councillor, did try to get some of the witnesses in the case to retract their statements, the IICSA report concludes that ‘at no point were the police improperly influenced’ by him or others on his behalf’.

Allegations Smith held some sort of sway over Rochdale police were ‘just plain wrong’, according to the inquiry, and available documents suggest in fact Smith was ‘not on good terms’ with the local force.

But did he have friends in higher places?

For years, rumours of a security services cover-up, based on an allegation that MI5 officers removed files on Smith from Lancashire Constabulary in the late 70s, have swirled.

These have no substance, the report says. The documents in question were not destroyed - in fact they’re still available today - and the report says there is ‘nothing to suggest a cover up’.

Rather, it’s thought the MI5 officers may have been investigating if there was any substance to 1979 allegations by the Rochdale Alternative Paper, that Smith had subjected boys at Cambridge House to sexualised punishment beatings.

What about the council then? Well, the inquiry didn’t find any evidence of a ‘deliberate cover-up’ of the abuse at Knowl View and Cambridge House either.

So if there was no big conspiracy, what does that leave? Was there something rotten in the political culture, over decades, that allowed people to get away with things, was it the cumulative effect of people in power simply not caring enough?

The inquiry does not make detailed findings on the report’s implications for Rochdale council as an institution, because it wants to hear evidence from similar scandals at Nottinghamshire county council and Lambeth council first.

Knowl View residential school, Norden Road, Bamford Closed mid 1990s

But what is abundantly clear from the report is that allegations of sexual assault were simply not taken seriously by those in authority, a culture that permeated the council from top to bottom for years, and allowed Smith and others to repeatedly get away with their sickening crimes.

From social workers and education workers to former council leaders Richard Farnell (2nd story on link) - suspended by the Labour Party after the report concluded he lied about what he knew about Knowl View - and Paul Rowen, who has been accused of having ‘turned a blind eye’ to the problems at Knowl View, there was a ‘careless and wholly inadequate response’ to the issue.

In regards to Knowl View the inquiry found there was a ‘total lack of urgency on the part of the authorities to address the problem and treat the matters involved for what they were – serious sexual assaults’.

“One boy’s file recorded that he had contracted sexually transmitted hepatitis through ‘rent boy’ activities,” the reports adds.

“We concluded that no one in authority viewed any of this as an urgent child protection issue. Rather, boys as young as 11 were not seen as victims, but as authors of their own abuse.”

For many in Rochdale, the criticisms in the damning IICSA report will make for familiar reading.

Almost identical failures were uncovered during inquiries into the 2012 grooming scandal, when dozens of vulnerable girls, some as young as 14, were plied with vodka, threatened with violence and passed around men for sex, while their pleas for help were ignored by the authorities.

It’s become known as the ‘Three Girls’ grooming scandal, after a harrowing BBC drama based on the case.

Eventually that led to nine men being convicted of sex trafficking and other offences including rape and trafficking girls for sex.

9 Pakistani Muslims!

A string of inquiries that followed found those in authority ‘lacked human compassion’ and were ‘inexcusably slow’ in dealing with the victims, while girls were referred to as ‘making life choices’ rather than being rape victims.

The Smith Street toilets in Rochdale (Image: Manchester Evening News)

Rewind a little more than 20 years and another lurid child abuse scandal was putting Rochdale in national headlines.

In 1990 a total of 20 children were taken from their homes on the Langley estate in Middleton and put in care by Rochdale council following allegations of ‘Satanic abuse’.

It was claimed they had been forced into devil worship and sexually abused.

In total the youngsters spent 34 years and four months in care.

But, the allegations were false - and after a year-long investigation, which found social workers had grossly over-reacted, the parents were proved to be completely innocent.

The scandal was referred to during the IICSA hearings, when it was suggested the fall-out from the case could have led to a culture of ‘over-caution’ among Rochdale social services, in regards to the allegations which were coming out of Knowl View at around the same time.

Not everyone was blinded to wrongdoing by a sense of ‘over-caution’, however.

Martin Digan, a former social worker and head of care at Knowl View, blew the whistle on the allegations in the 1990s. He now tells the Manchester Evening News the IICSA report provided the ‘vindication myself and the victims never got’.

“I think the panel deserve a great deal of credit for what they have done”, he says. “It has taken all this time for the public to be made officially aware of the truth of what happened at Knowl View.

“But there is only cold comfort in child sex abuse cases.

“The saddest thing is none of this had to happen, but they wouldn’t listen in 1994 and 1995 when I challenged Rochdale council."

“The human impact of that is phenomenal. Lives have been ruined, lads are living in abject poverty and misery because of the abuse they suffered at the hands of monsters at Knowl View."

“How do those lads get their lives back? I hope the courts now give them the compensation they deserve, but it is never going to give them back what they have lost.”

Richard Scorer, the lawyer acting for the Knowl View victims, believes the report shows Rochdale’s political culture is ‘stuck in a timewarp’ and is in ‘desperate need of reform’.

“My perception is that the attitude of staff in social services and education at Rochdale council towards child sexual exploitation has changed much for the better over the last few years, but Rochdale political culture is still stuck in a timewarp and remains in desperate need of reform”, he said.

Meanwhile, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has said the ‘damning’ report highlighted the need to ‘ensure we are doing everything we can to protect children today’ - and highlighted a worrying pattern.

“Although the events covered by this report are historical, there have been more recent cases in Rochdale where children have been abused and it is claimed institutions did not do all they could to safeguard them”, Mr Burnham said.

A still from the BBC drama about the Rochdale grooming scandal - 'Three Girls' (Image: PA)

“This is why, last year, I set up an independent review of current practice to see if Greater Manchester has the right culture and the best possible systems in place to put children first.

“This review is not complete, but it is clear there has been significant progress made in strengthening the protection of young people in Greater Manchester. The review will now look at the IICSA report and assess what implications it has.

“The people of Rochdale and Greater Manchester have the right to know if children today are being protected, and not let down as they have been in the past. I will not rest until we can be certain we have the right culture in place where children’s safety comes first.”

The unfortunate reality is that Rochdale, a place which is rightly proud of its long history of achievements in industry, arts, politics, sport and culture, is by no means the only town or institution that is now having to face up to some very uncomfortable truths about its past.

In the past seven years groups of men have been prosecuted for organised sex grooming crimes against hundreds of girls in towns and cities as geographically, socially and economically diverse as:

Rotherham, Oxford, Telford, Leeds, Birmingham, Norwich, Burnley, High Wycombe, Leicester, Dewsbury, Middlesbrough, Peterborough, Bristol, Halifax and Newcastle.

The BBC and the world of football have also been rocked by their own abuse scandals, while future IICSA hearings will examine allegations of historic abuse in the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, Westminster, Lambeth and Nottinghamshire.

And since 2012, Rochdale has been widely praised for making great strides in tackling grooming. Following the grooming gang’s conviction a specialist unit, called the Sunrise Team, was launched.

Made up of police, social workers and NHS staff among others, it is dedicated to rooting out the abusers and protecting their victims.

Speaking to the M.E.N. last year in the wake of the Three Girls scandal. Rochdale council chief exec Steve Rumbelow said there had been a ‘fundamental change’ in attitudes from ‘top to bottom’ of the town hall.

“I can genuinely say in Rochdale today, and every day, what happened to those girls is in our minds and the hurt caused to those girls is in our minds because that is the best way we can ensure we will not let victims down again,” he said.

“The fundamental change we have made is the treatment that young people get from staff. If a young person comes to us today saying they have been abused they will be taken seriously.”

While that approach is undoubtedly commendable, what is clear from the IICSA report is that much more may still need to be done.

And what is also clear is that many will continue to ask why and how this happened. The level of institutional neglect was so bad - for so long - that for some, official answers and belated apologies are simply too little, too late.