From the Express
When 13-year-old Ruby had a gun pulled on her by a rapist demanding sex, she
didn’t expect to receive any help. The teenager with special needs reasoned that given Greater Manchester Police already knew she was being abused by a grooming gang in Rochdale, and had failed to act, threats to her life were also unlikely to prompt a response.
Sadly, she was to be proven right.
“The police didn’t do anything [about the gun] so I spoke to my brother, who was in prison at the time,” she says today. “He had to get some of his criminal friends to go to the takeaway where the guy worked and threaten him.”
The force wasn’t alone in ignoring the organised abuse that Ruby, whose real name can’t be revealed for legal reasons, and other girls endured at the hands of a Pakistani rape gang in the late 2000s.
Ruby, now in her late 20s, told teachers, social workers and sexual health workers of her abuse nearly every day for years. She claims none of them batted an eyelid . . . sexual health workers even offered her different condom flavours ahead of “nights out”.
Ruby is speaking to the media now in a rare interview to challenge the narrative, pushed by Sir Keir Starmer among others, that the Rochdale grooming gang case was a success story.
Because while nine men from Rochdale and Oldham were jailed for a total of 77 years in 2012 for running a child sexual exploitation ring in Manchester, 14 years later no one has been held accountable for ignoring Ruby’s desperate pleas for help.
“The Rochdale case was not a success, it was garbage,” she says. “They didn’t care and once it was done, there was nothing.”
Ruby’s story, which featured in the 2017 BBC drama Three Girls, began in the town of Heywood on the outskirts of Rochdale where she and her cousin found themselves often “bored and [feeling] naughty”.
One Saturday night they visited a local kebab shop where, rumour had it, children were being offered free food. In a room upstairs a friendly man known as “Daddy” brought them polystyrene boxes stuffed with chips and doner meat. Ruby, then aged 12, and her cousin returned one week later. This time they were offered a litre of straight vodka.
On their third visit, they were introduced to Asian men with nicknames like Billy and Ray.
But around two weeks later, there was a shift. The drunk girls were separated, plied with food, alcohol and cigarettes and pressed for sex.
“I was like ‘no’ but I was scared they would hurt my friend, so I did it,” says Ruby. What I didn’t know was that they were already doing the same thing to her in the other room.”
Day after day this pattern of abuse continued.
She then repeated the allegations to social workers, police officers and anyone who was required to listen.
“I spent countless days telling the school that men were getting me drunk and we were having sex,” she adds. “They didn’t care. They would say ‘Oh, right, did you have a good night?’ or ‘tell me about your night’.
…she says they ignored her mother’s desperate pleas for action at case meetings between the two.
“My mum told them, ‘You’re not helping my daughter or listening to her. She’s telling you what these men are doing’,” says Ruby.
She claims the authorities also put her at greater risk by keeping her in Heywood where the gang could easily target her.
Ruby was trafficked to Oldham, Bradford, Rotherham and Birmingham. She was sold and abused by countless men and if she refused, the gang beat or threatened her.
Alongside the exploitation Ruby had told many agencies that from the age of 12, she had a “boyfriend” known on the streets as Billy. His real name was Adil Khan and he was a 43-year-old taxi driver with a wife and three kids.
Today she is horrified by the professionals in her life who stood by and did nothing. “I was classed as a difficult child because of my special needs,” she says. “I wasn’t the crying, sad victim they wanted.”
When Ruby was 13, Adil Khan got her pregnant. She considered keeping the child until social services told her it was likely to be adopted. The termination was horrible, but with her mum by her side, she got through it.
Without informing the family, Greater Manchester Police seized the aborted foetus as evidence and kept it in a freezer for several years. Ruby only learned about this when the police began building a case of evidence against Khan and the rest of the gang.
“It was vile,” reflects Ruby today. “That was a piece of me, it was like them taking somebody’s kidney without asking.”
It was Maggie Oliver who told Ruby about the horrific violation and convinced her to become a witness at the men’s trial. With her support, Ruby gave hours of traumatic interviews and identified suspects from line-ups.
“Before I gave evidence, they were in the courtroom, calling me a sl*g, shouting ‘the ******g b**** is lying.’ It was scary. Even after they were found guilty, I received threats and people were chasing me through Rochdale. Men pulled up at the side of the road and hurled abuse. Nothing changed.”
Ruby says the police neglected to support her through this ordeal.
It was only when a furious Maggie Oliver turned up on her doorstep that she realised how badly she’d been failed. The detective had resigned over Great Manchester Police’s appalling treatment of victims, livid that the Crown Prosecution Service had not charged Khan with rape.
He was convicted of conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child, and trafficking a child for sexual exploitation. He served a total of three years for his crimes.
Ruby only learned of his release from prison when she came face to face with him one day while shopping in a supermarket.
“I turned around and he was stood there,” she says. “He followed me through the aisles. I locked myself in the changing rooms and had a complete panic attack. It was traumatising.”
Adil Khan has never accepted responsibility for abusing Ruby and claimed the prosecution was “racism.”
Today, Ruby is in a secure relationship with her own children, which has made her realise just how horrifically she was failed as a 12-year-old. By sharing her story she hopes to prevent other vulnerable children from suffering the same neglect she did.
Her story is harrowing because there were so many opportunities for authorities to protect her, yet she was constantly ignored until they decided they needed her
One Response
Has British royalty yet raged to arouse their subjects to reject their shameful behavior?