Margaret Oliver

Margaret Oliver (born 23 October 1955) is an English former Detective Constable with the Greater Manchester Police.

She is known as a whistleblower for exposing the poor handling of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring case by her own force.

Oliver joined the Greater Manchester Police in 1997 as a police constable.

When Oliver started investigating the sex abuse ring, she had worked for the police force since 1997.

She had been part of The Serious Crime Division of the GMP and investigated countless gangland murders, shootings, kidnappings, rapes and witness protection cases.

The first contact with the scandal was her investigation into multiple severe sexual assaults perpetrated mainly by Pakistani men.

During her work in Operation Augusta, Oliver interviewed many victims, some as young as 11.

She was again shocked by the lack of response of the police force and the lack of efforts in trying to protect the victims.

She claims that it seemed as if the authorities had known about the crimes for ten years when she started working on Operation Augusta.

An almost-identical pattern could be observed to what was happening in Rochdale.

In the operation, 26 teenage girls had been identified to have been trafficked to about 206 suspects in Hulme and Rusholme and were abused by men mainly of Pakistani background.

One of the girls that was abused by suspects in Operation Augusta died in Rochdale.

In Operation Augusta, 16 child victims and 97 perpetrators were identified of which 3 were taken to court.

The television programme Dispatches filmed the documentary Edge of the City.

During its filming, the crew found out that girls in Yorkshire were being groomed and abused by a network of men.

The girl who had died in Rochdale was one of the group of girls being filmed by the team.

The Greater Manchester Police had the broadcast of the documentary delayed for fear that it would make public its failure to protect the girls.

After the broadcast, a small group of detectives was formed to deal with the problem of the grooming gangs.

Greater Manchester Police accepted the report and apologised to the victims "who have been denied justice" and stated that it had established a major investigation team to look again at the abuse of Victoria and the other girls in 2004.

The chief constable asked for all lines of enquiry from 2004 to be pursued, and further information has emerged in 38 of the 52 cases with new victims and new alleged attackers.

In 2005, Oliver left the force, as her husband, Norman, was dying of terminal cancer.

When she returned, she claims that the investigations had been closed.

None of the perpetrators had been prosecuted, and the victims were still being abused.

She was told that the victims "were prostitutes making a life style choice" and that they were "bad kids" and not credible witnesses.

Oliver was disgusted by that and said that the victims were among the most vulnerable children in British society.

The original investigation in 2008 and 2009 had been chaotic.

The girls had been labelled unreliable witnesses, and the CPS had decided not to prosecute.

Oliver was asked to try to regain the trust of the girls.

She agreed to take on the case only because the department assured her that what happened in Operation Augusta would not happen again in Operation Span.

There had been an exhibit, which was kept as evidence within the department, of a fetus that had been ceased within a termination of a pregnancy of a 13-year-old child, nicknamed Ruby.

The exhibit had been found in a routine property review.

The family had never given consent for the fetus to be kept as an exhibit.

Her sister, who was 15 years old, was suspected to have been a madam, a procurer of prostitutes for pimps, for a group of Pakistani men and so had been arrested.

In 2010, Oliver received a phone call about a case breaking in Rochdale.

The phone call was an invitation to join Operation Span, which was the investigation of child grooming in Rochdale.

She claims that the convictions that were made in the Rochdale child sex abuse ring of 9 men in early 2012 barely scratched the surface of what she describes as a highly-organised crime group of hundreds of perpetrators against countless young victims.

She remained with the force until her resignation in March 2013 in response to the handling of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring.

As a detective constable, Oliver worked on the Rochdale child sex abuse ring case for the Greater Manchester Police.

The Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, ordered an independent report on Operation Augusta, which was published on 14 January 2020.

It found failings by the police and by children's services.