What happened to “Sam”
- In 2006, a 12‑year‑old girl in Oldham went alone to Oldham police station late at night after being indecently assaulted in the grounds of Oldham Parish Church by an unknown Asian man.[oldham-chronicle.co]
- Staff at the front desk told her to come back with an adult when she was not drunk, and she was effectively turned away without being safeguarded, even though she was obviously a child in distress.[news.sky]
- As she left the station, men who had been in or near the police station offered her a lift “home”; instead they sexually assaulted and raped her in a car, then abandoned her.[oldham-chronicle.co]
- Seeking help again, she accepted assistance from another man, Sarwar Ali, who took her to a house where he raped her.[oldham-chronicle.co]
- Later, another man, Shakil Chowdhury, picked her up and took her to a different house on Attock Close, where he and four other men raped her repeatedly over several hours; in total, over a 24‑hour period, eight men are reported to have attacked and raped her.[news.sky]
Only one of those men, Chowdhury, was eventually convicted and jailed in 2007 for raping her, despite the number of alleged perpetrators and the forensic and witness trail that later emerged.[
news.sky]
Why this was not just “a one‑off”
- Neighbours on Attock Close had repeatedly reported concerns that taxis would arrive en masse every Wednesday night and children were being brought to the address in a “conveyor belt” fashion, which strongly suggested organised child sexual exploitation at that property.[oldham-chronicle.co]
- Forensic analysis later identified DNA from multiple men and three other women at the Attock Close address; two of those women said they had sex with Chowdhury at 16, and review authors said this supported Sam’s claim that the house functioned as a place where young women were sexually exploited by Asian males.[oldham-chronicle.co]
- Sam has consistently stated that the house was effectively “a brothel for kids” and that authorities resisted accepting that it was part of a wider grooming pattern, preferring to class her ordeal as an isolated incident.[oldham-chronicle.co]
These patterns match what later national audits described as “group‑based child sexual exploitation” where children, mostly white girls in these towns, were repeatedly used by small networks of men, often of Pakistani or broader Asian heritage in certain areas.[
en.wikipedia]
Institutional failings and evidence handling
The independent review commissioned by Oldham Council and Greater Manchester Mayor (the Newsam–Ridgway review, published 2022) and subsequent reporting identified multiple severe failings in how Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and Oldham Council handled Sam’s case:
- Only two of the men who assaulted Sam were ever arrested; the rest were never brought before a court, despite the victim’s clear account and later forensic evidence indicating multiple perpetrators.[oldham-chronicle.co]
- The review found that vital evidence was lost or destroyed, including CCTV, a key video interview with Sam, exhibits from the Attock Close house, and parts of the prosecution file.[oldham-chronicle.co]
- GMP’s own internal probe had already identified missed forensic opportunities and “serious weaknesses” in the original investigation, but for years the force denied wrongdoing and refused to acknowledge this to Sam and her family.[oldham-chronicle.co]
- The review concluded there were “very serious failings” and recommended that GMP and Oldham Council publicly acknowledge these and apologise, which the Chief Constable later did, recognising that Sam suffered horrific abuse compounded by institutional failures.[bbc.co]
The review authors explicitly said the behaviour of the council and GMP in their public communications “created the impression that both agencies were more concerned about covering up their failures than acknowledging the harm that had been done to a vulnerable young person.”[
news.sky]
From “failings” to cover‑up
Whether something counts as a criminal cover‑up rather than “just” catastrophic failure depends on intent: deliberately concealing evidence, obstructing justice, or lying in official capacities. The material in the public domain shows:
- There was a long‑term pattern of authorities in multiple towns (Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Oldham and others) minimising or dismissing the testimonies of exploited children, delaying action for years, and showing a “nervousness about race… bordering on a reluctance to investigate” offending by groups of Asian or Pakistani‑heritage men.[telegraph.co]
- National reviews have described “deep rooted institutional failures… blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions” across police and local authorities, which allowed perpetrators to remain at large and victims to be disbelieved or blamed.[mmu.ac]
- In Sam’s specific case, the destruction or loss of critical evidence, denial of established investigative failures for years, and communications that appeared to prioritise institutional reputation over transparency collectively go beyond routine incompetence and into conduct that looks, in effect, like a cover‑up, even if courts have not (to date) criminally convicted officials for that concealment.[gov]
Legally, UK inquiries tend to frame this as “institutional failure” or “collective failure” rather than formally finding that specific officers committed the criminal offence of perverting the course of justice, but the audit led by Baroness Casey emphasised that perpetrators have “walked free because no one joined the dots or because the law ended up protecting them instead of the victims.” That is the environment in which Sam’s case sat.[
gov]
Wider context: ethnicity, racism and reluctance to act
- The Oldham case fits into a broader national pattern where most identified victims in these scandals were white girls and a high proportion of known offenders in some towns were men of Pakistani heritage or more broadly Asian background.[en.wikipedia]
- Several reviews found that some professionals feared being labelled racist, which contributed to a reluctance to act or to name the ethnic pattern among perpetrators.[telegraph.co]
- At the same time, national audits stress that the majority of British Asian and Pakistani‑heritage people are horrified by these crimes, and that failing to address the reality of a criminal minority harms both the victims and those wider communities.[mmu.ac]
