Rochdale Pakistani Gang, CPS Shame, One Survivor

With the national inquiry into grooming gangs set to begin hearings within weeks, a survivor and a police whistleblower are demanding the Prime Minister recuse himself entirely over unreleased findings from a 2017 review.

A Rochdale survivor has accused Sir Keir Starmer of betraying victims to advance his political career, as newly examined documents reveal the Crown Prosecution Service under his leadership pursued a “dehumanising” courtroom tactic against a teenage witness that an independent reviewer later labelled “deplorable further abuse.”

The survivor, identified only as Ruby, was subjected to repeated rape from the age of 12 to 15 by a group of men. She became pregnant at 13, and Greater Manchester Police froze her terminated foetus without her knowledge. When Sir Keir’s CPS finally acted, prosecutors pursued only conspiracy charges against her primary abuser, Adil Khan, who was released after three years. Ruby told a journalist: “It’s absolutely vile. How can he stand there and say he did a good job? They had DNA, concrete evidence and still didn’t get him charged with rape.”

Ruby is now joined by former Detective Constable Maggie Oliver, who resigned over the original police handling of the Rochdale case, in calling for the Prime Minister to step away from any role in the forthcoming national inquiry. The inquiry, chaired by Baroness Anne Longfield, is expected to begin taking public evidence by late summer 2026. However, Oliver has confirmed she will submit a formal complaint to the inquiry’s secretariat this week, arguing that Sir Keir’s direct oversight of the CPS during the Rochdale prosecutions creates an insurmountable conflict of interest. She told a journalist: “The decisions made are so horrific that he is compromised. If he is trying to say this was a pinnacle prosecution success, we have exactly the opposite here. There must be a conflict in wanting to conceal some of those decisions.”

The most damaging evidence comes from an independent review commissioned in 2017 by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, which has never been fully published. The review concluded that the CPS, under Sir Keir’s leadership as Director of Public Prosecutions, showed an unacceptable lack of concern for a vulnerable survivor named Amber. To secure a conviction, prosecutors added Amber to the same indictment as the gang, portraying her in court as a teenage pimp procuring children. She was never informed, never arrested, never cautioned, and had no opportunity to defend herself. Following the trial, she received death threats, her address was shared online, and social services attempted to remove her infant child. The review described the CPS’s actions as “deplorable further abuse of a child sexual exploitation survivor.” In 2022, Greater Manchester Police issued a full apology to Amber and officially recognised her as a victim, but the CPS has never followed suit.

Maggie Oliver confirmed that the CPS’s tactic against Amber was a deliberate legal strategy. She told a journalist: “The only way to get Amber’s evidence into court was to add her to the indictment as one of the gang of paedophiles. But they didn’t arrest her, they never cautioned her. She didn’t even know she was being portrayed as an older madame procuring children. It was a complete lie.”

What happens next is critical. Baroness Longfield’s inquiry has the power to compel witnesses and demand unpublished documents, including the full 2017 Burnham review and internal CPS emails from 2010 to 2013. Legal experts advising survivors now believe the inquiry will issue a Section 21 notice within the next 30 days to force the disclosure of these materials. A Downing Street spokesperson defended the Prime Minister, stating: “As Director of Public Prosecutions, the Prime Minister secured the first grooming gang prosecutions more than a decade ago. Survivors and victims are at the heart of the inquiry and we will leave no stone unturned to get them justice.”

However, Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has written to the Cabinet Office demanding Sir Keir’s full recusal. Reform UK home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf went further, telling a journalist that the Prime Minister should resign immediately. Ruby concluded: “The British public can have no way of trusting him. He should not be anywhere near this inquiry.”