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Groomed girls were depicted in Three Girls TV drama

Suffering of the girls played on screen was detailed in court documents

Pat Hurst
Tuesday 12 April 2022 17:00 BST
Three Girls, the BBC drama based on the Rochdale abuse scandal (Ewen Spencer/BBC)
Three Girls, the BBC drama based on the Rochdale abuse scandal (Ewen Spencer/BBC) (PA Media)

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One of the three women who has won damages from Greater Manchester Police (GMP) was depicted as the character Ruby in Three Girls, the award-winning BBC dramatisation of the Rochdale grooming scandal.

In legal documents detailing her claims against police for failing to protect her, Ruby is identified as BXW, and states the abuse began aged 12 and continued for four years, where she was passed “like a ball” between, “thousands” of men for rape and sexual abuse.

Forced into prostitution, on one occasion, she was recorded while naked and the video circulated.

She was impregnated by one man, Adil Khan, when she was aged 13 and had an abortion.

Police seized the foetus as evidence, but she was not notified – and nor was her mother or any responsible adult.

The second woman, Amber, also depicted in the BBC drama in 2017, was aged 14 when the abuse began, according to her legal claim.

She was first raped while intoxicated and thereafter raped and sexually assaulted by numerous men on numerous occasions, giving police the names or nicknames of 45 males who abused her or other children.

On occasion she would be “swapped” with other victims of the abuse to have sex with different men and threatened with a gun and a knife on separate occasions when she refused to comply.

Daisy was also only 12 when the abuse began, continuing for the next five years.

She was punched in the face and called a “white slag” by one of her abusers outside a pizza shop in Rochdale in 2006. She was arrested for harassment.

On one occasion, she was picked up by GMP officers on the Moors miles outside Manchester.

She had told a man she did not want to sleep with him, and he had taken her coat, thrown orange juice over her, and left her to walk home with no socks or shoes on.

Police drove her home and told her they could not do anything because they did not have the man’s name.

Later police were called after she had been burnt repeatedly with a heated spoon when she refused to comply with the demands of a group of adult men.

When interviewed by the police, she was accused of inflicting the wounds on herself and arrested for disorderly behaviour.

Her claim against GMP stated she was treated as a perpetrator not a victim and as far as she is aware no action was ever taken by GMP to record, investigate it, or take steps towards the prosecution of her abusers.

The force has paid the women “substantial” damages.

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