MAGGIE OLIVER: Burnham had a chance to give a voice to grooming gang victims, and he wasted it

Next month we will hear a lot from Andy Burnham, who is bidding to return to Westminster, about his role in rooting out Asian grooming gangs and delivering justice for the countless children who fall victim to them.

He will claim to have fought the police and social services to expose their failure to act. And it will imply that the scandal is largely over, thanks to his intervention.

If Burnham is elected MP for Makerfield in next month’s by-election, there is a good chance she will soon become Prime Minister. And this concerns me.

I have no affiliation to any party. I left my role as a Detective Constable in Rochdale in 2012 to protest the force’s mishandling of two child sex exploitation rings. Since then, I have campaigned for victims of grooming gangs and exposed the failure of institutions, from the police to social services, to prevent group-based sexual abuse of children.

I criticized Tory inaction. I attacked Labour’s frustrations. And I am not afraid to take on politicians of any faith because of my determination to highlight the failure of the police to groom gangs.

It doesn’t matter to me which party Burnham represents. He should not be Prime Minister because he does not fulfill his promises. He happily takes the credit for others’ battles, but lacks the steel to keep fighting when the stakes are high.

Andy Burnham ‘melted down’ after calls to keep promises to victims, writes Maggie Oliver

In my experience it doesn’t get the job done. Instead he looks for an easy way out. Don’t just take my word for it. Just ask Victoria Agoglia’s grandmother, Joan.

Victoria was 15 when she died of a drug overdose. Two months earlier, she had told Joan that men had injected her with heroin and raped her. Joan desperately tried to convince the authorities that her grandson’s life, living in a council care home, was in danger.

‘I phoned them and called them and called them but no one cared,’ he said.

Fourteen years later, as Mayor of Manchester, Burnham finally took action and ordered an investigation. This followed the BBC documentary Betrayed Girls, in which I starred, which highlighted the extent of the grooming gangs crisis.

Burnham vowed to hold a second inquest to uncover the true causes of Victoria’s death. But seven years later, this still hasn’t happened. Manchester social services were allowed to claim they had done everything possible to prevent Victoria’s death, but in reality many workers at the care home admitted they were aware of the abuse she had suffered. His story is just one of thousands of stories.

I have known Burnham for almost a decade and have begged him many times to keep his promises. But it just melts away. I reluctantly came to the conclusion that he was unwilling to make the difficult decisions that a true leader would make.

He has the charisma to say what people want to hear. I liked him when I met him and I’d rather go to the pub with Sir Keir Starmer, who failed to tackle grooming gangs when he was Director of Public Prosecutions.

But give him credit: Burnham dealt two blows to the gangs by launching independent reviews of two police investigations, Operation Augusta in Manchester and Operation Span in Rochdale, both of which were spineless.

Thanks to his intervention, my stance that these operations were failures since 2013 was confirmed. I’m grateful for that.

But the third investigation into widespread sexual abuse of children by Asian gangs in Oldham amounted to little more than a cover-up. And the ‘reassurance review’ that followed (so named because it was intended to reassure the public that the reign of gangs was over and that Greater Manchester Police were finally dealing with victims properly) was not honest, transparent or fit for purpose. It was so bad that I had to withdraw myself and my charity, the Maggie Oliver Foundation, from any association.

The two independent professionals who delivered the first three episodes also resigned.

We clearly explained to Burnham why we were taking such a step. He still proceeded without speaking to a single victim, meaning the conclusions were largely worthless.

As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham is also the Police and Crime Commissioner. It is his job to hold senior civil servants to account and confront the incompetence that allowed mass abuse to continue largely unimpeded.

He had the opportunity and he wasted it. He promised he would but he didn’t. There is an ongoing cost of lives lost and victims suffering, and I think Burnham bears some responsibility for that.

This country needs a leader who is not afraid to shine a light in dark corners. We need a courageous and honest leader.

We need someone as good as he says he is. You’ll hear a lot of quotes from Burnham, but based on my experience, whether they’ll be honored is another question entirely.

The Maggie Oliver Foundation helps survivors and those at risk of childhood sexual abuse and exploitation.