Rochdale sex trafficking gang

The Rochdale child sex abuse ring involved under-age teenage girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Twelve men were convicted of sex trafficking and other offences including rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child, on 8 May 2012. Forty-seven girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation during the police investigation. The men were predominantly British Pakistanis which led to discussion on whether the failure to investigate them was linked to the authorities' fear of being accused of racism. The girls were mainly white British. In March 2015, Greater Manchester Police apologised for its failure to investigate the child sexual exploitation allegations more thoroughly between 2008 and 2010.

Twelve men were initially charged with sex trafficking and other offences including rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child. Nine men convicted, of whom eight were of British Pakistani origin and one was an Afghan asylum-seeker; of the three not convicted, one was cleared of all charges, the jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case of the second, and the third was not present at the trial after fleeing to Pakistan while on bail. Most of the men were married and well-respected within their community. One gang member convicted of sex trafficking was a religious studies teacher at a mosque and a married father of five. The men were aged between 24 and 59 and all knew each other. Two worked for the same taxi firm and another two worked at a takeaway restaurant; some came from the same village in Pakistan and another pair shared a flat. The gang worked to secure underage girls for sex.

The abuse of under-age girls that occurred in 2008 and 2009 centred around two takeaways in Heywood near Rochdale. Despite one victim going to the police in 2008 to report the grooming, and the detectives involved giving her support, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute two men, invoking the witnesses' credibility. As a result of the CPS's dropping the case, the police halted their investigation, which was resumed when a second girl made complaints of a similar nature in December 2009. The CPS's original decision was overturned in 2011 when a new chief prosecutor for the region, Nazir Afzal, a first generation British-Pakistani, was appointed.

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