Margaret Oliver

The Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, ordered an independent report on Operation Augusta, which was published on 14 January 2020. It found failings by the police and by children's services. Greater Manchester Police accepted the report and apologised to the victims "who have been denied justice" and stated that it had established a major investigation team to look again at the abuse of Victoria and the other girls in 2004. The chief constable asked for all lines of enquiry from 2004 to be pursued, and further information has emerged in 38 of the 52 cases with new victims and new alleged attackers.

Oliver, Margaret (2019). Survivors: One Brave Detective's Battle to Expose the Rochdale Child Abuse Scandal. [John Blake]; .mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit;word-wrap:break-word}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"\"""\"""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .citation:target{background-color:rgba(0,127,255,0.133)}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg")right 0.1em center/9px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg")right 0.1em center/12px no-repeat}.mw-parser-output .cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:none;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{color:#d33}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#3a3;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}ISBN 1789460859 (London, UK)

Oliver founded the Maggie Oliver Foundation for the survivors of the Rochdale abuse scandal. The mission of the foundation is to "transform pain into power." The foundation is planning on opening a network of "Maggie Oliver Centres" for women. It is intended to be run by volunteers and survivors of the scandal. In the house support will be given to those who have been affected by sexual abuse. They will receive help to access support, legal advice, therapy, training and education. Oliver is also a public speaker raising awareness on sexual abuse perpetrated by organised grooming gangs. Oliver regularly appears on the ITV programme Loose Women. There she started the Never Too Late To Tell campaign in December 2016, which encourages all survivors of sexual assault to speak out about what happened to them. On the programme she gave further advice on recording evidence, having an open dialogue with children, monitoring technology, enlisting help and looking for changes in children's behaviour as signs of abuse.

As a detective constable, Oliver was the lead investigator on the Rochdale child sex abuse ring case for the Greater Manchester Police. She claims that the convictions that were made in the Rochdale child sex abuse ring of 9 men in early 2012 barely scratched the surface of what she describes as a highly-organised crime group of hundreds of perpetrators against countless young victims. When Oliver started investigating the sex abuse ring, she had worked for the police force since 1996. She had been part of The Serious Crime Division of the GMP and investigated countless gangland murders, shootings, kidnappings, rapes and witness protection jobs. The first contact with the scandal was her investigation into multiple severe sexual assaults perpetrated mainly by Pakistani men.

Oliver said that Child Protection Services were equipped to deal only with sexual abuse of children perpetrated by assaulters known by the victim (family members, teachers etc.) and so the type of assault taking place in grooming (by strangers) was not something that they were equipped to handle. Neither CPS nor the police had really felt responsible or had been equipped to deal with the new grooming phenomenon. Oliver claims that for 18 months, she tried to be heard by different parts of the justice system, including the Head of Serious Crime, the Chief Constable, the IPCC and the Home Office. She left the force in 2012 in disgust of the handling of the case by Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service. Oliver did so with the intention of speaking out about the mishandling of the cases and of informing the public.

In 2010, Oliver received a phone call about a job breaking in Rochdale. The phone call was an invitation to join Operation Span, which was the investigation of child grooming in Rochdale. The original investigation in 2008 and 2009 had been a car crash. The girls had been labelled unreliable witnesses, and the CPS had decided not to prosecute. Oliver was asked to try to regain the trust of the girls. She agreed to take on the case only because the department assured her that what happened in Operation Augusta would not happen again in Operation Span. There had been an exhibit, which was kept as evidence within the department, of a fetus that had been ceased within a termination of a pregnancy of a 13-year-old child, nicknamed Ruby. The exhibit had been found in a routine property review. The family had never given consent for the fetus to be kept as an exhibit. Her sister, who was 15 years old, was suspected to have been a madam, a procurer of prostitutes for pimps, for a group of Pakistani men and so had been arrested. As the patterns in Rochdale were identical to what had happened in Operation Augusta, Oliver was asked to join the investigation around the exhibit and the sisters.

The television programme Dispatches filmed the documentary Edge of the City. During its filming, the crew found out that girls in Yorkshire were being groomed and abused by a network of men. The girl who had died in Rochdale was one of the group of girls being filmed by the team. The Greater Manchester Police had the broadcast of the documentary delayed for fear that it would make public its failure to protect the girls. After the broadcast, a small group of detectives was formed to deal with the problem of the grooming gangs. In 2005, Oliver left the force, as her husband, Norman, was dying of terminal cancer. When she returned, she claims that the investigations had been closed. None of the perpetrators had been prosecuted, and the victims were still being abused. She was told that the victims "were prostitutes making a life style choice" and that they were "bad kids" and not credible witnesses. Oliver was disgusted by that and said that the victims were among the most vulnerable children in British society.

Oliver joined the Greater Manchester Police in 1997 as a police constable. She remained with the force until her resignation in March 2013 in response to the handling of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring.

Margaret Oliver (born 23 October 1955) is an English former Detective Constable with the Greater Manchester Police. She is known as a whistleblower for exposing the poor handling of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring case by her own force.