Press coverage of the Manchester sex abuse scandal is a disgrace

Last week, a catastrophic failure to protect vulnerable children, mostly girls, was finally exposed in all its devastating detail. Up to 100 members of a Manchester grooming gang were found to have abused at least 57 children aged as young as 12. Those children were in the care of Manchester council.

One of them was 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia. She died of a suspected overdose in 2003, having been forcibly injected with heroin. Victoria told the authorities that she was being drugged and raped, but they failed to stop it. Furthermore, at one point, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) actually identified 97 potential suspects, who had abused up to 57 potential victims, during an operation known as Operation Augusta. However, that operation was abandoned in 2005. Eight of those men, who were identified by GMP, later assaulted or raped girls.

The truth has come out because the Mayor of Great Manchester, Andy Burnham, demanded an inquiry into what had happened. This followed a campaign for justice from Victoria’s grandmother, Joan Agoglia. That, combined with former GMP detective Maggie Oliver blowing the whistle on the failings of Operation Augusta, finally meant the authorities’ failings were exposed.

The abuse in Manchester is a horrifying story, but it is one you will barely have heard about in our national media. Last Tuesday, when the report was published, it was covered on Radio 4’s PM programme. Then it disappeared from view. National newspapers did not put it on their front pages. The Express, for instance, thought it more important to launch its campaign to get Big Ben to sound as we leave the EU on Wednesday, than to cover the scandal. The Times also felt it necessary to dedicate part of its front page that day to the same burning issue. Elsewhere, there was coverage of the Royals and Love Island. The Independent and the Guardian ran exclusives on their front pages — but the scandal in Manchester was nowhere to be seen.

Even the Sunday papers, which usually have more space to delve into such issues, ignored it on their front pages. At least the Times made an effort to cover a sex abuse scandal on Saturday, although it was a previous one in Rotherham. (“Lessons will be learned,” they always promise. But they rarely are.) Yes, there were some well-meant opinion pieces on the issue, but little hard news coverage, the type of which brings these terrible issues fully into the public consciousness. I’m a news junkie, and even I have to confess that had I not been in the car listening to PM on that specific day, this horror may have passed me by. If you asked people in the public about this story, they would probably look confused and wonder what you were talking about.

While we all will have our opinions on what newspapers should lead on, this was a shameful dereliction of duty by the national press, made starker by the extensive coverage of the scandal in the Manchester Evening News. Newspapers are meant to hold the powerful to account. The type of people — police officers, coroners, local authorities — who have been criticised for the way they handled the abuse in Manchester. They are meant to expose wrong-doing against vulnerable people and give a voice to the voiceless. There are few who are more vulnerable or voiceless than young women being raped and drugged by abusive men, while those in power look on.

I tend to reject the allegation that the media only covers things that happen in London — I actually think editors have become increasingly conscious of the need to look beyond the M25. However, it is hard to believe that had such a scandal happened in London it would not have been covered more widely.

As Jennifer Williams wrote in a rightly furious comment piece for the MEN:

“The report makes quite clear that the attitude at the time was one of dismissiveness. This was, from the perspective of both the council and GMP — albeit not for some frontline social workers, who did desperately want it to be properly addressed — a problem for the girls to fix.”

Shamefully, that dismissiveness continued in our national newsrooms. Britain’s top editors need to ask themselves why.