How the Newspapers Buried the Truth About Charlotte Tetley
Why Did A Rochdale Grooming Gang Survivor Commit Suicide?
When the news broke about Charlotte Tetley’s death, the headlines were all the same: a Rochdale grooming gang victim who took her own life after a long battle with mental health.
Charles Wade-Palmer, Jennifer Pinto
That’s how they wanted you to see it. But the real story, the story that mattered, was buried.
Charlotte wasn’t just a woman who struggled with mental health. She was a child victim of the Rochdale grooming gangs. That abuse shaped everything that followed. It was the starting point of her trauma, the reason she turned to drugs to cope, the reason her life spiralled. Yet in the press, it was reduced to a footnote.
The newspapers sanitised her story. They framed her death as an isolated tragedy, detached from the scandal of Rochdale. They disguised systemic failure behind language about “complex needs.” They made it sound like Charlotte’s death was the result of personal weakness, rather than years of institutional betrayal.
What they skimmed over includes;
- how Charlotte was forced out of her home in Rochdale because one of her abusers was allowed to return.
- how she ended up homeless, unstable, and abandoned by services.
- how she repeatedly begged for help, attempted suicide, and was still turned away.
- how police and ambulance staff refused to respond when she was listed as a high-risk missing person.
Those details were glossed over because if the public knew the full truth, questions would have to be asked. About the probation service. About the NHS. About the police. About why, once again, the system chose to protect itself instead of protecting a victim.
The media’s job should be to hold power to account. Instead, once again, they acted as its shield. By reporting Charlotte’s death as if it was just another sad case of mental health decline, they buried the truth of what really happened.
That’s why I’m going to tell you the full story and not the sanitised version. The truth of how Charlotte Tetley was failed at every stage, right up until the day she died.
I am Raja Miah. Seven years ago, I began exposing how politicians protected the rape gangs. Since then, I have carried the weight of uncovering and telling these truths. Often alone, against a tide of lies, smears, and intimidation. It has taken a heavy toll.
Every truth I reveal comes at a price. Those in power have tried to imprison me, and those I exposed have openly encouraged my murder. It does not matter. I will not stop. I refuse to let those who failed our children walk away as if they did nothing wrong, or let their crimes and the cover-ups that protect them be buried in silence.
If my words have ever helped you make sense of a broken system, if they’ve ever made you feel seen, heard, or less alone, please don’t scroll past.
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– Raja 🙏