The Evidence Andy Burnham Refuses to Answer For

What Burnham’s team left out, and why it matters now

This wasn’t a failure to discover the truth. It was a decision to control it.

Andy Burnham has never explained why the Assurance Review he commissioned suppressed truths that had been written down for over a decade. As Mayor, he authorised the review into historic child sexual exploitation in Oldham, appointed his "independent" experts, and oversaw the process. Now we know, the documents his experts 'missed' were in plain sight all along.

The Warning They Ignored

That trail begins in 2006, when Ruth Baldwin, then Executive Director for Young People and Families at Oldham Council, documented what was happening in plain language. Girls from children’s homes were going missing repeatedly, found in the same locations with the same men. Groups of offenders were targeting children at high schools.

One victim was just twelve years old when she fell into their clutches while truanting. By fourteen she was addicted to crack and heroin, having been raped by around three hundred men.

“Unless you scratch below the surface you do not realise the enormity of the problem,” Baldwin warned in December 2006. “We are not talking about teenage relationships. These are men in their 20s, 30s, and beyond.”

She launched Operation Messenger because she understood exactly what she was documenting. The programme was hailed as groundbreaking, winning awards for partnership working and running for eight years. But behind the accolades lay a troubling reality: Operation Messenger failed many of the girls it came into contact with. Though it investigated alleged offenders from various racial backgrounds, including white men, exploitation by British Asian men, particularly those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, formed a significant chunk of its caseload.

The award-winning child protection programme had become a monument to institutional failure disguised as institutional success.

They Knew All Along

By 2011, Greater Manchester Police put the truth in writing.

"Sexual exploitation is a real issue, and we need to be addressing it," the memo acknowledged. "People feel strongly about this issue and there is the potential for it to escalate. There is the perception that there is a conspiracy of silence due to political correctness and that some areas are not dealing with the issue."

They knew. They admitted sexual exploitation was widespread. They acknowledged the public could see through their silence. They documented that political correctness was driving institutional cover-ups.

When Police Became Politicians

Then the memo revealed something far more sinister: "Further cases in Oldham might bring wider media interest and further exploitation of the issue by the BNP and English Defence League. There is therefore a risk of further demonstrations and the risk of increased hate crimes."

This crosses a constitutional line. Police were explicitly factoring political parties into operational decisions about child rape investigations. They were calculating how the BNP might "exploit" their law enforcement work. This isn't policing, it's political interference disguised as community relations.

Protecting Feelings Over Children

But the memo's final revelation was the most damning: Muslim communities felt "demonised," it added.

There it is. Working-class White girls being systematically raped was acceptable collateral damage to avoid hurting the feelings of the perpetrators' community. The police had decided that protecting one group from feeling "demonised" mattered more than protecting children from actual gang rape.

This wasn't political correctness or constitutional confusion. It was a conscious choice to sacrifice White working class rape victims to maintain what they called "community relations." The memo exposes an institution that had calculated the political cost of protecting White girls and decided it was too high.

The Brass Neck of Denial

With Baldwin's warnings on file and police memos documenting institutional paralysis, the public was still told for more than a decade that claims of industrial-scale abuse were fantasies peddled by racists. MPs Jim McMahon, Debbie Abrahams, and Angela Rayner backed this narrative, dismissing documented evidence as far-right conspiracy theories. Their council had the paperwork. The same council McMahon was leader of. So why did they choose the lie?

The sheer audacity is breathtaking. While sitting on documents proving systematic failure, they branded anyone asking questions as conspiracy theorists. This wasn't ignorance or incompetence. It was calculated deception designed to protect careers built on the bodies of rape victims.

Burying the Evidence

Burnham's inquiry didn't miss these documents. It helped bury them. And then the likes of McMahon, neck deep in the cover up, used Burnham's sham review to attack the whistleblowers that had uncovered the truth. Burnham sat back and watched. The same man who promised transparency presided over an investigation that filtered truth to protect the very institutions that had failed.

Despite their collective efforts, damning evidence has begun to emerge anyway and a National Inquiry has now been forced. Incredibly, even the Guardian newspaper has submitted a Freedom of Information request to Greater Manchester Police about Operation Messenger. Andy Burnham's police force has refused the request. Apparently it will cost them too much money to process it.

The same force that wrote about prioritising political cover over child protection now refuses to explain itself to the public that pays for it. This isn't bureaucratic inefficiency. It's active concealment by people who know exactly what they're hiding and why.

What Burnham Must Answer

Andy Burnham must explain which documents his inquiry saw and which it chose to bury. He must name who made those decisions and why the public was denied evidence that demolishes his official narrative. There was a rape gang cover up. The paperwork demonstrates it.

Greater Manchester Police must release every document relating to Operation Messenger immediately. No redactions to spare blushes. No exemptions to protect institutional embarrassment. The refusal of Freedom of Information requests must end. A police force that prioritises covering up institutional failure over protecting children has forfeited the right to police its own disclosure.

Most importantly, there must be consequences for those who buried evidence of child rape to save their own skins. Not process reviews or lessons learned but accountability that matches the scale of the betrayal.

This is what Burnham still fails to grasp - justice is more than just arresting the men that raped and trafficked these children, it is also about prosecuting those in power that knew what was taking place and actively concealed the gang rape of children.

These failures were written down. They were ignored. They were buried. And they were paid for in the bodies of little girls who were supposed to be protected. The same institutions that hid the truth then are refusing transparency now. This does not end with an inquiry. A line is not drawn with an assurance review. It ends only when those responsible for the cover up are forced to answer for what they did.

I'm Raja Miah. For seven years, I led a small team that exposed how politicians protected the rape gangs. Before that, I spent over a decade safeguarding children and protecting communities from extremists.

If my words have ever helped you make sense of a broken system, if they’ve ever made you feel seen, heard, or hopeful, please don’t scroll past.

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Politicians did not wake up one day and decide to do the right thing. Journalists did not suddenly decide this is newsworthy. We are not where we are because of them. We will not get where we need to be if we leave it to the very same people that were part of the cover up to deliver justice.

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