What Happened When Burnham Promised Rape Gang Accountability?
Burnham and the Pakistani Rape Gang Cover Up: Part 4
97 Men, 57 Children, Zero Accountability
Victoria Agoglia was 15 years old when she died of a drugs overdose in 2003. She was in a Manchester Council care home at the time. Before she died, she told her grandmother Joan that men were injecting her with heroin and raping her. Joan contacted the authorities repeatedly. Nobody came.
The care home workers later admitted they knew what was being done to Victoria while she was in their care.
Manchester social services maintains to this day that it did everything possible to prevent her death. That claim has never been formally tested. It remains untested because the inquest that would test it has never been held.
Operation Augusta
Operation Augusta was launched in the wake of Victoria's death. The operation identified 97 persons of interest, predominantly Pakistani men working in the restaurant trade, takeaways, taxi firms, the familiar pattern, involved in the gang rape and trafficking of at least 57 children. These are minimum numbers. The operation did not finish. It was shut down in July 2005 before all lines of enquiry were complete.
It was shut down by withdrawing resources. Not because the enquiries were exhausted. Because it got too uncomfortable. Because of who the 97 men were. We do not know if it was because of their connections to the Labour Party and to the political structures of the communities they came from. Why? There were two key meetings at which the decision to close Augusta was made, one involving the council and one involving Gold Command at GMP. The minutes of both meetings have disappeared.
Minutes from child protection meetings involving police operations do not disappear. Andy Burnham knows this. This is what happens when you rely on those being investigated to produce the evidence that incriminates them.
GMP referred three former senior officers to the IOPC. The IOPC spent two years investigating and then discontinued in August 2022. It could not establish who took the decision to close Operation Augusta, or why. The former officers identified as potential witnesses either declined to engage or could not recall the relevant events. No officer was disciplined. No prosecution followed. No explanation was offered for where the records went. Outlining the decision to discontinue the investigation, the police watchdog said it had "determined there was no indication any of the three former officers had acted in a way that may have breached the standards of professional behaviour".
Though Burnham called the outcome inconclusive and inadequate, he built the conditions for that outcome. He chose a process with no power to compel those records and no power to compel those men to answer questions under oath. He chose it knowing what that choice would mean, because he is the politician who spent years arguing that the absence of compulsion is the mechanism by which cover-ups survive.
BBC News
None of the 97 persons of interest have been convicted as a result of anything Andy Burnham did. Not one. Likewise, not a single public official, politician or police office has been held to account for what happened to a child in the care of Manchester social services.
Following the findings of the 2020 independent mayoral review, Greater Manchester Police launched Operation Green Jacket; its stated aim was to fully investigate the historic child sexual exploitation network originally identified in Operation Augusta. GMP specifically references Pakistani heritage men. In the six years that this police operation has been ongoing, the total number of convictions against Pakistani-heritage men it was originally set up to go after is zero.
I’m Raja Miah MBE. For seven years, I led a campaign that exposed how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs. I represent no political party. I have no side other than the survivors and the communities left abandoned by a political elite. I bring a type of campaigning unique in this space. This is why those in power have desperately tried to silence me.
The Accountability Burnham Still Owes
In 2017, alongside commissioning the review, Burnham publicly pledged to hold a second inquest into Victoria Agoglia's death. A proper inquest, one that would establish the true causes of her death and the true failures that preceded it. One that would put Manchester social services under oath. One that would finally test the claim that everything possible was done to protect her.
He promised that to Joan. Victoria's grandmother, who contacted the authorities repeatedly while her granddaughter was being injected with heroin and gang raped in a council care home, and was ignored every time.
The fresh inquest finally opened in 2024 after years of campaigning and legal challenges.
Then came a development nobody had previously been told about.
Greater Manchester Police informed the Coroner that five men were under active criminal investigation for child sexual exploitation offences against Victoria. As a consequence, the inquest was adjourned before the public hearings could begin.
Legally, criminal proceedings take precedence over inquests. If prosecutions are possible, the inquest must wait.
The timing raises obvious questions. For years, campaigners had fought to secure an inquest capable of compelling witnesses to give evidence under oath. For years, Manchester social services had avoided that scrutiny. Yet once the inquest had finally been obtained, GMP disclosed an active investigation that legally prevented the hearings from proceeding.
Perhaps the timing is entirely coincidental. Perhaps it is not. What is beyond dispute is the outcome. The public examination of the institutions that failed Victoria remains stalled. Manchester social services have still not been required to explain their actions under oath. Joan is still waiting for the scrutiny she was promised.
Maggie Oliver has spent years publicly urging Burnham to honour his commitment to Victoria's family. The inquest has now been secured, but the accountability at its heart remains frozen.
That matters because there is already evidence that Manchester City Council has since obstructed efforts to establish the truth.
A report by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services found that detectives investigating Victoria's exploitation and death faced significant delays obtaining records from Manchester City Council. When the files were eventually handed over, inspectors found they had been so heavily redacted that, in some cases, entire pages contained only a handful of visible words.
The watchdog concluded that the council's actions made it "impossible to assess the evidential value of the information". It specifically identified both Operation Bernese, the investigation into Victoria's abuse, and Operation Green Jacket, the wider investigation into child sexual exploitation in South Manchester, as having been adversely affected by these delays.
Manchester City Council defended the redactions by citing data protection concerns and the need to avoid prejudicing future prosecutions. Perhaps that explanation is sufficient. But the consequence was that police investigations were delayed, evidence was obscured, and the search for answers was slowed. Now those same investigations are being cited as the reason why the public hearings in Victoria's inquest cannot proceed.
The result is a bitter irony.
Anna Jameson and Lauren Hirst
The very institutions that stand accused of failing Victoria have yet to face questioning under oath. The council's actions have already been criticised by a national watchdog for obstructing the flow of evidence to detectives. Yet the public process designed to test those failures remains stalled.
Joan is still waiting for Andy Burnham to honour his promise. Waiting for Manchester City Council to explain what it knew. Waiting for social services to explain what they did. Waiting for police officers that failed her granddaughter to finally answer questions under oath. More than twenty years after Victoria's death, those answers remain out of reach.
Burnham is now out there promising voters he will cut business rates on pubs and secure WASPI women their pensions. He promised a grandmother that her granddaughter would finally get justice. Nine years later, Joan is still waiting.
The questions Burnham promised would be answered remain unanswered. The institutions that failed Victoria have still not been required to explain themselves in public. And the grandmother who was promised justice is once again being asked to wait while Greater Manchester Police continue an investigation that shows little sign of reaching a conclusion.
Meanwhile, Andy Burnham, in his pursuit of becoming Prime Minister, is telling those who ask him of his record on the rape gangs, a completely different story. A story that no media outlet has dared challenge. Ask yourself why.
Part 5 to follow
I’m Raja Miah MBE. For seven years, I led a campaign that exposed how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs. The people of my town EXPOSED ANDY BURNHAM and helped force the national inquiry.
You won’t see me on the BBC. You won’t read my work in the legacy press. That’s not an accident. I take this to a place from where there is no coming back.
All of my work is 100% free. There are no paywalls to access any of my content. I just ask those that can afford to do so to support me. Either with a subscription to my newsletter Red Wall and the Rabble or by a one off contribution and buying me a coffee using one of these links.
Buy me a coffee here;
http://BuyMeACoffee.com/recusantnine
I represent no political party. I have no side other than the survivors and the communities left abandoned by a political elite. I bring a type of campaigning unique in this space. This is why those in power have desperately tried to silence me.
With the ongoing mainstream media blacklist of my voice, I need your help. Please, if you can, share, subscribe and support the work.
Raja Miah MBE