Police chief denies GMP tried to stop publication of damaging Operation Augusta report

Chief constable Ian Hopkins

Ian Hopkins, the chief constable of GMP, has denied claims the force tried to stop the critical report on Operation Augusta.

The operation was launched in 2004 by Greater Manchester Police following the death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia, who died of an overdose in 2003 after being injected with heroin by a 50-year-old man.

The report was ordered by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, and was released on Tuesday morning. It was highly critical of the police and children's services.

In a statement issued today (Wednesday), Chief Constable Hopkins denied that the force had tried to block publication of the report.  "We have cooperated fully with the review team and acted with transparency and integrity throughout. At no time has there been any effort from us to prevent the publication of the report and any suggestion that states otherwise is categorically untrue.

"On 15 January 2018 I attended a meeting with Deputy Mayor Beverley Hughes and Malcolm Newsam, one of the independent reviewers, along with legal representatives. At this meeting I personally cut through the issues around sharing victims data with Malcolm Newsam to ensure there was no delay to the start of the review. As a result of the actions at this meeting, I signed on behalf of GMP the data sharing agreement.

"By doing this, I set the standard and led the way for other agencies to support the review, which was acknowledged by the Deputy Mayor during yesterday’s press conference. Manchester City Council followed later in 2018 and Rochdale Borough Council in 2020."

The report suggested GMP failed to learn lessons from the operation - which closed in 2005 due to lack of resources - noting that nine Asian men in Rochdale were found guilty of sexually exploiting vulnerable young white girls in 2015, over ten years after Victoria’s death.

Burnham commissioned the research after Margaret Oliver, a detective on the Augusta team, went public criticising GMP in the aftermath of the Rochdale child sexual exploitation case.  She told media outlets "Don’t believe any of this rubbish that police have learned from their mistakes. I worked on an almost identical operation in 2004, Operation Augusta, which had identified dozens of young victims and dozens of suspects. It was a virtual carbon copy of Rochdale, men of largely Pakistani heritage were abusing vulnerable white girls, in Hulme, and around Rusholme"

Chief constable Hopkins spoke of his personal disgust at the abuse children had suffered.

"I would like to once again apologise on behalf of Greater Manchester Police to all those victims who were let down in 2004 by police not thoroughly investigating the offences that had been committed against them."

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