One victim was forced to have sex with at least 20 men in one night. another was forced to drink vodka and vomited on the side of the bed while being raped by “countless men”. The perpetrators passed the girls on to their friends, often to settle some debt. The victims, many of whom came from difficult backgrounds and were therefore particularly vulnerable, were fed drugs, alcohol and fast food and then taken to “cold houses” across the north of England to be abused. A 13-year-old victim became pregnant and had an abortion. Some of the men involved were arrested, tried and found guilty. But not all. One of the victims – under the pseudonym Amber in Three Girls, the BBC One drama about abuse – was 14 when he was targeted by gang members. After a troubled upbringing, Amber was listed on the Child Protection Register as at risk of sexual and emotional abuse and neglect. Craving for love and attention, Amber was drawn into a nightmare, subjected to repeated and often violent sexual abuse. This nightmare should have ended with the arrest and trial of the perpetrators, but the police, the Crown Prosecutor (CPS) and even the social services treated her not as a victim but as an perpetrator. Last Tuesday, Amber, along with two other victims of Rochdale’s gang, finally received an apology from Stephen Watson, the Greater Manchester (GMP) Chief of Police. Their treatment includes a series of catastrophic mistakes in one of the most painful scandals of child sexual abuse in the country. When we met at a hotel in Rochdale last month, Amber was accompanied by Maggie Oliver, a former police detective who resigned in protest of the way Amber was being treated. In 2009, when Amber was 16 years old, uniformed men arrived at her mother’s house, arrested her and took her to the police station. “[I] “I can not remember exactly what they said, but it was something like ‘lady,’” he recalls. “I did not know what that meant.” He was detained for hours before being released on bail. Her mother was not allowed to be with her during the interview and no suitable adult was mentioned. Amber, under pressure from the abusers, had taken some of her friends to the takeaway from where the leaders were operating. He told me: “It was not necessary. It was like a casual, “Oh, bring your friends.” He was a vulnerable child, he was sexually abused, he was controlled and he was scared. No further action was taken against Amber, but it would be another two years before the CPS agreed that she should be treated as a victim and a witness and not as a suspect. During this time, Amber, now pregnant and living in a one-room apartment, continued to be targeted by grooming gangs. Although police interviewed a total of 56 men as suspects of abuse, only a few were tried. There were therefore many more who walked free who had avoided being located. Greater Manchester Police Chief Stephen Watson has personally apologized to three of Rochdale’s victims. Photo: Christopher Thomond / The Guardian Amber was also threatened at gunpoint by a man she later identified with police. Nothing happened. He told me: “The police were not involved with us, really. Do not be disturbed… when you are out of a shit house. They do not make you pop when you are not from a rich background “. Only when she met Oliver in early 2012 did things start to change. Oliver was prosecuted for involvement in the grooming gang case as a detective and victim liaison officer in 2010 because of her experience working with vulnerable victims. Amber was reasonably reluctant to trust the police. But as soon as the CPS informed the GMP that she was no longer seen as a suspect, Oliver persuaded her to start a series of video interviews and identity parades. I asked Amber what gave her the strength to testify to the police, after what she had gone through. He told me: “So it did not happen to anyone else. “I did not want other people to feel what I felt.” Her courage and Oliver’s support led to a database of criminals whom she identified by name, car registrations, telephone numbers and addresses. It was a big part of the police investigation that became known as Operation Span. The ID parades were particularly exhausting for Amber, who made 12 in just one day, correctly identifying 10 of her criminals. Then he said to me: ‘I went home, I put it in the back of my mind to be honest. “I have a box on the back of my head, and I put it all in there and it is locked.” But before what turned out to be the last interview, Oliver says she began to notice a change in tone from senior officers and felt that they were now deliberately trying to repel the victim. Then, shortly after the ID parade, Oliver was told that he was no longer going to “use” Amber’s details. She left, refusing to agree to this decision and was barred from speaking to Amber. The period during the rally until the trial of the men accused of being part of the grooming gang was dark for Amber. She says she was never informed by the police either that she is no longer treated as a victim, or that none of those who claimed to be her abusers would be prosecuted for her abuse. The groom’s nine-year trial was pending, and in the meantime, although she was never informed, arrested or warned, Amber was added to the indictment by the CPS as a conspirator. Without Amber’s initial evidence, a trial might never have taken place. He gave police a list, at an early stage of Operation Span, of nicknames, phone numbers and other details about the offenders. He later continued to acknowledge a number of offenders, which led to charges being brought against everyone. Photographs from leaflets released by Wider Manchester police in 2012 show eight of the nine men convicted of child sexual exploitation. Photo: AFP / Getty Images But in court, the prosecutor and the defense appeared as an assistant pimp. Because she did not participate in the trial, and therefore did not testify, she did not have the opportunity to defend herself. She was slandered and nicknamed in the press as the “Honey Monster”. Although a court decision did not allow her to be named, everyone in her local community knew who she was. Following the court case, social services began harassing Amber in order to remove her children. Shortly before the expiration date of her second baby, she was summoned to the family court, where a request was made to remove both children on the grounds that Amber was a bully and a danger to the children. Finally, after a grueling 18 months and many hearings, the judge dismissed the case. Five years later he won an apology and compensation from social services. In 2019, Amber, along with two other victims, with the help of the Center for Women’s Justice, filed a lawsuit against the GMP and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). While the GMP has finally settled the claim, which includes a personal apology from the chief warden, the DPP has so far resisted. In response to Amber’s claim that it was wrong to name her in the indictment, she says it was “both legally and regularly the right course to follow”. To date, the CPS has not acknowledged any failure on its part and instead continues to herald this case as the first successful grooming prosecution. While this is true, Amber believes it was used as a scapegoat. “What the police and CPS did to me was worse than the abuse… Sorry will be a kind of burden to be lifted off me.” But the nightmare will never really end. Amber still sees those who say she was raped, beaten and tortured in Rothdale. “One delivered a package to my house a few weeks ago,” he tells me. He was eventually acquitted. She has forced the police and social services to apologize for their behavior. “I agreed to help police stop this from happening to others,” Amber wrote to Oliver as part of her campaign for justice. “I trusted the police… that they would help me this time. I gave hours of interviews, reliving all the abuse. I felt sick, I was upset; nothing ever came from the police to explain to me why I was no longer going to court. It was never charged, why? “My name has been dragged into the mud. I drive the thoughts of abuse out of my mind. And I have done nothing wrong – I was a victim of these men at the age of 14. “They should have helped me, not punished me.” The NSPCC offers support to children at 0800 1111 and adults concerned for a child to 0808 800 5000. The National Association for Child Abuse (Napac) offers support to adult survivors at 0808 801 0331.