A MAN suspected of taking part in the child sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl in Oldham later attempted to murder his wife after police failed to investigate him properly, according to an investigation by The Guardian.
The suspect, identified only as “Offender J” in official records, was named in 2007 as an alleged accomplice in the gang-rape of Samantha Walker-Roberts in 2006.
Despite being identified by the ringleader in the case, Greater Manchester police did not pursue the allegation and closed the inquiry, the report revealed.
Two years later, in 2009, he tried to kill his wife. An internal police inquiry later concluded that she might have been spared the attack if officers had properly followed up forensic and intelligence leads in the earlier child sexual abuse case.
Walker-Roberts was abducted from a police station after attempting to report an earlier assault and was then trafficked around Oldham to be abused by multiple men. She said she was raped for hours by five men at a property owned by Shakil Chowdhury, who was later jailed for six years in 2007. He remains the only person convicted in relation to her abuse.
Documents seen by the newspaper showed that dozens of items seized from Chowdhury’s home — including bedding and towels — were either returned to him through his solicitor or destroyed by police, despite their potential relevance to identifying other suspects.
Walker-Roberts was informed last month that police are still pursuing two outstanding suspects. One man, Sarwar Ali, was charged with rape but absconded and has never been found. A third man has been forensically linked to the case but has yet to be identified. Offender J is now unlikely to face charges due to a lack of surviving forensic evidence.
The survivor said she had been told for years to move on but said that without answers she could not find closure. “Most people get closure when there’s a sentence. I’ll never reach that point. For me, answers are closure," she was quoted as saying.
She said she had long accepted that not all those responsible would face justice but feared they may have harmed others. She said she hoped more victims would come forward so they could at least receive some form of justice.
A safeguarding review commissioned by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham found in 2022 that it was unable to properly assess the quality of the original police investigations because of gaps in the records. It also concluded that information passed to a specialist taskforce was not acted upon, calling this a “serious failure”.
The review noted that Offender J’s wife told police in 2011 that her husband had admitted raping a 12-year-old and had kept newspaper cuttings about Chowdhury’s conviction. Despite this, no further action followed.
Failures in Oldham played a key role in the decision to launch a national inquiry into organised child sexual abuse, which is due to begin in March and will be chaired by former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield. A previously planned local inquiry has now been absorbed into the national investigation.
A spokesperson for Greater Manchester police said Walker-Roberts had suffered “horrific abuse” that was made worse by “appalling failures” by authorities at the time. The force said it had apologised to her and was determined to bring the remaining suspects to court.
