CSE CAMPAIGNER MAGGIE OLIVER DEMANDS RIGHTS FOR VICTIMS AFTER GROOMING VICTIM DISCOVERS HER ABUSER IS LIVING NEARBY

Former detective Maggie Oliver has slammed a justice system that treats victims as after thoughts.
She made the claim after a victim of a rape gang discovered one of her perpetrators had been released and was living nearby.
Speaking to GB News, Maggie Oliver said:
“Eva’s story is one that I hear time and time again. It’s not an isolated case, and I have to say as well that it isn’t just victims of grooming gangs that experience horrendous trauma.

“I’m known for the Rochdale case, young Ruby. Her abuser, who had got her pregnant when she was just 13, he was out of prison in less than four years. She didn’t know we’d been released from prison, and she bumped into him in the local supermarket and went into a complete and utter panic attack.

“Now at the Maggie Oliver Foundation, we took that forward. She’d never been informed. They used the excuse again that she had moved house, but the reality was that the house she lived in when all the abuse was happening, her mum still lived there. They could speak to me.

“The other really relevant point in this that I think all victims should know is that unless you opt in to the victim contact scheme, the authorities have no obligation to inform you that your rapist or your abuser is being released.

“A victim is not considered; they’re not treated as a victim in the criminal justice system, they are treated as a witness, as an afterthought, as an inconvenience, quite often.

“Charlie [Peters] has often spoken to young Elizabeth. Now she recently went through the same process with a parole hearing where the victim liaison service told her that she couldn’t attend the hearing when he was appealing for parole. She was told she couldn’t take a support worker with it, where he had his solicitor sitting next to him.

“All these failures retraumatize a victim, and it’s just proof that they are always the bottom of the pile. They’re the changes that we need to see. Victims need to have rights. This should not be an afterthought.

“[The scheme] is called the victim contact scheme, and the victim liaison service run it.

“At the time of the conviction, a lot depends on the actually, the knowledge of perhaps their officer in the case, or the people who are dealing with that case to raise that with them so that they can opt in.

“I didn’t even know it until a few years ago because it really is not taught. They will not be entitled to updates and they won’t know.”