(BBC) Rochdale is “synonymous” with grooming — that was what one of the defence lawyers told a jury that has just convicted five people of committing 22 sexual offences against two girls as young as 12.
They were worried the Greater Manchester town had become so linked with the serial sexual exploitation of young girls that they felt they had to warn jurors to “rid yourselves of preconceptions.”
That warning came more than a decade after the conviction of the notorious Rochdale grooming ring in 2012 — a story the whole country became acquainted with five years later in the BBC series Three Girls.
It showed how the gang, comprising men of mostly Pakistani and Afghan heritage, plied girls as young as 13 with alcohol and drugs and passed them around for sex.
