Gromit - // Did the Police and the Council not care, or were they just incompetent? //
I think a combination of both.
But I think the biggest factor in all of this is the difficult behaviour exhibited by these children, and the reaction it provoked among the authorities.
Young teenage girls who are already damaged by their dysfunctional home lives, and may have already experienced abuse before reaching the care system, tend to act in a specific way that alienates people who do not see it for what it is.
Their behaviour is often to exhibit sexual precociousness and awareness, often being provocative and sexually explicit in language and behaviour.
The reasons for this are immature minds attempting to deal with the hostility and violence with which they live daily, and discovering that this sort of behaviour can offer them what they feel is some small measure of control over what happens to them, which in a world where they have had no control, looks very attractive. Of course, such behaviour simply opens them up to the sort of horrendous sexual abuse that they experienced.
But to the untrained eyes of male police officers, often with daughters that age themselves, such overt sexual attitudes leads to instant dislike, dismissal, and an utter lack of sympathy and empathy, and a realisation that this is not 'tarty *** getting what they deserve', it is damaged frightened children in a world they don;t understand.
Such children are looking for any faint hint of affection and love from anyone, and can interpret a sexually abusive relationship as just that, which is why they not only refuse to testify against their abusers, but return to them to maintain their semblance of being 'taken care of'.
To the police and authorities, this simply looks like girls who don't want help, or to co-operate in abuse cases, so they 'get what they deserve' and the whole horrible circle grinds on for ever and a day.
Add in layers of procedures and bureaucracy, and you distance the people dealing directly with the problems, from the people who make the policy that deals with it, and the fact that social workers are over-worked and under-resourced, and the perfect storm of Oldham has all its horrible cogs and gears in place to work away unchecked for decades.
The government should not be 'learning lessons', it should be resourcing social services and the police adequately to correctly provide proper training and support to front-line workers who know what they are doing, and see what is actually happening, and how to stop it.
It won't happen of course - children don't vote so they don't matter.
The whole thing stinks, but it will go on, because no-one in power actually wants to do anything meaningful to stop it, and that is something over which we should all feel deep and abiding shame.