A suspect in a horrific child gang-rape case, who evaded justice due to a catalogue of police failings, later attempted to murder his wife, a Guardian investigation has uncovered.
A Trail of Missed Opportunities and Destroyed Evidence
The man, identified in official documents only as Offender J, is alleged to have participated in the gang-rape of 12-year-old Samantha Walker-Roberts in Oldham in 2006. The ringleader, Shakil Chowdhury, named Offender J as an accomplice in 2007, but Greater Manchester Police (GMP) failed to act on this information and closed the case.
In a devastating series of errors, dozens of items of forensic evidence recovered from Chowdhury's home, where Walker-Roberts says she was raped for hours by five men, were either destroyed by officers or returned to Chowdhury. In 2007, 22 items including bedding and a towel were given back to him via his solicitor. The following year, in 2008, officers destroyed a further 24 items, including material from his car and bin contents.
Walker-Roberts had been trafficked around Oldham and abused by multiple men after being kidnapped from a police station where she had tried to report an earlier assault.
Consequences of Inaction: An Attack on Another Victim
In 2009, Offender J tried to kill his wife. An internal police inquiry in 2014 later concluded this attack might have been prevented if forensic inquiries into Walker-Roberts's case had been properly conducted.
Furthermore, in 2011, Offender J's wife told police he had confessed to raping a 12-year-old and had kept newspaper clippings about Chowdhury's court case. This critical information was passed to Operation Messenger, a since-disbanded taskforce tackling child sexual exploitation in Oldham, but was again not acted upon—a failure later described as "serious" by a safeguarding review.
Chowdhury was jailed for six years in 2007 and remains the only conviction. The Guardian understands Offender J is now unlikely to face charges for Walker-Roberts's ordeal as surviving forensic evidence does not link him to the crime.
The Search for Justice and a National Inquiry
Walker-Roberts told the Guardian: "All my life, I’ve been told I need to move on but how can I, when I don’t have the answers?" She said she had "given up hope a long time ago" that all her abusers would be caught but feared they had other victims.
GMP is still pursuing two outstanding suspects. One, Sarwar Ali, absconded after being charged with rape and has never been found. Police are also trying to identify a third man forensically linked to the case.
Failings in Oldham contributed to the establishment of a national inquiry into grooming gangs across England and Wales, set to begin in March and chaired by former children's commissioner Anne Longfield. The inquiry has faced controversy, including resignations from its survivor advisory panel.
A GMP spokesperson stated Walker-Roberts suffered "horrific abuse which was compounded by appalling failures by the authorities," for which she received an apology in 2022. They added that the way she was treated was "far from the standard survivors can expect from the GMP of today."
