Back in 2010, journalists started to hear for the first time that predatory gangs of Asian men were raping and sexually exploiting vulnerable white girls. In Rochdale , paedophiles were plying them with drink and sharing them at sex parties across the north. It's a shocking, heart-breaking story we've grown all-too familiar with, but back then there was a palpable reluctance to give credence to the notion that race could really and truly be a factor in these pernicious, coercive, disgusting crimes. It was the same impulse which encouraged one official to Tippex out the word 'Pakistani' on one file of sexual abuse, Baroness Casey revealed this week as part of her 'audit' which has persuaded the government to carry out a U-turn and announce a full public inquiry. In October 2010 the Manchester Evening News learned about the police investigation in Rochdale and when we approached GMP the force asked us to postpone our story until they had spoken to all the victims. It's important to say GMP never asked us not to publish. In the end the scandal was first exposed in January of the following year by our chief reporter Neal Keeling in the M.E.N. and by the late Andrew Norfolk in The Times, the latter winning awards for his fearless work over the next few years shining a light on what was happening in working class towns across the country, especially in Rotherham. I covered each day of the shocking Rochdale grooming gang trial in 2012 and the M.EN. has been following the case closely ever since, whether it was about the abusers or the official failures which allowed them to continue. Norfolk, like pretty much like all journalists who covered the scandal, this correspondent included, struggled at first to believe it could possibly be true and worried the whole thing would be leapt-on by racists and extreme nationalists. The abusers flourished in the vacuum made possible by the inertia, the reluctance of people in polite society to tackle the problem head on for fear of being branded racist. As Home Secretary Yvette Cooper revealed this week, as she announced a full public inquiry, the figures on the ethnicity of 'group-based' sexual grooming are lamentable. It is only recorded in 37 per cent of cases. Yet there is enough information elsewhere to tell us Asian men are disproportionately reflected in the make-up of grooming gangs, and that the overwhelming majority of the victims are white females. GMP now accepts the harsh criticism for its failures, alongside Rochdale Council , to protect the victims, but at least it was one of just three police forces to have collected ethnicity data. Their figures confirmed Asian men represented more than half of the suspects in the areas concerned. GMP confirmed to Baroness Casey's 'audit' it investigated 35 'group-based child sexual exploitation operations' and identified 243 suspects in the three years up to May this year. The biggest group (131) were Asian males well ahead of the number of white male suspects (81) while most of the alleged 317 victims were white females (250). The figures were belated confirmation of an obvious and extremely uncomfortable fact: that gangs of mostly Pakistani-heritage men were raping vulnerable white girls. Before these striking but partial figures belatedly came along, journalists and anyone in court with eyes could see that nearly all the men in the dock were Asian and nearly all their young victims giving damning evidence over a videolink were white girls. One of those vulnerable white girls was 'Holly' in the BBC drama Three Girls about the scandal in Rochdale. Our whole notion of sexual grooming of children may not have evolved the way it has were it not for her, then aged 15, committing a simple act of vandalism in the Balti House takeaway in Heywood , Rochdale, one night in August 2008 when she smashed up the counter. It was actually a cry for help by a victim of horrific sexual abuse. A cry that fell on deaf ears, at least at first. Like so many like her, she was not believed until more girls came forward and the case was revisited and, eventually, the perpetrators were jailed. But what about the officials who cocked a deaf ear or turned a blind eye? What followed was a plethora of reviews and apologies from the authorities - some of them very reluctant - and more prosecutions which, to the cynic, were a showy act of shutting the barn door when the horse had already bolted. Then, in 2017, the whole story erupted again following the broadcast of the BBC documentary 'The Betrayed Girls' which accompanied the drama and which reported NHS leaders in Rochdale notified Greater Manchester Police and the council of 'dozens' of cases of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) prior to 2008, but both agencies failed to protect the children. Much of the detail had already been reported by the M.E.N. but, much like the Post Office scandal, the dramatisation of such shocking failures gave the story new energy. Among the many viewers was the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham , who commissioned a review to evaluate the allegations. The report he commissioned was published in January last year, and it was damning. The review team said it found 'compelling evidence' of 'widespread organised sexual exploitation' of children in the town between 2004 and 2012. The report identified 'at least' 96 individuals 'who potentially' posed a risk to children over the period, but chillingly they are described as being 'only a proportion' of those involved in CSE' across the town. Girls were 'left at the mercy' of grooming gangs for years because of failings by senior police and council bosses, the report said. The 173-page review covers 2004 to 2013 and sets out multiple failed investigations by GMP and apparent local authority indifference to the plight of hundreds of youngsters. From the beginning, the victims had very few champions fighting their corner, but the few who did speak up were powerful voices for the truth who have become louder and louder over the years. Among them are former GMP detective turned child sex abuse campaigner Maggie Oliver, who blew the whistle on the force following the Rochdale scandal, and Sara Rowbotham, who compiled names and addresses of suspected abusers and supported girls during her time as an NHS sexual health worker in the town. The focus on grooming gangs has, in Greater Manchester at least, been firmly on Rochdale. But the numbers suggest grooming gangs operating in and around Rusholme's Curry Mile have far more perpetrators and far more victims. Operation Augusta was set up by GMP after the 2003 death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia. Victoria, who was living in a home under the responsibility of Manchester city council, died after she was injected with heroin by a man then aged 50 . She died in 2003 but prior to her death she disclosed to social workers that she was being forcibly injected with drugs, and raped, but no effective action was taken to protect her. It was her death - four years before 'Holly' was kicking off at the Balti House in Heywood - that first alerted GMP to the suspicions about widespread child sexual abuse of girls, and Operation Augusta was launched. Augusta identified up to 97 suspected offenders and at least 57 children believed to be potential victims of Asian perpetrators in the early noughties. But the op was shelved in 2005. Eight of the suspects went on to assault or rape other girls in the years that followed. A review commissioned by Mayor Burnham in 2020 pinned the blame on 'senior officers' at GMP due to 'resources'. The review requested a copy of the notes of the meeting where the decision to pull Augusta was made but GMP said they could not be found. Later the same day there was a 'gold group meeting' of senior police and council figures. The review requested the minutes of this meeting as well, but neither GMP nor the council could provide them. The M.E.N. has previously named all the senior cops who had oversight of the operation but to this day it's not clear who made the ultimate decision. The shelving of the operation was infuriating for at least one of the officers involved, Detective Constable Maggie Oliver. She had been working away in the background, persuading the girls involved that they could trust the police to look after them and put their abusers behind bars. She went on holiday and by the time she came back Op Augusta had been pulled without proper explanation. Years later she was persuaded to become involved in the Rochdale grooming investigation (Operation Span), but she resigned in disgust after the ringleaders were jailed. One of the girls she had persuaded to talk was portrayed during the prosecution as a ‘madam’ who had introduced the men to a string of vulnerable girls for a finder’s fee of £10. It would be many years later, after review upon review and a series of documentaries exposing the scandal of gangs of predatory men, that the Op Augusta was revived, under a new name. Operation Green Jacket was eventually launched by GMP in May 2018. It remains a live investigation today which in February made its 70th arrest, suggesting the scale is far bigger than what has been uncovered in Rochdale so far. It's worth remembering also that the Jay report said at least 1,400 children were subjected to sexually exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. Since nine men became the first in the nation to be jailed for sexual grooming in 2012 - the Rochdale grooming gang - there have been three other significant prosecutions for gang-based sexual exploitation in the town: ten men were jailed in 2016; four more were jailed later in 2016; five more were jailed in 2017. In total jail sentences totalling 210 years were handed out. Under a different Op named Lytton, seven more were convicted earlier this month and will be jailed at a later date. The upshot is that, despite obvious and horrific failings, there has been a significant impetus at least from the police to put the perpetrators behind bars. That's only one half of the story though. Welcome as it is to put vile paedophiles behind bars, the national (and international) conversation has moved on now. Like it or not, this is in part thanks to US tech billionaire Elon Musk suddenly deciding in January that this was a UK scandal that merited his attention. At one stage he was posting daily from his X account to his 221m followers about the subject. "So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this," he said. His sudden interest meant the press benches at Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court, where the latest gang was on trial earlier this month, were packed with journalists from far and wide. The M.E.N. covered the previous grooming trials but it hardly registered in the national media. There have been a significant number of official reports, reviews and and serious case reviews, notably the Anne Coffey review of 2014 which revealed sexual grooming had become the ‘social norm’ in parts of Greater Manchester and the review commissioned by Andy Burnham in 2018 following the BBC documentary. So for at least a decade in Greater Manchester, there have been efforts to discover how the perpetrators were allowed to carry out their crimes. None of these efforts have gone far enough. Last week the Government performed its U-turn and agreed to a full public inquiry. The officers who pulled Op Augusta will undoubtedly be called. So will officials at the council. If the Manchester Arena bombing public inquiry is any guide, it will end with blood on the carpet and reputations in tatters. Maybe that's what is required.