Who is Maggie Oliver? Celebrity Big Brother 2018 contestant profile
Everything you need to know about the DC who helped unearth the Rochdale child abuse scandal
Name: Maggie Oliver
Best known for: being a Detective Constable who helped expose the Rochdale grooming gangs
Bio: Oliver was one of the key figures in Operation Span, an investigation into the Rochdale sex grooming scandal. She was a DC who persuaded vulnerable and reluctant girls to give evidence against paedophiles who had sexually abused them for years.
However, one of the victims she convinced to speak out was portrayed as a member of the grooming gang in court.
“She was named on the indictment along with the men in the dock as someone who had acted with the perpetrators. She was essentially portrayed as a madam,” Oliver told the Manchester Evening News. “It made me sick to my stomach. I’d been used. This vulnerable girl had been failed. She was collateral damage. Because of that, social services also eventually tried to take her child from her. It was wicked and I was shocked.”
This turn of events saw Oliver resign from the police and she became a vocal critic of how the case was handled.
Oliver was played by Lesley Sharp in Three Girls, the BBC drama telling the story of the sexual abuse scandal.
