Three Girls is a three-part British television drama series written by Nicole Taylor and directed by Philippa Lowthorpe.
[1] A co-production between BBC Studios and Studio Lambert, the series is a dramatised version of the events surrounding the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, and describes how the authorities failed to investigate allegations of rape because the victims were perceived as unreliable witnesses, and the local authorities didn’t investigate through fear of being accused of racism because of the ethnicity of the perpetrators.
[5] The story is told from the viewpoint of three of the victims: fourteen-year-old Holly Winshaw (Molly Windsor), sixteen-year-old Amber Bowen (Ria Zmitrowicz) and her younger sister Ruby (Liv Hill); although the focus later shifts to sexual health worker Sara Rowbotham (Maxine Peake), the main whistleblower who drew attention to the case after repeated pleas for help from social services and the police fell on deaf ears.
After Margaret convinces Amber Bowen to testify against her former boyfriend, Tariq (Wasim Zakir), the case is re-opened by recently appointed public prosecutor Nazir Afzal (Ace Bhatti), who with the assistance of the police and the victims involved, manages to secure convictions against ten men involved in the ring.
The attacker, Darren Osborne, used a van to run over Muslim pedestrians, killing one man and injuring several others.