'A lot of us were raped': The girls and women who are forgotten victims of Manchester's gang wars

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Alice, not her real name, was dragged into an alleyway in Moss Side, stripped and raped at gunpoint by a young gangster and aspiring boxer, Emmanuel Richards, in the mid 1990s. She was 13, in care and a virgin. He was still 15 but, physically, a brute, nicknamed 'Tank'.

It's only now, decades after Richards violently snatched away her childhood, that she finally feels liberated, free to open up about her pain thanks to the courage of a woman she has never met, another of Richards' victims, who would come forward years later.

For Alice the trauma continues and still informs her life. And the attack on her was part of a 'culture of sexual violence that has been going on for a very long time' in parts of south Manchester's criminal underworld, she says. Very few women ever came forward to make formal complaints but it's a picture police tasked with tackling south Manchester's notorious gangs recognise.

READ MORE: The horrifying pictures which document abuse campaign at hands of violent bully who strangled and raped his victim

Richards denied raping Alice, forcing his terrified young victim to give evidence at Manchester Crown Court. The jury believed her and he was jailed for seven years.

It was justice, but for years it never felt that way for Alice, who had to endure accusations that she had lied about the attack, falsehoods she believes were put about by people close to Richards. Her life was in tatters.

She was placed with a foster family out of the area although she would return to Manchester. Today she is a mother in her 40s.

It's only now, almost 30 years after he was jailed for raping her, she feels vindicated - because of the bravery of another young woman who was also raped by Richards years later. Alice's