Another six so-called “grooming gang” rapists have been sentenced for waging a “campaign of rape” in the English town of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.
“The way these girls were treated defies understanding, this abuse was vile and wicked,” remarked sentencing judge Geoffrey Marson QC of the victims, who were as young as twelve when the gang abused them, according to a report buried in the Leeds and West Yorkshire sub-section of the England sub-section of the BBC News website.
Judge Marson admonished five of the abusers, “principally Asian men”, for the fact that “None of you has expressed any remorse for what you did.”
He described how one of the rapists, a 32-year-old man who cannot be named for legal reasons, orally raped one of his victims at knifepoint and “laughed at her and called her a slag”, and then on another occasion drugged her with sleeping pills and raped her a minimum of ten times in a public park.
Another of his victims, a 12-year-old virgin, was “left… bleeding on the floor in the park” after being attacked, and “had to make her own way home, bleeding, to an empty flat before disposing of her clothes in a bin bag.”
“This was a campaign of rape,” Marson added.
However, despite being convicted of five counts of rape, the unnamed man was only given a 14-year term by the judge — only half or possibly two-thirds of which will actually have to be served in custody before he is automatically released on licence, assuming his sentence follows standard English legal conventions.
Another unnamed 32-year-old received a similar eight-year term for raping a teenager near a school, and an unnamed 38-year-old received a seven-year term for attempting to rape a girl behind a shop.
Two named gang members, 31-year-old Umar Zaman and 32-year-old Samuel Fikru, both of Huddersfield’s William Street, received eight-year terms after both being convicted of two counts of rape.
However, Zamam, who is reported to have string of previous convictions for crimes including violent offences, burglary, and drug dealing, will for the time being not be serving any time in custody at all — as he has gone on the run and it thought to be in hiding in Pakistan, where a large majority of grooming gang rapists have roots.
A sixth man, 36-year-old Banaris Hussain, was given a 10-year term for abuse police officers described as “depraved” at a separate sentencing hearing on October 4th.
Judge Marson had said at the first hearing that the abused girls “were young when the abuse started” and “targeted because of their extreme vulnerability”, predicting that it was “likely that many, if not all, of these girls will never recover from the abuse they suffered.”
At Hussain’s hearing the judge recapped how he had previously “addressed how the girls had been groomed by a number of Asian men in order for sexual abuse to be committed against them” and that Hussain had “shown not a shred of remorse” for his part in the gang’s crimes, raping his victim when she “was 14 or 15… when a number of others were present and also abusing her.”
Hussain, for his part, impudently told the judge that his sentene was ” a miscarriage of justice, I want you to know that” as he was taken from the dock at the end of the hearing.
It does not appear that contempt of court proceedings are being pursued against him.
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