More child sexual exploitation convictions have been secured against four South Asian-origin grooming gang members who abused a vulnerable girl from the age of 12 in Telford, England.
According to a West Mercia Police statement, 33-year-old ringleader Mohammed Ali Sultan, formerly of Victoria Avenue in Wellington, was convicted of rape and three charges of indecent assault and received was given an eight-year sentence.
37-year-old Mohammad Rizwan, of Mafeking Road, was convicted of two counts of indecent assault and given a five-and-a-half-year sentence.
35-year-old Shafiq Youness, of Regent Street in Wellington, was convicted of indecent assault and given a four-and-a-half-year sentence.
38-year-old Amjad Hussain, of Acacia Drive in Leegomery, was convicted of indecent assault and given a four-and-a-half-year sentence.
A fifth man, 35-year-old Nazam Akhtar of Victoria Avenue, Wellington, was found not guilty on a charge of rape.
If the abusers’ sentences are standard determinate sentences — and the police statement offers no indication that they are not — all would be entitled to release on licence, automatically, halfway through their terms.
“Each of you knew this girl was utterly defenceless and was being used as a sex object by others,” commented sentencing judge Melbourne Inman QC.
“At the relevant time, the victim was very vulnerable… she lost her father in April, 2001.
“In the months following, she fell victim to another man who abused her, raped her and other men repeatedly abused her.
“You, Sultan, became aware of her vulnerability and her helpless position, and when the other man who controlled her left, you took control of her yourself,” he added, addressing the gang’s ringleader directly.
“The victim was clearly extremely frightened of you, and you exercised significant control over her.
“Sometimes you reinforced your control by a slap or her hair being pulled to ensure obedience. She described how you pulled off her lower clothing and raped her in the back of a car.
“Your control caused others to commit sexual offences against her. It’s clear on the evidence you told the victim to perform sexual acts with your associates.”
The “other man who [initally] controlled her” who the judge referred to is said to be one Tanveer Ahmed, a takeaway delivery driver who was not tried for her abuse because he had previously been deported to Pakistan for “unrelated offences”.
It is known that Ahmed had a previous conviction for controlling a child prostitute, for which he reportedly received a short two-and-a-half-year term.
“These men, they’re vile, they’re dangerous, they don’t care about what they did,” the victim told the BBC, adding that she was “very sure” girls continue to be sexually abused in Telford.
“These men, they’re clearly all linked, and I suppose maybe because they’ve got away with it for so long it’s still going on,” she suggested.
“I am glad to have been given a platform in Parliament to raise this issue [of grooming gangs] repeatedly,” commented Lucy Allan, the Conservative MP for Telford, after the girls abusers were convicted.
“I know that because of this, victims have been encouraged to speak out. We need to be sure that all victims and survivors have access to the support services they need to deal with the trauma they have experienced,” she added.
On the subject of how the abuse — which has been perpetrated by hundreds, possibly thousands of so-called “groomers”, overwhelmingly Muslim men with roots in Pakistan, almost always against white girls — the MP highlighted the need for a planned local inquiry to get underway, after resistance from the authorities was overcome.
“We must push forward with the local independent inquiry in Telford — it is over three years since I first stood up in Parliament and asked for this inquiry. We do have an excellent chairman in place at last, but the work must now begin of finding out what happened and why. We cannot allow any further roadblocks to stand in the way of getting justice for victims and survivors, and allowing our community to move forward.”
Previousl inquiries into grooming gangs abuse have found police, prosecutors, and local government failed to act despite being aware of the issue for years, paralysed by political correctness and fears of being accused of racism if they pressed the issue.
Down to the present day the criminal justice system has resisted treating grooming abuse as racially-aggravated — which would attract more robust sentences — despite some of them having made clealry racist statements, such as “White women are good for only one thing – for people like me to f*** and use as trash.”
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