Picture from a protest against active grooming gangs in United Kingdom (Quilliam International)
The Rochdale police in the United Kingdom exposed a grooming gang, which led to the sexual abuse of minor girls in the region, almost two decades ago. The accused men have been identified as 38-year-old Mohammed Faisal Ghani, Insar Hussain, 50-year-old Jahn Shahid Ghani, 39-year-old Martin Rhodes, and 35-year-old Ali Razza Hussain Kazmi. The accused groomed minor girls ages 12 and 13 and sexually exploited them between 2002 and 2006.
The incident came out this week after the accused were punished for the crime they committed.
Shockingly, the victims, who were 12 and 13 when the accused assaulted them are now 33 years old and still waiting to get justice. The accused used to pick the then-minors up outside of their schools while they were clad in their uniforms and subjected to sexual assault against school walls, in cars, in public parks, on Saddleworth Moor, and in flats and houses.
As per a report, the victims were assaulted sexually and videotaped upon intoxication. They were forced to drink vodka and later the clips were circulated across Greater Manchester town. The allegations were first made in 2015 after one of the victims complained to police about being “beaten and raped” while taking a parenting course. She notified the police and they talked to the other victim, a childhood friend of hers. Both of them remain anonymous.
Notably, the victim realised that she is being subjected to sexual abuse after reading a book, Three Girls, a BBC production on child sex slavery in Rochdale.
She reported to her sister, “That’s what happened to me.” Later, she asserted that her experience was “so much worse than what happened in Three Girls” on social media. The other girl (now a woman) spoke in court about how the gang members bought drinks for her and another girl before coercing them into having sex.
The victim admitted that when she first met Mohammed Ghani’s companions, a group of young guys, she was abused in front of one of her friends, who was 11 years old. When the other girl’s attack started, she was 13 years old. Even though the eight offenders did not know one another, the jury was informed that the 12-year-old would be “bombarded” by phone calls from the men, called “on demand” every day, and encouraged to get drunk.
According to testimony given at the trial, the girls were “mere objects for the defendants to use, abuse, humiliate, then discard.” “These men committed appalling offences for their own sexual gratification, with no thought for the lasting effects their offending would have on their victims,” said Frances Killeen, senior crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) north west complex casework section.
One defence lawyer noted that Rochdale had come to be “synonymous with grooming” and urged the jury not to judge the culprits only on the basis of where they were from. The 80 counts that had been presented against the defendants, some of whom were teenagers, had been disputed.
The Rochdale residents Mohammed Faisal Ghani of Bamford Way, Insar Hussain of Bishop Street, Jahn Shahid Ghani of Whitworth Road, and Ali Razza Hussain Kasmi of Brotherod Hall Road were all found guilty of numerous child sexual assault charges, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Martin Rhodes of Dinmore Avenue in Blackpool entered a plea of guilty to four counts of penetrative sex with a child in the meanwhile.
Ikhlaq Yousef (38) of Stanley Street, Aftar Khan (34) of Sparth Bottoms Road and Mohammed Iqbal (67) of Gainsborough Drive, all from Rochdale were cleared of any wrongdoing by the jurors.
The trial was the largest child sexual exploitation crown court case involving males from Rochdale since 2012 when nine men were found guilty of grooming and assaulting girls as young as 13.
Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Jackson of the Greater Manchester Police praised the victims for having “demonstrated such bravery in testifying against these offenders on their journey to justice.” “This result is long overdue,” she continued. We really appreciate the victims and survivors’ perseverance and involvement.
Notably, the alleged abuse began with a victim who was 12 years old when she first met Mohammed Faisal Ghani, who would have been 17 or 18. told his students that he had taken her to a remote moor above Rochdale, abused her there, and then given her to them.
She revealed that he had introduced her to his older half-brother Jahn Shahid Ghani when he was in his early 30s. The latter admitted to playing threesomes with the ladies when they were just 14 or 15 years old with one of his older girlfriends, of whom two gave testimony during the trial.
It is interesting to observe that the UK is developing into a hub for grooming. It is anticipated that over 19,000 adolescents in England were sexually groomed in the previous year, according to the official statistics. Around 18,700 alleged victims were identified by local authorities in England in 2018–19, an increase from 3,300 in the previous five years. The most recent statistics revealed a substantial rise in child grooming victims over the previous five years.
To help police agencies investigate the serious problem of Muslim grooming gangs in the country, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the British government launched a new Grooming Gangs Taskforce. According to an official announcement from his office in April of this year, the task force would have specialised police to assist in the investigation to ensure that the criminals responsible for grooming gangs will be brought to justice.
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