TWO “sexual predators” who subjected a series of vulnerable girls to rapes and
sexual assaults described by a judge as a “reign of terror” have been given
indefinite prison sentences.
Abid Mohammed Saddique, 27, was jailed for a minimum of 11 years at Nottingham
Crown Court yesterday.
Mohammed Romaan Liaqat, 28, was told he must serve at least eight years before
he is considered for release.
The men were the prime movers in a group of men who befriended girls aged from
12 to 18 in the Derby area and groomed them for sex.
The sentencing comes after controversial reports that there has been a culture
of silence over the fact these types of abuses have mainly been committed by
Asian men.
Police forces and social services were accused of treading too carefully for
fear of being branded racist despite evidence those who committed such
crimes against vulnerable girls, often white, predominantly belonged to the
British Pakistani community.
Experts have said a tidal wave of such offending has been going on for over a
decade.
Cops were horrified by the extent of the gang’s abuse after they
systematically raped and abused young girls.
First they befriended them by giving them alcohol before inviting them to
parties where they were often used for sex.
They used a “classical grooming process” to entice and bewitch the youngsters,
a senior police officer said.
They normally targeted youngsters with troubled personal and family lives so
they were at their most vulnerable.
Of 26 victims – the youngest of which was 12 and eldest 18 – a serious case
review was carried out into two girls who were in local authority care at
the time.
A report published after the gang was convicted said there were “missed
opportunities” by agencies to help the girls, and the two in care would have
been at less risk if action had been taken to support them sooner.
The trial heard a harrowing account by one victim of a time she was raped in
June 2008, aged just 16.
She knew one of the men who rang her and asked her to meet him. But after
being taken to a petrol station to buy alcohol, she was driven to an
isolated spot where she was raped.
Describing the ordeal, she said: “It felt like it lasted for hours but it
didn’t, I know that it didn’t.
“While I was lying there, he said ‘Do you like it, do you like it?’. And I
said ’yes’.
“I tried to do everything I could to stop it so at that stage I just said
’yes’. I just thought if I tell him what he wants to hear, it will be done
quicker.”
Prosecutor Yvonne Coen QC told the court the “young and impressionable” girls
were used as sex objects, whether they liked it or not.
Detective Superintendent Debbie Platt, of Derbyshire Police, said many of the
girls eventually decided they had to stop the abuse.
She said: “My personal belief is that the girls had had enough. They wanted to
be listened to, they wanted to be believed and they wanted the abuse to
stop.
“I think that’s a critical part, they knew the offenders were under arrest and
that’s when they’ve decided to speak to the agencies and particularly the
police.”
After each girl came forward officers were put in touch with more victims.
“The girls have been incredibly brave.
“Not just by putting their trust in the police officers who took that initial
statement from them, but they’ve seen this through.”
Judge Philip Head told Saddique: “Your crimes can only be described as evil.
“You are in the truest sense a sexual predator with a voracious sexual
appetite that you gratified as frequently as possible in a variety of ways.”
He said that if he had imposed indeterminate sentences for public protection,
Saddique would have been jailed for 22 years and Liaqat for 16 years.
An anti-trafficking campaigner said that this type of on-street grooming had
been seen for years.
Not only was it lucrative but it was a successful way of coercing young
people, according to Gill Gibbons from the Coalition for the Removal of
Pimping (Crop).
She said: “I don’t think it’s particularly new. I think it’s been going on for
many, many years.”
One difficulty in recognising when youngsters were being abused was that gangs
used “sophisticated techniques” similar to those used by international
traffickers, which made the way they treated youngsters seem normal.
“When they haven’t yet formed opinions about how sexual relationships should
be conducted, and (the gangs) influence them and turn them against their
families and their parents, and isolate them from those who love and protect
them, (it) is so they can influence more control over them.
“The whole targeting and grooming process is to normalise what is happening to
them so they don’t realise it is actually extreme behaviour.”