Six men have been jailed for the historic grooming and rape of six Oxford teenage girls in crimes against children the convicting judge called “sinister” and “predatory”.
The rape gang operated in Oxford, preying on six “vulnerable” teens, then aged 13 to 17, from 1998 to 2005 and subjected them to “hundreds of episodes of sexual abuse”, according to Judge Peter Ross.
Prosecutors described it as “sexual exploitation on a massive scale”, with Judge Ross saying at the defendants’ convictions in March: “Systematic and widespread grooming, that is what this case has revealed.”
Describing the victims as “all vulnerable teenagers” during sentencing on Tuesday, the judge said: “They [the victims] were brought into the group, of which the defendants were part of, through flattery, making them feel a sense of belonging, and the provision of alcohol and drugs.
“And the consequence was that sexual abuse of these girls became the norm,” he said, according to The Oxford Times.
Some of the hundreds of instances of abuse took place in a black Nissan Serena with a licence plate ending “SHG” – referred to as the “shag wagon”.
“They would pick the girls, have sex with them, and dump them. Everything happened in that Serena,” one victim told Oxford Crown Court.
Victims told the court of the sexual and mental abuse suffered, with one describing being used as a “sexual object” by Assad Hussain, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge described Moinul Islam, who was jailed for 15 years and nine months, as having one child “completely at his mercy”.
Muslim, Pakistani-origin rape gangs operating in Rochdale, Rotherham, and Telford targetting mostly-white girls are well-documented and receive some level of media attention; however, this is not the first reported rape gang to have been convicted in Oxford, the ‘city of dreaming spires’ and home of one of the world’s top universities.
In 2013, seven members of a rape gang were found guilty of grooming and raping vulnerable women and girls, some as young as 11, the sentencing judge saying on occasions that “the depravity was extreme”.
The convictions resulted in a 2015 case review which found that some 370 “white British girls” may have been exploited, raped, and abused from 1999 to 2014 in Oxfordshire. The report confirmed that the link between “group-based CSE [Child Sexual Exploitation], with mainly Pakistan heritage [attackers] is undeniable”.
However, like with Rotherham, Rochdale, and Telford, one Oxford rape gang victim told of attackers still being free to groom and abuse girls despite them being reported to authorities.
The sentences, handed out on Tuesday, are as follows:
- Assad Hussain, 37, was found guilty of five counts of rape, one count of conspiracy to rape, and two counts of indecent assault. His offences relate to two female victims. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 12 years.
- Khalid Hussain, 38, was found guilty of one count of indecent assault and one count of rape. His offences relate to one female victim. He was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.
- Kameer Iqbal, 39, was found guilty of three counts of rape. His offences relate to one female victim. He was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.
- Moinul Islam, 42, was found guilty of one count of rape, two counts of indecent assault, one count of supplying a class A drug, one count of supplying a class B drug, and one count of supplying a class C drug. His offences relate to two female victims. He was sentenced to a total of 15 years and nine months’ imprisonment.
- Haji Khan, 38, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to rape. His offence relates to one female victim. He was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
- Alladitta Yousaf, 48, was found guilty of one count of indecent assault. His offence relates to one female victim. He was sentenced to seven and half years’ imprisonment.
Two other rape gang members were handed their sentences on April 16th, 2018:
- Raheem Ahmed, 41, was found guilty of two counts of indecent assault and one count of false imprisonment. His offences relate to three female victims. He was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.
- Kamran Khan, 36, was found guilty of one count of false imprisonment. He was found guilty of one count of indecent assault. His offences relate to two female victims. He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.