Twelve men sentenced for sexual exploitation of Keighley teenager
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Version 0 of 1. Twelve men have been sentenced to up to 20 years each after being found guilty of sexually exploiting a vulnerable girl in West Yorkshire when she was in her early teens. The men, who include three sets of brothers, were mostly young, low-level criminals living in Keighley. But one was a taxi driver 46 years older than the girl, who had sex with her in his cab when he picked her up as a fare, and another a paedophile with a long history of sexual offending, whose nephew was in her class at school. Ranging in age from 19 to 63, the men abused the girl at different places around the former mill town near Bradford. She was raped on the library steps, in an underground car park at an abandoned police station and in the rugby club changing rooms at Burgess Fields park. One afternoon in 2012 five of them lined up to rape her in daylight on Dalton Lane, near the town centre. Many of the men behaved so badly in the dock that the judge admonished them regularly throughout the trial at Bradford crown court. Passing sentence on Monday, Mr Justice Thomas, QC, told them: “The attitudes that the majority of you have so clearly demonstrated to these proceedings have been contemptuous, disrespectful and arrogant on a scale that I have hardly seen before in many years of practice in criminal law. Exactly the same as your attitude to the 13- to 14-year-old girl who you all sexually abused and exploited for your own selfish gratification.” Some of the men treated the case as a joke from start to finish. They grinned in the police mugshots taken after their arrests, messed around in the dock, and laughed and waved as they were sent to prison to begin their sentences. They lied about knowing the girl, despite a number having sent her explicit Facebook messages demanding oral sex. The court heard how Asian men would shout at the white girl in the street, calling her “Randi”, the Urdu word for “slag”. One defendant, 25-year-old Yasser Kabir, told the girl in front of her grandmother that she could “suck me off”. Kabir was jailed for 20 years for the rape of that girl, and the rape of two others, one aged between six and seven, and the other seven to nine, when he was 13 to 15. After being arrested, one defendant, Sufyan Ziarab, 23, who was one of four men to rape the girl in the underground car park, told detectives the girl was “a prostitute you don’t have to pay for”. The main complainant in the case is now 18 but was 13 when the sexual abuse began. Unhappy at home, she went off the rails when she reached Year 8 at school. She started to play truant and was reported missing 71 times before being taken into care in June 2012, aged 14. She had a poor relationship with her mother, claiming she would call her a “Paki shagger”. She said that much of the abuse she suffered was instigated by a teenage boy called Arif Chowdhury, a drug dealer. She was 12 or 13 when they met and he was two years older. She began doing drug runs for him and said he raped her when she told him she wanted to stop. He was present during many of the rapes, bringing her along to the gang rape in Dalton Lane, telling five of his friends: “She’s all yours.” Chowdhury was not in court, having skipped bail and fled the country shortly after his arrest. The judge said he was “now beyond the jurisdiction of the court, living somewhere in the Asian subcontinent”. His friends, facing long prison sentences, complained to reporters outside court during the trial that he was “the bad one” and had run away to Bangladesh, leaving them to face the music. The girl was well-known to police and social services. Teachers, noting bruises and her deterioration in behaviour and attendance, had often expressed their fears for her wellbeing, despite not knowing exactly what was going on. They later told detectives that the girl could not see the peril she was putting herself in. One police officer specifically warned her about the dangers of hanging around with older men. She saw some of her abusers as friends or even lovers, refusing to press charges against one particular older man, whom she insisted was her boyfriend. The judge said of the girl and her abusers: “She clearly demanded pity and understanding but their view of her was heartless and demeaning. They saw her as a pathetic figure who had no worth and who served no other purpose than to be an object that they could sexually misuse and cast aside.” In a victim impact statement read to the court, the girl said the rapes had left her paranoid and suffering from clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Resentful that the abuse led to her being taken into care a long way from Keighley, she said she had no friends and saw herself as “a possession or inconvenience to everyone around me”. “My impression of what a normal relationship would entail is mixed up and warped.” Her life had been ruined, she said: “I always thought I would grow up and do my exams and go into nursing. This has become more of a fairytale than the reality for me, which hurts.” The men were sentenced as follows: The underground carpark defendants 1. Sufyan “Sufi” Ziarab, 23, from Keighley, was found guilty of two counts of rape at trial last year and sentenced to 15 years in jail. He has convictions for possession and intent to supply cannabis. His barrister said he had an “extremely low” IQ, lower than 98% of the population and “did not fully understand the consequences of his actions”. His limited intelligence was given as an excuse for him not giving evidence. 2. His brother Bilal “Brownie” Ziarab, 21, from Bradford, was also found guilty of two counts of rape, committed when he was 16. He was sentenced to 12 years. The victim said he was her most reluctant rapist, and may have been pressured into it. He has a previous conviction for sexual activity with a child after he received oral sex outside St Andrew’s Church in Keighley from a girl he knew was 14, when he was 16. He was given a rehabilitation order for that offence in 2010. His barrister said he was “effectively feral” and had been taking drugs since a young age, having left school at 14. 3. Tauqeer “Toki” Hussain, 23, from Keighley, was found guilty of two counts of rape with regard to the main victim and one count of rape in relation to a second underage victim. He was given a total sentence of 18 years. He raped both girls in the underground carpark. He has no previous convictions and was one of the few defendants to have had a job. 4. Yasser Kabir, 25, is Hussain’s half brother. He was found guilty of three counts of raping the main victim during last year’s trial. The jury was not told that he had been convicted last summer of 12 rapes and sexual offences against the two young girls when he was 13 to 15. He wrote to the judge after being convicted, expressing regret for what he had done to the main victim, but not the two young girls. He was given a total sentence of 20 years. The Dalton Lane gang rape 5. Nasir “Khani” Khan, 24, from Keighley, was found guilty of one count of oral rape and given a 13-year sentence. He has 11 previous convictions for 21 offences, including two for indecent exposure. He also served a prison term for drug offences and assault. He laughed in the dock as his previous convictions were outlined. His barrister said he grew up without a father figure. 6. His brother Faisal Khan, 27, was found guilty of one count of rape and given a 13-year sentence. He received a four-year jail sentence in 2007 for robbery and in 2010 was convicted on drugs charges. In 2012 he was convicted for public disorder. 7. Saqib Younis, 29, is the Khans’ cousin. He was found guilty of one count of rape and also got 13 years’ jail. He has previous convictions for possession of firearms and public disorder. 8. Hussain Sardar, 19, from Keighley, was 14 when he took part in the Dalton Lane rape. He has been in trouble with the law for six years. In 2009 and 2010 he received referral orders for assault and handling stolen goods. He was convicted of one count of rape and sentenced to six years’ detention in a young offenders institution. Further charges for intent to supply class A drugs were ordered to lie on file. 9. Zain “Droopy” Ali, 20, from Keighley, was 16 or 17 when he raped the girl. He has previous convictions for shoplifting and public disorder. On Friday he pleaded not guilty to a further charge of witness intimidation, relating to a witness in the recent multi-rape trial. He was sentenced to eight years’ detention in a young offenders institution. Burgess Fields park, Keighley 10. Israr “Sari” Ali, 19, from Keighley, raped the main victim in the changing rooms at the rugby club in Burgess Fields. He has a learning disability and an IQ of 50. His victim told police she thought he was her friend. He was given three and a half years in a young offender institution on account of his age and the fact he had not taken part in a gang rape. The taxi driver Mohammed Akram, 63, was found guilty of sexual activity with a child under the age of 16. The court heard his wife had died a few years before he had sex with the main victim in his cab when she was 14. His defence was that he thought she was over the age of consent. The judge sentenced him to five years in prison. The sexual predator Khalid Mahmood, 34, pleaded guilty on the day the trial was due to start to five counts of raping the main victim in the woods at Cliffe Castle Park in Keighley and various other public places. She was 13 or 14 at the time and he was around 30. He knew her age because she was in the same class as his nephew and he had seen her in her school uniform. He would ply the girl with alcohol, cigarettes and marajuana before abusing her, the court heard on Friday. By the time the trial started last year, Mahmood was already serving an eight-year sentence for the rape of a 43-year-old woman in Cliffe Castle Park, as well as the attempted false imprisonment of a child he had tried to snatch off the street. The father of three has a long history of sexual offending, having been first convicted of indecent assault in 1998, when he was 16, and spending time in a young offender institute the following year for a similar crime. He also has convictions for kerb crawling. Ruling him to be “dangerous” within the meaning of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the judge gave Mahmood an extended sentence comprising a custodial term of 13 and a half years and an extended licence period of three and a half years and ordered to serve two-thirds of the custodial term in custody. |