Eight jailed for ‘degrading and violent’ exploitation of teenage girls

Eight men have been given jail sentences of up to 19 years for sexually exploiting girls as young as 13 in Rotherham. A month-long trial at Sheffield Crown Court heard how the men ‘sexualised’ their victims and, in some instances, subjected them to acts of a ‘degrading and violent nature’. One girl told police she was abused so badly that she moved to Spain with her family to get away after reporting the abuse, after Sageer Hussain carried out a ‘campaign of violent rape’ against her when she was 13. He was jailed for 19 years today along with Mohammed Whied, 32; Ishtiaq Khaliq, 33; Waleed Ali, 34; Asif Ali, 30; Masoued Malik, 32; Basharat Hussain, 40; and Naeem Rafiq, 33. Michelle Colborne QC, prosecuting, said Hussain played a ‘key role’ and was ‘instrumental in befriending young girls who were flattered that he and his friends spent time with them’. His brothers, Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras, were jailed in April following the first successful prosecution of a grooming gang in Rotherham since the child sexual exploitation scandal engulfed the South Yorkshire town two years ago. Arshid, the ringleader, was given 35 years by a judge who told him: ‘The harm you have caused is of unimaginable proportions’. An official inquiry into exploitation in Rotherham in 2014 by Professor Alexis Jay concluded that at least 1,400 children had been raped, trafficked and attacked between 1997 and 2013 by gangs of largely Asian men, and that the victims were effectively ignored. Speaking after the verdicts last month, Detective Chief Inspector Martin Tate said: ‘The verdicts today are of massive importance to the young women who have come forward to report years of horrific sexual abuse at the hands of these criminals.’