Pakistani-origin grooming gang leader sentenced to 35 years in UK rape case

A British court has sentenced Mohammed Zahid, the Pakistani-origin leader of the UK’s Rochdale grooming gang, to 35 years for raping two girls and using them as sex slaves for five years. His six fellow rapists have also received various sentences in the case. All of them are of Pakistani-origin.

Judge Jonathan Seely said the girls were “passed around for sex, abused, degraded, and then discarded” and they were “seriously let down by those whose job it was to protect them”, according to Sky News.

The seven men abused the girls between 2001 and 2006. Zahid, the gang leader, was previously sentenced to five years in 2016 for having sex with a minor. The Telegraph reported all seven convicts were of Pakistani-origin.

In the United Kingdom, ‘grooming gangs’ refer to organised sex crime networks in which men target vulnerable girls from troubled families in dysfunctional families or care homes — these girls can be as young as pre-pubescents. They often shower girls with gifts and get them hooked to alcohol and drugs. As they gain trust and develop a relationship, they get sexual. They pass around girls in the gang for sex and use them in prostitution.

As per investigations, several thousands of girls have been raped and pushed into sexual slavery over the decades. The scale is such that in one town alone, Rotheram, around 1,400 girls were abused between 1997 and 2013, as per multiple investigative reports.

A separate investigation by Quilliam Foundation found that abusers in grooming gang cases have been predominantly of Pakistani-origin.

‘Survivors were woefully failed’

Judge Seely said that the girls were “woefully failed” by everyone around them, including the authorities, as they were pushed into prostitution at the age of 10.

Prosecutor Rossano Scamardella said that the authorities’ failure to act over the years in the matter was such that Zahid “was confident that nothing would be done about it”. He said that no one did anything even though they knew.

“Such was the brazen way he did this that by the end of the abuse, he felt almost untouchable. It’s not as if she had no one to turn to. She turned to the care home. She turned to social services. She felt able to tell them at some stages, or other people did, and nothing was done. People knew, authorities knew. And nothing was done,” Scamardella further said, as per Sky News.

The prosecutors told the court that girls were expected to have sex “whenever and wherever” the convicts and other men wanted. They said these activities took place in filthy flats, cars, car parks, alleyways, and disused warehouses.