Five ‘vile and wicked’ members of Huddersfield grooming gang jailed

From the Manchester Evening News and the Independent.

Five men who sexually exploited young girls have been given jail sentences of up to 14 years by a judge who said their abuse was “vile and wicked” and “defies understanding”.

A total of 27 men have now been convicted following West Yorkshire Police’s Operation Tendersea investigation into child sexual exploitation in Huddersfield, with prison sentences totalling more than 300 years.

On Friday (November 1), Judge Geoffrey Marson QC told the five men: “The way these girls were treated defies understanding. This abuse was vile and wicked. None of you has expressed any remorse for what you did.”

The victims were taken to isolated rural areas, like moors or reservoirs, to be abused and threatened with being abandoned in the early hours of the morning if they did not comply.

Judge Marson said girls were also “rendered senseless” at so-called house parties where older Asian men would abuse them one by one, in front of each other.

The court heard that one 32-year-old defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, “took the virginity of a particularly vulnerable 12-year-old and left her bleeding on the floor in the park. She had to make her own way home, bleeding, to an empty flat before disposing of her clothes in a bin bag,” Judge Marson told him. “This was a campaign of rape. “ 

Another abuser, who has a wife and two children, raped one victim orally at knifepoint, threatened her with violence, “laughed at her and called her a slag”. .. a “campaign of rape”, abusing her on a regular basis in a Huddersfield park, using sleeping pills to subdue her.

He told Leeds Crown Court that Operation Tendersea involved “a large number of men, principally Asian men”, who have been charged in relation to “the grooming and sexual abuse of a large number of children”. Not Asian. Muslim.

Judge Marson described how one terrified 12-year-old was targeted by the men who used her phone to locate her despite attempts to move her.

He said: “One night the house phone rang and a man asked for the girl and said ‘tell her I want to f*** her’. After three days the girl was moved to another foster carer in another city and again she was quickly located. There were repeated calls from Asian men saying ‘can you tell her we want to f*** her’.

Umar Zaman, 31, and Samuel Fikru, 32, of William Street, Huddersfield, were each jailed for eight years on Friday after they were convicted of two counts of rape.

The court heard that Zaman has absconded and is believed to be in Pakistan.

A 32-year-old man convicted of five counts of rape was jailed for 14 years. Another 32-year-old found guilty of a single count of rape was jailed for eight years, and a 38-year-old man found guilty of attempted rape was jailed for seven years.

Their names cannot be reported for legal reasons.

A sixth defendant, Banaris Hussain, 36, also of William Street, was convicted of one count of rape, and will be sentenced on Monday.