‘No remorse’: Paedophile grooming gang leader jailed for another 12 years for abusing girl

He told Ali: “You have shown no remorse at all. There continues to be a high risk that you may cause serious harm to young females through the commission of further offences against them,” adding that he must remain categorised as a “dangerous offender”.

He described the victim as a ‘vulnerable girl’ who had been through a difficult childhood and was ‘desperate for a stable, loving relationship.’

The judge told Ali: ‘You were eight years older. You seemed the sort of person who could provide stability and affection. She thought she was in love with you and could not see how abusive the relationship had become. . . You expected her to have sex with you even though she was under the age of consent. It became normalized behaviour for her.’

Shrewsbury Crown Court heard that by the time the girl reached 14, Ali began plying her with alcohol and cannabis and the sexual abuse started. Ali, who was in his 20s at the time, sexually abused her in hotels in Telford, at his mother’s house in Wellington, Shropshire, and in broad daylight in front of a ‘disgusted’ dog walker in the town, as well as pimping her out to local restaurant workers – just as jurors heard had been the fate of victims in his earlier trial.

The court … heard that as the girl matured she became less easy to manipulate and Ali resorted to violent verbal threats and abuse on multiple occasions.

Judge Barrie added: ‘Not content with having a relationship that involved frequent sex for yourself, you took advantage of the hold you had over her to get her to have sex with other men. At restaurants people would queue up to have sex with her and you gave out her phone number so other men could make arrangements with her.’

He accused Ali of making money and gaining perverse sexual gratification from what he put her through. ‘You coerced and humiliated her and caused her severe psychological harm.’

Telford is feared to have been the epicentre of one of the worst and longest-running child grooming scandals in Britain. Ali was part of gang brought to justice by West Mercia Police in 2012 as part of its Operation Chalice – one of the biggest inquiries in the force’s history. Many of the seven men convicted worked for or had connections with fast-food restaurants across Telford and some of the victims were sold for sex to workers.

Officers on Chalice identified up to 110 potential victims and 200 predators operating in the town between 2007 and 2009. But in 2018 a Sunday newspaper investigation suggested up to 1,000 girls could have been abused in Telford – a town of 170,000 residents – since 1980.