Seven men in 'grooming gang' jailed for raping and abusing girls in the UK

Published on 01/10/2025 - 16:54 GMT+2

Seven men who abused and raped 2 girls successful bluish England were jailed connected Wednesday successful nan latest lawsuit involving alleged "grooming gangs" successful nan UK.

The pack members were sentenced to a full of 174 years successful situation for aggregate activity offences against 2 teenage girls successful Rochdale betwixt 2001 and 2006. The maltreatment started erstwhile each of nan girls were aged 13, nan Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

Both victims were from susceptible backgrounds and were known to societal services, according to prosecutors. One woman was surviving successful nan attraction system.

They were groomed pinch gifts and money and often plied pinch intoxicant aliases narcotics earlier being assaulted aliases raped, nan authorities said.

At Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, nan gang's ringleader — Mohammed Zahid, 64 — was jailed for 35 years.

The different six members — Mushtaq Ahmed, 66, Kasir Bashir, 50, Roheez Khan, 39, Mohammed Shahzad, 43, Nisar Hussain, 41, and Naheem Akram, 48 — were fixed sentences ranging from 12 to 39 years' imprisonment.

All 7 of nan men had denied nan charges but were convicted unanimously.

"These 7 men preyed connected vulnerability for their ain depraved intersexual gain," said Detective Chief Inspector Guy Laycock, nan elder investigating serviceman connected nan case.

"The men abused, degraded and past discarded nan victims erstwhile they were conscionable children. This horrific maltreatment knew nary limits, contempt their denials passim this lengthy investigation and tribunal case," he added.

Ethnicity successful nan spotlight

The decades-old rumor of grooming gangs — successful which hundreds of susceptible young women and girls person been sexually exploited by men — came to afloat nationalist attraction successful nan early 2010s successful nan UK.

It became evident that galore of nan gangs were astatine slightest partially known to section authorities for immoderate clip earlier their members faced galore criminal charges. Scores of men successful different towns person been arrested, tried and imprisoned for their actions.

However, nan rumor returned to nan governmental schedule astatine nan commencement of nan twelvemonth erstwhile Elon Musk made a bid of incendiary societal media posts.

His involution came aft it emerged that nan UK's safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, had rejected a petition for a government-led inquiry, alternatively saying it should beryllium commissioned locally.

In June, nan British authorities said that constabulary officers successful England and Wales will beryllium required to cod ethnicity and nationality information successful cases of kid intersexual maltreatment and exploitation aft a reappraisal recovered nan rumor had been "shied away" from.

A erstwhile reappraisal successful 2014 estimated that immoderate 1,400 children were sexually exploited successful Rotherham betwixt 1997 and 2013, predominantly by men of Pakistani descent.

That study identifies failings by authorities and nan police, and besides cites section authority officials describing their "nervousness" astatine identifying nan "ethnic origins of perpetrators for fearfulness of being thought racist".