Four members of a Huddersfield grooming gang have been jailed for a harrowing campaign of violence and sexual abuse against three vulnerable girls.
Leeds crown court heard how Mohammed Akram, Niaz Ahmed, Mohammed Imran Ibrar and Asif Bashir used their teenage victims as “commodities” after plying them with drink and drugs.
The judge, Simon Phillips QC, said their criminality “defied understanding” and had traumatised the girls and their families, prompting the mother of one to write to the prime minister.
The men, who were convicted of 10 offences spanning 2004 to 2010, were members of a 20-strong gang that carried out the “inhuman” abuse of 15 girls.
On Thursday, Akram was jailed for 17 years for two counts of trafficking for sexual exploitation and two counts of rape. The 33-year-old, nicknamed Kid, trafficked one of his victims to a hotel in Bradford, where she was raped by another man while she was unconscious.
The court heard how, when Akram crashed his car into the wall of a mosque, he ran away and left two of the victims at the scene of the accident when they “clearly were in need of medical attention”.
As some of the complainants watched via TV link, the judge told Akram he showed a “complete disregard for the safety of the girls” and added: “The way that you treated these girls defies understanding. This abuse was vile and wicked.”
Phillips said the girls became “conditioned and immersed” in the abuse, with one saying in a statement read to the court that she felt as though her life was at risk every time she left the house. “It has basically ruined the rest of my life,” she said.
One of the victims’ mothers said she had to call the police three times a week when her daughter went missing. “She would always come home looking like she was on drugs,” she told the judge, adding that she wrote letters to social services and “even wrote to the prime minister”.
Ahmed, 54, was told he was prepared to abuse girls for his own “sexual gratification” as he was sentenced to five years in jail for sexual assault and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.
Ibrar, 34, was jailed for three years after being found guilty of trafficking for sexual exploitation and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The court heard how he battered one of his victims and dumped her on a moor in Oldham “covered in blood” in the middle of the night when she refused to perform a sex act on him.
Bashir, 33, was sentenced to 11 years after being convicted of rape and attempted rape. All four men were from Huddersfield.
The gang was spearheaded by Amere Singh Dhaliwal, 36, who was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 18 years by a judge at Leeds crown court in June, having been convicted of 22 rapes involving 11 different girls.
