Asian paedophile Taboo

Asian gangs, schoolgirls and a sinister taboo: As nine men are jailed for grooming up to 100 for sex, the disturbing trend few dare talk about

By Sue Reid
Last updated at 12:48 AM on 27th November 2010

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At a pristine house on the ­outskirts of Derby, life is slowly getting back to some semblance of normality. The teenage girl living here is a college student who’s put photos of herself dancing and laughing with her friends on several social ­networking websites.

A few miles away, another teenager, only a ­little older at 18, won a prize last month for being an ‘inspirational’ student at her college. A third girl, a child of 14, has a loving mother who waves her off to a Derby school each morning from a terrace home with a manicured front garden and picket fence.

The three girls from decent families have, almost certainly, never met. Yet each has become caught up in what’s believed to be the biggest case of serial sex abuse ever uncovered in Britain. This week, nine men from Derby were jailed for a string of offences against these girls and 24 others whom they groomed for sex.
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Guilty: Married fathers Mohammed Liaqat (left) and Abid Saddique who were jailed at Leicester Crown Court this week

The gang — all but one of whom were Asian — roamed the streets in a BMW with blacked-out windows looking for girls. They plied them with vodka from bottles and plastic cups ­hidden under the seats, before raping or ­abusing them. They were not the only victims in Derby. Up to 100 girls may have been ensnared in this horror after being lured by the smartly-dressed gang into the car outside school gates, shops, ­coffee bars near the city’s railway station and a local park.

Over weeks and months, the girls were taken to houses in Derby and other towns before being raped by the gang and their friends, some of whom paid the men in cash.

In rundown flats with mattresses on the floor, the girls were locked into rooms and turned into sex slaves. If they protested or refused, they were threatened with being beaten with a ­hammer and even told they would be shot. The depraved sex acts were filmed on mobile phones and may have now been sold on through internet pornography sites.

As one of the girls, a 16-year old raped by the gang, said through tears this week: ‘They would take you out, buy you ice creams and a lovely, nice meal. There’s a part of you who thinks it’s really exciting: “I have met this lovely man.” You feel like they’re going to keep you safe. They then abuse every part of you.’

If this was a one-off, it would be deeply ­troubling indeed. The reality is, it’s not. Many schoolgirls — one just eight — living in towns and cities all over the north of England are ­falling prey to gangs who groom them to be sex slaves for themselves or other men.
Depraved: Mohammed Romaan Liaqat and Abid Mohammed Saddique from the gang cruise the streets of Derby

Depraved: Mohammed Romaan Liaqat and Abid Mohammed Saddique from the gang cruise the streets of Derby

The resulting court cases have marked ­similarities. A gang of five Asian men was jailed earlier this month for a total of 32 years for a string of sexual offences against girls aged between 12 and 16 in Rotherham, South ­Yorkshire. The judge, Peter Kelson QC, told the men they were ‘sexual predators’, adding: ‘You had what you regarded as your fun. Now you will take your punishment. All five of you were ­convicted of sexual activity with a child. The clue is in the title: a child.’

This case came just weeks after a privately-educated schoolgirl, forced into sex slavery at 14, bravely gave evidence in court against nine Asian men, who were jailed for her ‘­sustained sexual abuse’ over many months.

The girl was picked up by the gang while walking through Rochdale, Greater Manchester. They took her to a nightclub, gave her vodka, and then drove her to a private house where three men had sex with her. For 11 days, missing from home, she was passed around ‘like a piece of meat’ from man to man before finally managing to escape.

The experience of all these young girls has an uncomfortable element to it. It is a subject that in politically correct modern Britain is almost taboo — rarely spoken about by the police, the courts or even the ­agencies that counsel the girls afterwards.

The simple fact is that the ­perpetrators are almost all Asian and from the north of England — and their victims white.

This week, the BBC reported the Derby case repeatedly on radio with barely a mention of the fact all but one of the gang members were Asian, or the fact the vast majority of the victims — 22 of the 27 mentioned in court — were white girls.

Victim: Burst into tears as she recounted her ordeal

Victim: Burst into tears as she recounted her ordeal

In the city’s own newspaper, an eight-page investigation under the lurid headline in red capitals ­‘Monsters in our Midst’ showed ­pictures of all nine gang members and printed their names, but failed to use the word Asian once.

At this point, it should be said loud and clear that the vast majority of Asian men are decent, law-abiding citizens and that rapists come from all racial and social backgrounds.

But as Emma, a 21-year-old who eight years ago became a sex slave in another northern town and now counsels other victims, told the Mail recently: ‘The truth is, most men running the gangs in the north of England are Asians of Pakistani ­origin. But very few of the authorities will say this.’

Instead, it has been left to some outstandingly brave members of the Muslim community, former MP Ann Cryer (who was roundly criticised for speaking her mind when seven years ago she said Asian gangs were ­raping white girls) and a handful of the girl victims to highlight the reasons behind this deafening silence.

Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for peaceful harmony between different communities, has said: ‘I think the police are overcautious because they are afraid of being branded racist. These men are criminals and should be treated as criminals — whatever their race.’

In Derby this week, Shokat Lal, chairman of the city’s Pakistani Community Centre in the Normanton area — where many of the girls were taken to seedy flats and then sexually attacked by the gang – spoke out, too: ‘It is important that political correctness or fear of offending any particular group of people does not get in the way of protecting those who are vulnerable.
At work: Gang members stop two girls in the street late at night and engage them in conversation

At work: Gang members stop two girls in the street late at night and engage them in conversation

‘This is not an issue of race or ­religion, but about right and wrong, and people committing criminal acts. Vulnerable girls are being exploited for sex. We must stand together as one, people of all backgrounds, to denounce these vile acts.’

On the Derby doorstep of one of the girl victims, a relative told me: ‘Our child is beginning to get over it. She is hoping to go to university and enjoying life, even going down into the city ­centre to shop or to see friends.

‘We know what has happened and all about the men who are doing this. We only wish the whole world knew the truth and their own ­community might then step in and stop them.’

So why are such vile crimes taking place in so-called modern, civilised Britain?

One reason is the money that can be made. According to Scotland Yard, a gang can reap £300,000 a year from prostituting a young white girl. There is more money in selling a girl for sex than peddling drugs — especially if she is a virgin and free of sexual diseases.

And then there is a controversial, but relevant, cultural issue. Asian men of Pakistani heritage often believe white girls have low morals compared with Muslim girls. ‘They wear what they call “slags” clothing, showing much of their bodies and “deserve what they get”,’ an Asian social worker in the north of England has told me.
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Jailed: Akshay Kumar (left) and Ziafat Yasin are now behind bars as a result of their association with Liaqat and Saddique
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Jailed: Mohammed Imran Rehman (left) and Graham Blackham were members of the gang that held sex parties with underage girls in Derby

The girls are held in contempt by the gang members, who do not even call them by their own names. They refer to each one by the same generic term, either to the girls themselves or to their Asian friends on their mobile phones — the Urdu term ‘gori’, which means simply ‘white-skinned female’.

To add a further twist to this ­brutal cultural divide, the gangs hide their own names from the girls. They call themselves by unidentifiable nicknames, a simple trick which makes the police’s job of tracing the culprits more difficult. And, of course, the girls have no idea who they really are.

In the cases that have come to court in the north of England, whether in Rochdale, Rotherham or in Derby, the modus operandi is invariably the same.

A schoolgirl is out with her friends in the town centre, often on a ­Saturday afternoon or after class on her way home. She’s bored, so when a group of smiling men pull up in a flash car blaring rap music she takes notice. The men, smartly dressed, start their chat-up routine. They ask her to ‘chill’ with them. They say ‘come for a ride’ and tell her she’s pretty. They promise they will buy her a meal at any place she chooses.

Once in the car, they produce a plastic cup of vodka and give it to her in the back seat.

They hand her a cigarette or a spliff of cannabis, too. The girl is befuddled, but charmed. The gang plays a waiting game, telling her to meet them tomorrow at the same place.

She gives them her mobile phone number and they warn her she must not tell her parents about anything that has gone on.

The trap has been set. As Emma, the counsellor captured by a gang at 13 in Leeds, explained to me: ‘I thought I was having a great time. I was young and a virgin.
‘I had no idea the men were part of a gang when they drove up in a Bentley with personalised number plates.’

Not one word of her story would surprise the Derby schoolgirls who over the past year have given their accounts in a series of court cases which ended this week. The two 28-year-old gang leaders, Abid ­Saddique and Mohammed Liaqat, both married fathers, face years behind bars after being found guilty of sexual abuse over an 18-month period.

Despite barely uttering a sentence during police interviews, the pair told the court that their ­sexual encounters were ‘consensual’ or did not happen at all. They said they were living a secret life, hidden from wives in their arranged marriages and their families.

Abid Saddique told the court: ‘These are girls I did not respect and these are girls who are just ­partying and taking drugs and we had consensual sex.’

Mohammed Liaqat, who lived on benefits and with a wife recently arrived from Pakistan, said in ­evidence that he used nicknames to cover his tracks from police and to keep his double life from his family.

It was only a chance arrest in late 2008 that halted the Derby gang. Staffordshire police stopped a car in nearby Burton upon Trent which was carrying three men, including the two gang leaders, and two young girls. They were suspected of shoplifting.

The girls were taken back to Derby in a police car and told ­the horrified officers about what was going on. Meanwhile, a nurse from one of the city’s schools alerted police that a girl had come to her surgery saying she had been gang-raped.

It was the start of a huge undercover operation involving 100 detectives. Even now, police don’t believe that all the girls ensnared by ­Saddique, Liaqat and the rest of the gang have been found.

As Detective Superintendent Debbie Platt of Derbyshire Police said yesterday: ‘We were really shocked with the scale and extent of what we’d uncovered, but this is a very hidden crime.’


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