Shafiq Younas, 2019 trial then 35 of Regent Street, Wellington, was found guilty of indecently assaulting the victim in a churchyard and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison but was later cleared on appeal.
December 22, 2019
Telford rape victim ‘sobbed’ when abusers were finally jailed
A woman who was sexually abused by four men when she was 12 years old has revealed she ‘sobbed’ when they were jailed for more than 22 years.
The victim was passed around ‘around like a piece of meat’, forced to perform sex acts in a churchyard, raped above a shop on a filthy mattress and violently attacked when she attempted to refuse advances, Birmingham Crown Court heard this week.
She was even spat at and urinated on throughout her ordeal between 2000 and 2003 in Telford, West Midlands, the court was told.
Five men went on trial at Birmingham Crown Court, leading to convictions for four of the defendants while another was cleared.
The victim told the Sunday Mirror of her relief when the group was sentenced to between four-and-a-half and eight years each in jail on Thursday.
She said: ‘When I found out they’d been found guilty, I just sobbed.
‘I was relieved, happy and sad, all at the same time.’
She added: ‘I did have doubts about whether I’d get justice after such a long time but when this sort of thing happens it’s something you are never going to forget.’
Sentencing the group on Thursday, Judge Melbourne Inman QC said they had abused a ‘helpless’ victim.
Jurors were told the woman was sold for sex, first by a man named Tanveer Ahmed who ‘befriended her’ during a low point in her life.
Ahmed, a pizza delivery man, was not on trial alongside the other defendants, having been deported to Pakistan for ‘unrelated offences’, the court heard.
He was jailed for two and a half years in 2012 after admitting a charge of controlling a child prostitute.
Ahmed was one of a number of men imprisoned after an investigation into a child sex abuse ring in Telford as part of West Mercia police’s Operation Chalice inquiry.
‘Ringleader’ Mohammed Ali Sultan, 33, was convicted of rape and three counts of indecent assault on Tuesday.
He was jailed for eight years with an extended licence period of two years and made subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
Sultan was also slapped with a restraining order preventing him from having contact with the victim indefinitely.
He already had previous convictions, in 2012 and 2015, for similar offences.
Sultan’s sentence will run consecutively to a six-year jail term he is already serving, giving him a total of 14 years with an extended licence period of two years.
Addressing him, the judge said: ‘The victim was clearly extremely frightened of you, and you exercised significant control over her.’
- Co-defendant Mohammad Rizwan, 37, was found guilty of two counts of indecent assault and jailed for five-and-a-half years. Rizwan had saved his victim’s phone number under the contact name ‘blowjob2’, jurors heard.
- Shafiq Younas, 35, was found guilty of indecently assaulting the victim in a churchyard and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison.
- Amjad Hussain, 38, who was unanimously convicted of a single count of indecent assault on Tuesday but was cleared by jurors on Wednesday of another similar offence, was also jailed for four-and-a-half years.
- The fifth defendant, Nazam Akhtar, 35, was cleared of rape.
- https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/22/telford-rape-victim-sobbed-abusers-finally-jailed-11947466/
The judge said the men had abused the ‘helpless’ victim, who had been groomed until she was ‘no longer in effective control of her own life’.
He said: ‘Each of you knew this girl was utterly defenceless and was being used as a sex object by others,’
‘She was simply being used for male sexual gratification.’