Oxford grooming gang gets 95 years
Seven members of an Oxford grooming ring of Pakistani men were jailed for a total of at least 95 years as a judge branded their activities ‘true evil’.
The perverted gang plucked their victims from the streets of Oxford and plied them with alcohol and hard drugs before they were gang-raped and sexually assaulted.
The girls, aged between 11 and 16, were subjected to abuse sessions that lasted days and involved the use of knives, meat cleavers, baseball bats.
One was even forced to undergo an illegal abortion at a backstreet clinic when she fell pregnant by one of her tormentors.
Others were beaten, burned and even branded to force them to comply.
The gang threatened to burn down the house of one victim and told another they would chop off her baby’s head when gave birth after escaping their clutches.
They invited other men to Oxford to abuse the girls and pimped them out in other towns across the UK.
One victim was abused with a string of bizarre sex toys to ‘prepare’ her for one of the gang rapes.
A friend of one of the six victims who gave evidence during a four-month trial claimed the men were responsible for abusing hundreds more.
Police had known about the activities of the ring for years but took no action, allowing the abuse to continue for nearly a decade.
Kamar Jamil, 27, Akhtar Dogar, 32, his brother Anjum, 31, Mohammed Karrar, 38, his brother Bassam, 34, were each jailed for life at the Old Bailey.
Mohammed Karrar was told he would serve at least 20 years behind bars while the Dogars were each given minimum terms of 17 years.
Bassam Karrar was told he must serve 15 years and Jamil, who tried to claim he was mentally ill to escape a harsh sentence, 12 years.
Judge Peter Rook QC told them: ‘You have been found guilty by a jury of a serious of sexual crimes of the utmost gravity.
‘The offences involved the exploitation and abuse of young, highly vulnerable girls in the Oxford area over a long period of time.
‘On occasions, the depravity was extreme.
‘You targeted the young girls because they were vulnerable, underage and out of control.
‘You subjected them to repeated abuse. This was a pattern that repeated itself over and over again.
‘Each victim was groomed, coerced and intimidated to facilitate the commission of offences and make the likelihood of them every being reported remote.
‘This involved planning.’
He added: ‘The parents were made to feel powerless when their child became entangled in true evil.’
Assad Hussain, 26, and Zeeshan Ahmed, 28, were each jailed for seven years.
Akhtar Dogar stormed out of the dock after his sentence was announced, while Mohammed Karrar had refused to come into court.
Eleven members of the jury returned to court for today’s hearing, while four victims and their families were present.
The seven paedophiles had denied a total of 43 charges relating to six victims after a trial.
The gang recruited their victims from between May 2004 and January last year.
Some were first spotted drinking or playing truant along the city’s Cowley Road, while others had been living in local care homes.
They were groomed with gifts including perfume for up to a year before the gang plied them with alcohol and got them hooked on hard drugs.
The abusers then forced the girls to have sex using threats of extreme violence and encouraged them to recruit others who could be snared.
They used hotels, guesthouses and empty flats and houses to carry out their abuse, with the girls guarded so they were unable to escape until their ordeal was over.
One described the lifestyle she was forced to endure as a ‘living hell’ from which she could not escape.
None of the victims can be identified.
The first, known as Child A and now aged 21, had an unhappy home life and was smoking pot and playing truant by the age of 12.
She was befriended by Anjum Dogar and his hospital porter brother Akhtar, along with Jamil in early 2005.
They organised regular ‘sex parties’ in Oxford at which other Asian men from as far afield as Slough, Bradford and Leeds would pay to have sex with their victims.
One of the regular clients was former Oxford taxi driver Assad Hussain.
‘They treated me like a piece of meat that they could just tread over,’ she said in a video interview with police prior to the gang’s arrest.
‘I know they’re doing it to other girls as well.
‘I’ve seen them doing it to little girls in their school uniforms.
‘They don’t care how old you are. They don’t give two s***s.’
Child A was first offered cocaine and cannabis and showered with gifts before the Dogars and Jamil suddenly turned nasty, threatening to burn down her home and kill her family.
She was then gang raped in hotels and guest houses from the age of 13 and was sometimes missing from home for days at a time, even missing her 15th birthday.
One abuser enjoyed sniffing her soiled underwear while another forced her to scratch herself so she would bleed.
Another sexually assaulted her with a hairbrush, while one ‘big, fat, sweaty’ northern man tried to choke her before forcing her to urinate over him.
The Dogars and Jamil would barricade her in a bedroom and sit outside the door and threaten her if she tried to escape.
On one occasion she was driven to Shotover Woods, on the outskirts of Oxford, and told: ‘You know what we do with pigs – slit their throats.’
She was later forced to perform sex acts on seven men in the wood, before being left alone there for the night.
The Dogars and Jamil were also responsible for recruiting the ring’s second victim, known as Child B.
She was aged 14 when she was forced to have sex with her abusers and other men in flats, alleyways and parts in the summer of 2006.
On one occasion, Akhtar Dogar threatened her with a gun.
Child B, now 21, had been in foster care and had been a heavy drinker since the age of 12.
She was introduced to the men by Child A, who lived in the same children’s home.
She told friends: ‘I just want to be loved. I’ve never been loved and this shows me love.’
Child B managed to escape the gang when she moved to a children’s home in another part of the country in September 2006.
The Karrar brothers were responsible for reeling in the ring’s third victim, known as Child C.
She had been adopted a year before she met them in 2004 and would often bunk off school and drink alcohol.
They groomed her for a year, offering her cigarettes and cannabis and making her feel protected.
The gang then got her hooked on crack cocaine before she was taken to a flat in Oxford and ordered to have sex with strangers and rewarded with drugs.
She was taken to other cities, including London, Coventry and Manchester, with hired muscle brought in to act as an escort.
During one trip to the capital she was given so much crack cocaine she couldn’t breathe and had to be taken to hospital.
The Dogars later joined in the abuse, telling Child C they owned her and putting her up in the Nanford where men paid for sex with her.
Assad Hussain was again among the regular punters while Bassam Karrar also subjected her to a violent rape that was overheard by other guests.
He turned violent when she refused to pleasure him and a friend, telling her: ‘You laughed at me before but you’re not laughing at me now.’
Police were called and found her crouched in the hotel’s basement wearing nothing but a blanket.
But she was persuaded to withdraw her complaint by another girl who claimed she was ‘seeing’ Bassam.
Child C fell pregnant in 2007 but the abuse continued and only came to an end when she was placed in a secure unit.
The fourth and youngest victim was subjected to regular ‘torture sex’ during which she was bound and gagged before being gang-raped.
She was ‘sold’ to Mohammed Karrar by another unidentified man in mid-2004, aged just 11, and he later branded her to show she belonged to him.
He pimped her out, raping her in her parents’ living room and inviting others to do the same.
She was injected with heroin by him for the first time aged just 13.
Karrar got the girl, now 19, pregnant just after her 12th birthday and took her to a backstreet clinic in Reading for an abortion.
He also branded her buttocks using a heated hairpin so others would know she ‘belonged’ to him.
On one occasion when she tried to fight him off, he knocked her out with a metal baseball bat before raping her with it.
The girl was later introduced to Mohammed’s brother Bassam, raped her after forcing her to watch an episode of Eurotrash.
She was also ‘spit-roasted’ by the brothers in another gang-rape.
The pair went on to organise group sex sessions with other men, in which the victim would be raped with knives and meat cleavers.
He ‘prepared’ her for these sessions using a string of bizarre sex toys, telling her she was being subjected to a ‘new experiment’.
The equipment included a balloon and a piece of glass in the shape of a love heart.
‘He said it would help me,’ she said.
‘And he said it was because I was a whore.’
Child D was taken to Bournemouth, High Wycombe and others town and cities where punters would be charged up to £500 for regular sex and £600 for bondage sessions.
She described her abusers as ‘sick sex monsters’ who were playing ‘mind games’ with her.
The abuse continued until August 2009, when the girl was aged 15.
She said that for years she had been convinced the ordeals were her own fault.
Child E was aged between 12 and 14 and in foster care when she was abused by Anjum Dogar and Zeeshan Ahmed.
She was recruited in January 2009 and on one occasion was taken to Zeeshan Ahmed’s flat, where she passed out from drink and woke up with a love bite on her neck.
Child F would go with her to the flat above the Simpli Fresh store on Cowley Road and had drunken sex with Zeeshan.
She said she had also been made to have sex with other men and claimed Zeeshan was selling Child E’s body to others.
The gang were arrested by Thames Valley Police on March 22 last year as part of Operation Bullfinch.
Assad Hussain insisted they believed the girls were 16 or over.
The others denied having any part in the sex ring and claimed they had been misidentified.
Anjum Dogar, of Tawney Street, Oxford, denied three counts of rape, three of conspiracy to rape, three of arranging or facilitating child prostitution and one count of trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation,
Akhtar Dogar, of the same address, denied five counts of rape, three of conspiracy to rape, three of arranging or facilitating child prostitution and one count of trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation.
Jamil, of Aldwych Road, Summertown, a security guard, is charged with four counts of rape, three counts of conspiracy to rape, two counts of arranging the prostitution of a child, one count of possession with intent to supply class A drugs.
Mohammed Karrar, of Kames Close, Oxford, denied four counts of conspiracy to rape, an alternative count of conspiracy to commit sexual assault with a child, six counts of rape, two counts of trafficking for sexual exploitation, one of conspiracy to assault by instrument, two counts of arranging or facilitating child prostitution, one count of using an assault with intent to procure a miscarriage and one count of assault of a child by instrument.
Bassam Karrar, of Hundred Acres Close, Oxford, denied three counts of rape, three counts of conspiracy to rape, two counts of arranging or facilitating child prostitution, one count of trafficking for sexual exploitation and one count of conspiracy to assault by instrument.
Assad Hussain, of Horsepath Road, Cowley, denied three counts of sexual activity with a child and two of conspiracy to rape.
Zeeshan Ahmed, of Palmer Road, Headington, denied two counts of conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child and two counts of sexual activity with a child.
Mohammed Hussain, 25, of Ashurst Way, Rose Hill, Oxford, denied conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child, rape and two counts of sexual activity with a child and was cleared.
A ninth defendant, who cannot be named, from Maidenhead, Berks, denied with conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child and sexual activity with a child and was cleared.
