20-MAN SEX GANG CAGED
Predators drugged and raped girls as young as 11
A GANG of 20 men who waged a campaign of rape and sexual abuse against teenage girls have been jailed for a total of 221 years, it can now be reported.
Ringleader Amere Singh Dhaliwal, 35, was jailed for life earlier this year and told he must serve a minimum of 18 years by a judge who said: “Your treatment of these girls was inhuman.”
In a series of three trials at Leeds Crown Court, 15 women told what happened to them between 2004 and 2011, when they were aged between 11 and 17 in Huddersfield.
The trials were subject to a blanket reporting ban which was partially lifted yesterday.
It was towards the end of the second of these trials, in May, that English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson was arrested as he reported about the case live on Facebook from outside the court.
Robinson was jailed for contempt of court but his conviction was later quashed and the case will be heard again at the Old Bailey next week.
Dhaliwal was convicted of 54 charges, including 22 rapes involving 11 girls. Judge Geoffrey Marson QC told him: “You treated them as commodities to be passed around for your sexual gratification and the gratification of others. The extent and gravity of your offending far exceeds anything which I’ve encountered.
“Children’s lives have been ruined and families profoundly affected by seeing their children having been groomed by you and your gang.”
The girls, who are now all adults, told juries how they believed they were being shown genuine affection and attention as they were groomed.
But Judge Marson told the men this was “deliberately created to enable predatory men such as you to perpetrate gross sexual abuse for your own perverted gratification”.
According to the judge, one of the girls said: “They got your trust and then stuff would start happening to you and it’s one of those things you couldn’t get out of. It just happened.
“My mum and dad’s houses got trashed, their cars got trashed. I was constantly getting raped, beaten up.” At least one girl attempted suicide. One of the girls was seen being thrown out of a moving car outside her home. She had bruises all over her face and was under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
Judge Marson said at the end of the first trial: “The way you treated these girls defies understanding – this abuse was vile and wicked. As cases of sexual abuse with which the courts have to deal, this case comes at the top of the scale.
“None of you has expressed any remorse.”
Dhaliwal, of Huddersfield, was jailed in June along with seven other men, who received jail sentences of between eight and 18 years.
After the second trial, which ended in June, eight more men were jailed for between five and 18 years.
Four more men were found guilty of a range of offences earlier this month after the third trial and will be sentenced on November 1.