Asian sex gang rapist is sent to jail for 29 years

GIRLS sexually assaulted by an Asian grooming gang said their abusers ‘thought they could buy them for a tenner’, a court heard yesterday.

One said she still had flashbacks to being drugged at sex parties six years ago, where girls were passed around and forced to have sex.

Another said the gang members made her feel ‘worthless and disgusting’, adding: ‘It makes me sick to think of it now.’

Their heartbreaking statements were read out yesterday in the first of four sentencing hearings in which two gang members were jailed, one for a total of 29 years.

However, the judge refused to consider that the crimes were racially aggravated, which would have increased the sentences.

The girls were aged as young as 13 when the gang of 17 men and one woman groomed and trafficked them for sexual exploitation, handing them round at drug parties in Newcastle between 2011 and 2014.

One girl, who was raped and passed around the group for months, told the court: ‘They’re married with kids and think they can buy us for a tenner.’

The statements told how even years later the girls suffer from severe mental health problems, struggle to form relationships, and are scared to go out in public.

One girl, who was 16 when the grooming began, said: ‘I don’t feel safe in my own home, I’ve had to move back in with my mother ... I have a young child and due to my health and anxiety he is no longer in my care. I used to be such a happy girl.’

Privately-educated Mohammed Azram, 35, who had 62 previous convictions, received ten-and-ahalf years for sexual assault, prostitution and drugs charges. Jahangir Zaman, 45, was sentenced to 14 years for rape, prostitution and drugs charges, as well as 15 years to run consecutively for a separate heroin and cocaine conspiracy.

Judge Moreland, addressing the pair, said: ‘The damage done to victims is profound. You have taken away their teenage years when they should have been developing into adulthood.’

As she handed down the sentences, Judge Moreland sparked a row by refusing to apply tougher jail terms on the grounds that the gang’s abuse was racist.

She said the group’s victims were chosen because they were vulnerable, not because they were white, despite the fact that all but two of the gang’s 108 victims were white.

In addition, Newcastle Crown Court heard one member of the gang shouted ‘white women are only good for men like me to f***’ and another had made racist comments in a police interview.

Peter Saunders, of the National Association of People Abused in Childhood, said yesterday: ‘It is patently obvious and stated by the criminals themselves that they are targeting a particular racial group, in this case white girls.

‘If the situation was different and this was white gang attacking Asian victims, quite rightly there would be an outcry ... It is a further insult to the victims.’

The remaining gang members will be sentenced this week.

‘I used to be such a happy girl’