Seven convicted of Rotherham abuse
Double killer gets 38 years
A GANG of men have been convicted of sexually exploiting vulnerable teenage girls in Rotherham.
Jurors heard one of the victims in the case had sex with “at least 100 Asian men” by the time she was 16.
Another described how she was gang-raped in a forest and threatened with being abandoned there.
The five complainants in the Sheffield crown court trial, who are now women in their 30s, were “lured by the excitement of friendship with older Asian Sick Savage arrives at the court youths” but were then sexually assaulted and passed between men.
Michelle Colborne QC, prosecuting, said: “They were targeted, sexualised and, in some instances, subjected to acts of a degrading and violent nature at the hands of these men in the dock.”
She said: “None of the girls had the maturity to understand that they were being groomed and exploited.”
They were given alcohol and drugs and “believed sex of some kind or other was a necessary price for friendship”. Ms A WOMAN shot dead at home by her estranged husband told police just weeks before she was killed: “I believe he will hurt me any way he can.”
Michelle Savage, 32, and her mum Heather Whitbread, 53, were gunned down in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, by former soldier Craig Savage.
Found guilty of the murders yesterday, he was sentenced to a minimum 38 years.
Savage, 35, killed the pair and their pet dog Zeus after he stole an M4 semiautomatic rifle from a nearby firing range.
The Independent Office of Police Conduct is now investigating Sussex Police after it emerged yesterday Michelle filed a report saying Savage was threatening her.
A week before she died she also reported him for vandalism.
In an online statement a month before she died, she told police: “I’m concerned for my and my family’s safety as he’s becoming more and more aggressive.
“He is a nasty, spiteful, bitter person. I believe he will hurt me in any way he can. I believe he wanted to kill or hurt me, I genuinely don’t know which.” She told friends: “They know what’s going on.”
Lewes crown court heard how, on March 16, Savage shot Michelle about six times as she begged for mercy and her mum around seven times as she fled.
He claimed the gun fired by accident in a struggle, and said he had hoped to be shot dead by police. He gave himself up.
Michelle’s pregnant sister Raven Whitbread, 24, and grandmother Patricia Groves, 80, hid and escaped unharmed.
In a victim impact statement, Raven said: “I am haunted by what I saw that night. I have constant nightmares.”
CCTV was released showing him walking away from the house, rifle still in hand.
Judge Maura McGowan QC said the killings were “brutal, systematic and calm” and “every shot hit its target”.
She told Savage: “You have taken two lives and destroyed many others.” Colborne said: “They each suffer the emotional effects of that abuse to this day. The girls were enthralled by older Asian men, men who had cars and seemed exciting to them. They thought they were living the high life.”
The victims were also “frequently in cars stopped by the police but this did not deter the abusers”.
It was the first major prosecution arising from the National Crime Agency’s large-scale inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the South Yorkshire town which has identified more than 1,500 victims between 1997 and 2013.
The seven men who appeared will be sentenced on November 16. They are: Mohammed Imran Ali Akhtar, 37, who was convicted of rape, aiding and abetting rape, three indecent assaults, procuring a girl under 21 to have unlawful sex with another, sexual assault; Nabeel Kurshid, 35, two rapes, one indecent assault; Iqlak Yousaf, 34, two rapes, two indecent assaults; Tanweer Ali, 37, two rapes, two indecent assaults, one charge of false imprisonment; Salah Ahmed El-Hakam, 39, rape; Asif Ali, 33, two indecent assaults. Seventh man who cannot legally be named, two rapes.