Originally published at Gatestone Institute.
“As one police officer said to me, ‘There isn’t a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited.’ We should start from the assumption that children are being sexually exploited right the way across the country.” — Sue Berelowitz, Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England
A court in London has sentenced seven members of a Muslim child grooming gang based in Oxford to at least 95 years in prison for raping, torturing and trafficking British girls as young as 11.
The high-profile trial was the latest in a rapidly growing list of grooming cases that are forcing politically correct Britons to confront the previously taboo subject of endemic sexual abuse of children by predatory Muslim pedophile gangs.
The 18-week trial drew unwelcome attention to the sordid reality that police, social workers, teachers, neighbors, politicians and the media have for decades downplayed the severity of the crimes perpetrated against British children because they were afraid of being accused of “Islamophobia” or racism.
According to government estimates that are believed to be “just the tip of the iceberg,” at least 2,500 British children have so far been confirmed to be victims of grooming gangs, and another 20,000 children are at risk of sexual exploitation. At least 27 police forces are currently investigating 54 alleged child grooming gangs across England and Wales.
Judge Peter Rook, who presided over the trial that ended on June 27 at the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (aka the Old Bailey), sentenced five of the men to life in prison and ordered them to serve a minimum of between 12 and 20 years before becoming eligible for parole.
Rook said the severity of the jail terms — which are longer than those in other high-profile grooming cases such as those in Rochdale, Derby and Telford — were meant to send a message to abusers that they would be targeted and brought to justice.
After reading the sentence, Rook said the men — who are from Pakistan and Eritrea (see profiles here) — had committed “a series of sexual crimes of the utmost depravity” and had targeted “young girls because they were vulnerable, underage and out of control.”
The ringleaders of the gang, brothers Akhtar Dogar, 32, and Anjum Dogar, 31, were given life sentences and were told by the judge that they had been found guilty of “exceptionally grave crimes.” They are to remain in prison for a minimum of 17 years before becoming eligible for parole.
A second pair of brothers, Bassam Karrar, 33, and Mohammed Karrar, 38, were also given life sentences. Mohammed Karrar was given a minimum sentence of 20 years for the “dreadful offenses” he committed against the girls, including one child whom he branded with the letter “M” for Mohammed. He began pimping the girl when she was only 11, and forced her to have a backstreet abortion when she was 12.
In graphic testimony, one of the victims told the court that Mohammed Karrar would charge men £500 ($750) to have sex with her. They would take her to homes in High Wycombe where she would be subjected to gang rapes, incidents that she described as “torture sex.” The men would tie her up and gag her mouth with a ball to stop her cries from being heard. The men would play out abuse fantasies; sometimes she was left bleeding for days afterwards.
In one of her few acts of defiance, she threatened Mohammed Karrar with his own lock knife as he was preparing to rape her; he knocked her out with a metal baseball bat.
Mohammed’s younger brother, Bassam Karrar, who was found guilty of brutally raping and attacking a 14-year-old girl while he was high on cocaine, was ordered to serve a minimum of 15 years.