A woman who was groomed and raped by a Pakistani gang as a young child was told by a judge to remove a request for her abusers to be deported from her victim impact statement.
Last week, seven British-Pakistani men were sentenced to a total of 106 years in prison – an average of 15 years each – for the repeated child sexual abuse over five years of two young girls in Rotherham in the early 2000s. The girls, who spent time in the care system, were 11 and 15 respectively when the abuse began.
“These seven men deliberately preyed on two young girls they knew were vulnerable and, using drugs and alcohol, exploited them for their own sexual gratification,” said Zoe Becker of the Crown Prosecution Service. “The cruelty and abuse the victims suffered at the hands of these defendants was horrific and has continued to have a lasting impact on their lives today.”
At the sentencing hearings in Sheffield Crown Court last week, the younger of the two victims delivered an impact statement from the witness box, addressing the defendants.
“You ruined my life but I won’t let you ruin my future,” the woman, who can’t be named for legal reasons, said. “I’m a fighter and a survivor. I’m thriving and fighting. You can’t and won’t ever take anything from me again. 22 years ago, you first started grooming me, and 10 years ago I started my justice fight. You stole my childhood, now I’m taking your freedom, I am your karma,” she concluded.
However, GB News discovered that the speech was heavily censored by the judge, with multiple sections erased due to restrictions they imposed. “I’d like to request that after sentencing and upon Rudy and Showabe’s release, that they should be deported back to Pakistan as this is where they originated from and came here to exploit children,” the original uncensored conclusion of the statement read.
“Rudy” is Mohammed Amar, who was convicted of two counts of indecent assault, and sentenced to 14 years. “Showabe” is Mohammed Siyab, who was convicted of two counts of rape, one count of trafficking, and one count of sexual intercourse with a girl under 13, and sentenced to 25 years in jail. Siyab’s English language skills were so poor that despite living in the UK for decades, he required an Urdu interpreter in court.
“If someone’s not born here and they’re here to exploit children, after the sentences they should be deported,” the woman told GB News. “There’s nothing to say that they’ll stop exploiting children. We can deport them and let their own country deal with them. The Foreign Office should absolutely give Pakistan full punishment if they refuse to accept grooming gang rapists. Those men need to be deported or Pakistan should have its visas restricted.”
Despite the deportation of criminal foreign nationals who receive over a 12 month sentence being required under the 2007 UK Borders Act, many of them fight the claims via the European Court of Human Rights. Others, such as Qari Abdul Rauf, a ringleader in the Rochdale grooming gangs, have failed to be deported due to their home countries refusing to take them back. Civil servants have blocked new powers under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 to impose visa restrictions on countries that refuse to take back their offenders.
Commenting on the case on X, Conservative Party leadership candidate Robert Jenrick MP decried the judge’s behaviour. “Foreign sex abusers who came here and joined grooming gangs to exploit young girls should obviously be deported,” he argued. “The victims will not be silenced.”
While Lee Anderson MP, the Reform representative for Ashfield, noted that the grooming gangs have gotten away with “raping young English girls” because the police and social services have been “very slow” to act. “It would now appear that even when these vile perverts are caught that our judicial system still puts the perpetrators before the victims. No ifs or buts, if they were born in a different country send them straight back,” he added.
