Another Child Grooming Gang Convicted in England

Another day, another grooming gang targeting young English children convicted. This time in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

Banaris Hussain, 36, of William Street, Crosland Moor, Huddersfield, was found guilty of one count of rape; Umar Zaman, 31, of William Street, Crosland Moor , was found guilty of two counts of rape; and Samuel Fikru, 31, of HMP Armley, was found guilty of two counts of rape, according to an official police statement.

Three other men from Huddersfield aged 38, 32, and 32, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were found guilty of  one count of attempted rape, one count of rape; and four counts of rape and one count of rape of a girl under 13, respectively.

Detective Chief Inspector Richard McNamara, of Kirklees District Safeguarding Unit, said the men were responsible for “depraved and heinous crimes”, having “purposely and repeatedly targeted and abused three vulnerable young girls for their own sexual gratification.”

Their young victims were aged 12 to 16.

Grooming gangs have targeted thousands of vulnerable girls and young women, mostly from white working-class backgrounds, over several decades — but police, prosecutors, and local government resisted investigating them and were sometimes actively hostile to victims and their families for many years. Critics have claimed this reluctance to protect the girls being abused was due to the ethnic and religious backgrounds of the abusers, leading them to fear they would be accused of racism for intervening.

A 2013 study by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection division of the National Crime Agency (NCA) found that 75 per cent of recorded “Type 1” group abuse in Britain is carried out by “Asian” men — which in the British vernacular generally refers to people with roots in South Asia rather than the Far East.