Daily Mail
May 1, 2014
A gang groomed vulnerable young girls through Facebook before plying them with alcohol and raping them, a court heard yesterday.
Yasir Ali, 28, Daaim Ashraf, 19, Akash Yashin, 18, Mohammed Aslam, 24, and James Daly, 25, were involved in a sex ring spanning five years, it was said.
It was alleged that after messaging their eight female victims, who were between 13 and 16 at the time, over social media, ring leader Ali, along with Ashraf, began grooming them.
The young white girls, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were encouraged to meet up with the men – four of whom are Pakistani – and were plied with alcohol, Cambridge Crown Court heard.
They were driven around Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, by Ali – who used the nicknames ‘Mr Nice’ and ‘Sketcher Pidox’ on Facebook.
Mobile numbers would then be exchanged and the defendants, primarily Ali and Ashraf, would continue grooming the girls via Blackberry Messenger and text.
They would then meet up again and would go to a secluded location in cars or to a motel where the group of men would sexually exploit them.
The crown say the ‘vulnerable’ girls were picked out for their ‘very difficult backgrounds’ and thought they loved the gang members.
But they were ‘used as sex objects’ and the gang saw them as ‘worthless’ and ‘passed the girls around’.
Opening the case yesterday, Patricia Lynch, prosecuting, said Ali – the oldest of the gang – was ‘undoubtedly the primary offender’.
She said: ‘The girls were flattered and complimented and if I use the colloquial term, chatted up.
‘The girls would be driven from their home towns and villages and taken to Peterborough where they would be plied with alcohol en route and taken to secluded spots.
‘The messages by the main two defendants became increasingly sexual.
‘This resulted in the girls beginning to really like the defendants they were having contact with.
‘The grooming worked and the girls in fact began to love the defendants they were contacting, thinking it was a real relationship.
‘They found being driven round in flash cars, driving around Peterborough and being taken to hotels, they found that attractive.
‘Because of this grooming they thought these men wanted loving relationships.’
She added: ‘They thought they were respectful older men who gave them attention and that made them feel special.
‘But it was quite the opposite. The girls were being quite deliberately used for sex and passed around.
‘Their young age, their vulnerability, the grooming and the alcohol given to them negates any consent they could have given because it was not informed consent.
‘The girls were groomed, manipulated and plied with alcohol and they were simply being used as sex objects by these defendants who simply viewed them as worthless.’