Christians Under Attack

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sexually abused her. In this article, Sue Reid reveals how charities are helping those victims of this terrible abuse and importantly, why they are pushing the state to not hold back in their quest to find and convict the grotesque individuals.

At 13, Emma still played with dolls and loved nothing more than walking with her pet spaniel, Mollie, through the fields next to her home on the outskirts of Leeds.

Her blonde hair was cut in a little girl’s bob and she had never kissed a boy.

The highlight of her week was Saturday, when she would meet friends at the local shopping centre while her middle-class parents, Jack and Carol, went to Tesco.

Yet by her 14th birthday, that innocent childhood was over.

Emma had been raped and sexually abused in the most grotesque manner by 54 men from all over Britain.

‘It feels as if one minute I was playing with dolls, the next I was a sex slave,’ she told me this week.

‘I was wearing my favourite candy-striped ankle socks when I was first raped. Afterwards, my white coat was covered in blood.’

Emma remembers every detail. Two of those ‘friends’ in the shopping
mall were teenage boys, Niv and Jay, who were being used by a criminal gang to lure naive local girls into an underage sex ring.

They introduced Emma to older relatives, in their 20s and 30s, who said they wanted to be her friends, too. They plied her with vodka, cigarettes and cannabis spliffs.

‘I thought I was having a great time. I had no idea the men were part of a gang,’ she says now.

‘They were more exciting than my school friends. I began to meet them every day after school before catching the bus home.’

With rap music blaring, the men drove her around Leeds in a expensive cars, including a Bentley with personalised number plates. They bought her cheeseburgers at McDonald’s and gave her a new mobile phone.

One, 24-year-old, Tarik, took a particular interest in her. He was the gang’s ring leader - and one day he imposed his authority on her in the most brutal fashion.

He led Emma to a patch of wasteland near the bus station and raped her.

The whole episode was watched by a group from the gang who, laughing, recorded the attack on their mobile phone cameras.

Afterwards, Emma was left to pick herself up, try to wash the blood off her clothes in the nearby public lavatory, and catch the early evening bus home.

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Almost equally wicked were the threats that went with the rape.

Emma, who is now 21 and virtually living in hiding in the North of England, recalls: ‘It was like joining a cult.

‘They threatened to firebomb my home with my parents inside if I told anyone what they’d done, shoot me with a pistol, rape my mother and kill my older brother if I told anyone.

‘In my child’s mind, I wanted to believe Tarik had feelings for me. But he was just a pimp, and soon he was making money out of me by selling me to other men — I don’t know how much for.’

‘He would give me presents, vodka and cigarettes. But soon I was paying him back by having to do what I had to do with man after man, in empty flats, in parks and down alleyways.’

If Emma’s story were a one-off it would be distressing enough, but the reality is that it is not.

Many schoolgirls - some aged just eight - all over the north of England are falling prey to gangs who groom them to be lucrative sex slaves.

It is an organised crime which police say reaps four times more money for these gangs than dealing in drugs.

This week, a privately educated schoolgirl forced into sex slavery at 14 gave evidence in court against nine men, who were jailed for her ‘sustained sexual abuse’ over many months.

She was picked up in 2008 by Asad Hassan, 27, while walking through Rochdale, a former cotton-mill town in Greater Manchester.

He took her to a nightclub and gave her vodka before his friends, Mohammed
Basharat, 27, and Mohammed Atif, 28, drove her to a private house and all three had sex with her.

The daughter of a professional couple, she was then passed around from man to man, as Superintendent Paul Savill, of Greater Manchester Police explained after the case.

‘The level of abuse was beyond belief. She was a commodity, beaten, threatened
and sexually exploited.’

As with Emma, the experience of this girl has a very uncomfortable racial element to it, which is often not spoken about.

In both cases, they were white girls and the gang members were Asian.

Emma says: ‘Most of the men running the sex slave gangs in the north of England are Asians of Pakistani origin. But very few of the authorities will admit this.’

Is she right to say so? If she is, why are so few people in officialdom willing to discuss the issue?

At this point, two things should be stressed. First, that the great majority of Asian men are law-abiding decent citizens, who often possess stronger family values than their white counterparts.

Second, that rape and paedophilia are universal problems that have nothing to do with race and ethnicity.

But it’s also true that, during this investigation, I encountered a reluctance to comment on the racial element of these dreadful crimes.

One charity — Risky Business, operating in Rotherham — refused to answer any questions on the racial make-up of the gangs, although, with the help of Emma herself, it counsels scores of white girls who have been sexually exploited by Asians.

At another charity, Coalition for the Removal of Pimping, based in Leeds, the chief executive Gillian Gibbons said: ‘This is a crime committed by men. We are trying to work in their communities to change their attitudes to women. I cannot comment on the race of the criminals involved.’

So it has been left to the mothers of the victims, former local MP Ann Cryer and some Asian youth workers to highlight the problem.

The mothers say that political correctness and a fear of being branded racist is at the heart of the taboo.

One mother from Yorkshire, whose 13-year-old girl was lured into sex slavery, told me: ‘Almost every man found guilty of grooming under-age girls in this part of Britain is Asian, and everyone knows that.’

It was Ann Cryer who provoked a storm when she blamed traditional Asian culture for these kinds of attacks.

Seven years ago, she said: ‘It’s a fact that all the victims of these terrible crimes are white girls, and all the alleged perpetrators are Asian men.

That is significant and needs to be addressed.

She later added: ‘The family and cultural norms of their community means the Asian men are expected to marry a first cousin or another relative. Therefore, until the marriage is arranged, they look for sex.

‘There is also a problem with the view Asian men have about white girls. It is generally fairly low.’

Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation,
a charity working for peaceful harmony between different ethnic communities, has gone further.

He says: ‘I think the police are over cautious about this issue because they fear being branded racist. That they fear being branded racist. That is wrong. These are criminals that  should be treated as criminals whatever their race.’

Meanwhile, another Asian youth worker — himself a reformed former pimp — told the Mail that while the gangs’ main aim was to make money there were also cultural issues at play.

‘Asian men in these gangs believe white girls have low morals compared with Muslim girls. They believe they wear what they describe as slags’ clothing showing their bodies, and deserve what they get.’

Scotland Yard estimates that 5,000 British-born children are today under the control of sex-slave gangs  across the UK. At least ten towns on both sides of the Pennines face
the problem.

In Blackburn alone, 385 young girls have been offered protection after being sexually exploited by men in the past two years.

There have been 63 charges against men suspected of giving them drugs, alcohol and presents in return for sex.

Across Lancashire, 201 men, a quarter of them Asian and the rest white, have been investigated for the sexual exploitation and the abduction of 370 children this year alone.

Sheila Taylor, chairwoman of the National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People, is unsurprised by the huge tally of child victims.

‘The figures in Blackburn will be much the same as any other town of a similar size,’ she says emphatically.

As a victim, Emma knows from advising the girls in Yorkshire that their age is getting younger.

‘A few years ago, the girls were 15 or 16. I was just 13. Now there are plenty of ten-year-olds. The gangs want virgins and girls who are free of sexual diseases. Most of the men buying sex with the girls have Muslim wives, and they don’t want to risk infection. The younger you look, the more saleable you are.’

This week, Emma met three 14- year-olds at the charity Risky Business who are still trying to escape from the clutches of gangs of Asian men.

She told them: ‘I know the pattern. I bet you get men phoning you from London, Manchester or Birmingham who somehow know your mobile number.

‘They ask to meet for sex, and you are afraid to say no, because the gang who controls you has threatened to hurt you or your family.

All three girls nodded. Emma’s parents discovered the truth about her own ordeal just a week before her 14th birthday, in the spring of 2003.

Her mother and father, who owned a grocery business, were working when neighbours on the smart estate where the family lived rang to say two Asian men were
hovering outside the house looking for Emma. When they rushed home, the men had gone.

They asked their daughter to explain, and Emma admitted she had been raped (in fact she had been assaulted by Tarik once a week for months, and by many more men besides).

They called the police who started an investigation.

‘When the gang found out, they threatened the family who eventually decided to drop the charges because they feared for their lives.

A frightened Emma told her parents: ‘These men are more powerful than God.’

For a couple of months, Emma was kept in relative safety at home, only allowed to visit friends if her mother drove her to their houses.

‘But the mobile phone calls and messages from the gang never stopped. One from Tarik to Emma said simply: ‘U R 4 IT’.

Another message said: ‘Open your mouth and you will get a bullet in it.’

If Emma’s mother answered her mobile, a man would say:

‘Put Emma on the phone, love. Just do it or else.’

There were hundreds of calls, even after the family changed her SIM card.

In the end, the pressure became too much and the family decided they had to move away to protect Emma.

They settled in another part of Yorkshire, and Emma received counselling to help her recover.

Today, she has dyed her blonde hair a dark shade, and her family keep their new address a secret from all but their closest relatives.

Emma has written a book about her experiences, called The End Of My World, and uses a pseudonym.

She is still scared that the gang could find her.

Emma managed to rebuild her life to some degree through a longstanding relationship with a young man - who happened to be Asian - though it has now come to an end.

Only recently, she visited Leeds on a day trip. She was having a coffee in a bar, when the gang’s leader Tarik - her former tormentor - walked through the door but didn’t
recognise her, because she was quite a bit older.

‘I know he wouldn’t be interested in me any more,’ she says quietly.

‘He was looking for girls who are still children to groom as sex slaves. Younger ones, who the punters will pay the highest price for.’

Some names have been changed