Seven men in 'grooming gang' jailed for raping and abusing girls in the UK

Seven men who abused and raped two girls in northern England were jailed on Wednesday in the latest case involving so-called "grooming gangs" in the UK.

The gang members were sentenced to a total of 174 years in prison for multiple sex offences against two teenage girls in Rochdale between 2001 and 2006. The abuse started when each of the girls were aged 13, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

Both victims were from vulnerable backgrounds and were known to social services, according to prosecutors. One girl was living in the care system.

They were groomed with gifts and money and often plied with alcohol or drugs before being assaulted or raped, the authorities said.

At Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, the gang's ringleader — Mohammed Zahid, 64 — was jailed for 35 years.

The other six members — Mushtaq Ahmed, 66, Kasir Bashir, 50, Roheez Khan, 39, Mohammed Shahzad, 43, Nisar Hussain, 41, and Naheem Akram, 48 — were given sentences ranging from 12 to 39 years' imprisonment.

All seven of the men had denied the charges but were convicted unanimously.

"These seven men preyed on vulnerability for their own depraved sexual gain," said Detective Chief Inspector Guy Laycock, the senior investigating officer on the case.

"The men abused, degraded and then discarded the victims when they were just children. This horrific abuse knew no limits, despite their denials throughout this lengthy investigation and court case," he added.

Ethnicity in the spotlight

The decades-old issue of grooming gangs — in which hundreds of vulnerable young women and girls have been sexually exploited by men — came to full public attention in the early 2010s in the UK.

It became apparent that many of the gangs were at least partially known to local authorities for some time before their members faced many criminal charges. Scores of men in different towns have been arrested, tried and imprisoned for their actions.

However, the issue returned to the political agenda at the start of the year when Elon Musk made a series of incendiary social media posts.

His intervention came after it emerged that the UK's safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, had rejected a request for a government-led inquiry, instead saying it should be commissioned locally.

In June, the British government said that police officers in England and Wales will be required to collect ethnicity and nationality data in cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation after a review found the issue had been "shied away" from.

A previous review in 2014 estimated that some 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by men of Pakistani descent.

That report identifies failings by authorities and the police, and also cites local authority officials describing their "nervousness" at identifying the "ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist".