The Oxford child sex abuse ring was an alleged group of 22 men who were convicted of various sexual offences against underage girls in the English city of Oxford between 1998 and 2012. Thames Valley Police launched Operation Bullfinch in May 2011 to investigate allegations of historical sexual abuse, leading to ten men being convicted. Upon further allegations in 2015, Thames Valley Police then launched Operation Silk, resulting in ten more different men being convicted and Operation Spur which resulted in two more convictions. [1] [2] The term itself and the investigation has been heavily criticized by Muslims and left wing members for being highly racially motivated and Islamophobic. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Some have put the blame on media and the police for ignoring such crimes if they really happened for so long [8] Some have even questioned the narrative of grooming gangs as similar events elsewhere in India and Nigeria have instead been blamed as a conspiracy by right-wing Hindus and Christians. [9] [10] [11]
In March 2015, a report revealed that more than 300 children, mostly girls from the city of Oxford, could have been groomed and sexually exploited in the area. It accused the Thames Valley Police, then led by Chief Constable Sara Thornton, of disbelieving the girls and failing to act on repeated calls for help, and Oxfordshire Social Services of failing to protect them despite compelling evidence they were in danger. [12] The report also called for research into why a significant number of perpetrators of child grooming are of "Pakistani and/or Muslim heritage". [13] A Home Office report published in December 2020, however, concluded "research has found that group-based child sexual exploitation offenders are most commonly white. Some studies suggest an overrepresentation of black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending". [14]
The first seven men included two pairs of brothers with three other men in June 2013. [15] One of the gang was further convicted further in June 2014 along with two other men. [16] Three of the men were further convicted in another trial in January 2019 under another operation named Operation Silk. [17] There were two further groups of men convicted under Operation Silk, eight men in June 2018 and a further two men in February 2020, along with a man who was further convicted. [18] [19] A man was convicted in March 2015 [20] and two cousins convicted in July 2016. [21] Those found guilty include: [22] [23] [24]
| Forename | Surname | Age | Of | Charges |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kamar | Jamil | 27 | Summertown, Oxford | Found guilty of five counts of rape, two counts of conspiracy to rape and one count of arranging child prostitution. |
| Akhtar | Dogar | 32 | East Oxford | Found guilty of five counts of rape, three counts of conspiracy to rape, two counts of child prostitution and one count of trafficking. |
| Anjum | Dogar | 31 | East Oxford | Found guilty of three counts of rape, two counts of child prostitution, three counts of conspiracy to rape and one count of trafficking. |
| Assad | Hussain | 32 | Rose Hill, Oxford | Found guilty of two counts of sexual activity with a child. |
| Mohammed | Karrar | 38 | Cowley | Found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to rape, four counts of rape of a child, one count of using an instrument to procure miscarriage, two counts of trafficking, one count of assault of a child by penetration, two counts of child prostitution, three counts of rape, two counts of conspiracy to rape a child and one count of supplying a class A drug. |
| Bassam | Karrar | 33 | Cowley | Found guilty of two counts of rape, one count of rape of a child, two counts of conspiracy to rape a child, two counts of child prostitution, one count of trafficking and one count of conspiracy to rape. |
| Zeeshan | Ahmed | 27 | Wood Farm, Oxford | Found guilty of two counts of sexual activity with a child and perverting the court of justice. |
| Bilal | Ahmed | 27 | Maidenhead | Found guilty of serious sexual assault. |
| Mustafa | Ahmed | 26 | London | Found guilty of sexual assault. |
| Assad | Hussain | 37 | Iffley Road, Oxford | Found guilty of five counts of rape and two counts of indecent assault. |
| Moinul | Islam | 42 | Wykeham Crescent, Oxford | Found guilty of rape, two counts of indecent assault and supplying cannabis. |
| Kameer | Iqbal | 39 | Dashwood Road, Oxford | Found guilty of guilty of three counts of rape. |
| Khalid | Hussain | 38 | Ashhurst Way, Oxford | Found guilty of rape and indecent assault. |
| Alladitta | Yousaf | 38 | Bodley Road, Oxford | Found guilty of indecent assault. |
| Haji | Khan | 38 | Littlegreen Lane, Birmingham | Found guilty of conspiracy to rape. |
| Kamran | Khan | 36 | Northfield Road, Bolton | Found guilty of indecent assault and false imprisonment. |
| Raheem | Ahmed | 40 | Starwort Path, Oxford | Found guilty of four counts of indecent assault, false imprisonment and supplying a class B drug. |
| Naim | Khan | 38 | Herschel Crescent, Oxford | Found guilty of eight counts of rape, seven counts of indecent assault and one count of supplying a class B drug. |
| Mohammed | Nazir | 42 | Wood Farm, Oxford | Found guilty of seven counts of rape, eight counts of indecent assault and one count of supplying a class B drug. |
| Tilal | Madhi | 36 | Friars Street, Hereford | Found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to rape a girl under 16, conspiracy to indecently assault a girl under 16, one count of trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation and one count of arranging or facilitating child prostitution of a child under the age of 18 years. |
| Salik | Miah | 34 | Ferry Hinksey Road, West Oxford | Found guilty of one count of conspiracy to rape, two counts of rape and one count of arranging or facilitating child prostitution. |
| Azad | Miah | 37 | Riverside Court, Oxford | Found guilty of one count of conspiracy to rape, two counts of rape and one count of arranging or facilitating child prostitution. |
From 2004 to 2012, the men groomed children from 11-15 years-old from dysfunctional backgrounds who were unlikely to be believed by others living in care homes. They were given presents, plied with alcohol, and introduced to crack cocaine and heroin. [25] After the girls became dependent on the men, [25] they were guarded so they could not escape [26] and threatened that they and their families would be harmed if they tried to leave. [25] The girls were raped vaginally, orally, and anally, sometimes by several men, [25] the abuse occasionally lasting for several days at a time. [26] Some girls were groomed to be prostitutes and taken to guest houses in Bradford, Leeds, London, Slough, and Bournemouth where men [27] paid to have sex with them. [25] The girls were subjected to extreme sexual violence, biting, suffocating, and burning. They were tortured with knives, baseball bats, and meat cleavers and were occasionally urinated upon. [25] One 14-year-old girl was burned with a lighter when she tried to resist having sex. [28] The mother of another girl said that "she had begged social services staff to rescue her [daughter] from the gang", who had "threatened to cut the girl's face off" and "slit the throats" of members of the girl's family. [29]
One girl aged 12 was forced into prostitution. [30] She was abused in various places around Oxford, including a flat, the Nanford Guest House, Travelodge and in Shotover Woods. [27] She frequently contracted chlamydia and was covered in burns from where men had stubbed out their cigarettes. [30] She began to self-harm and described her experiences as "living hell". [30] She said that the men sometimes seemed to be aroused by her crying. [27]
Mohammed Karrar, the ringleader of the gang was "brazen in his exploitation". According to the Guardian, he "acted in the belief that the authorities would never challenge him—something that for years proved to be true." [31] He branded the buttocks of one under-aged victim with his initial, "M", marking her as his property and charged men between £400 and £600 to have sex with her. [28] Karrar visited the girl at her house where she was a carer for her deaf and ill parents. [28] [32] [33] He performed an illegal abortion on the same girl.
He regularly had sex with her when she was the age of 12. His brother had a parallel relationship with her, although she did not see him as often. Before she reached her teens, she was pregnant. When Mohammed Karrar found out, he was “fucking fuming” with her for allowing it to happen and told her, “You should have been more responsible.” He went into a rage and grabbed her by the throat. Soon after, he gave her drugs and took her to Reading, where a backstreet abortion was performed with a hooked instrument. [34]
A 14-year-old girl was threatened with a gun into having sex with member of the sex ring. She said the gang members were aware she lived in a children's home and that Akhtar Dogar, a gang member, waited around the corner from the children's home in Henley-on-Thames where she lived. [35] She described being transported around flats, guest houses and parks where she was then raped. [36]
The Daily Telegraph reported Dr Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation, as saying that "race and religion were inextricably linked to the recent spate of grooming rings in which Muslim men have targeted under-age white girls":
The view of some Islamic preachers towards white women can be appalling. They encourage their followers to believe that these women are habitually promiscuous, decadent, and sleazy—sins which are made all the worse by the fact that they are kaffurs or non-believers. Their dress code, from miniskirts to sleeveless tops, is deemed to reflect their impure and immoral outlook. According to this mentality, these white women deserve to be punished for their behaviour by being exploited and degraded. [37]
Hargey blames the agencies of the state, including the police, social services and the care system, who ″seemed eager to ignore the sickening exploitation that was happening before their eyes. Terrified of accusations of racism, desperate not to undermine the official creed of cultural diversity, they took no action against obvious abuse."
In the same newspaper, journalist Allison Pearson claimed that "fear of racism" had allowed sex crimes against white girls by Pakistani Muslims to become a serious problem not only in Oxford but throughout the country. She described the Pakistani Muslim community as "essentially a Victorian society that has landed like Doctor Who's Tardis on a liberal, permissive planet it despises". [38] She criticised the views of Sue Berelowitz, the Deputy Children's Commissioner, who has attempted to downplay the over-representation of certain groups in sex-crimes against children. While expressing relief that some action was now being taken against the problem, she concluded that trouble was still in store: "what remains is a political class still far too timid to challenge growing and alarming separatism in Muslim education and law."
In The Independent , commentator Paul Vallely pointed out that there was a danger of the media, fuelled on a toxic mixture of "combination of depravity and self-righteous indignation", peddling vicious stereotypes about Pakistani Muslim culture. He pointed out that these sexual crimes were not confined to Pakistani Muslims or directed purely against white victims: a Turkish Muslim gang in London had targeted a Bangladeshi girl and, in the Rochdale case, one Pakistani Muslim perpetrator had raped a member of his own community. He spotlighted voices from the Muslim community who were interrogating issues around the dysfunction there:
In June 2013 the gang received sentences totalling 95 years for what the presiding judge, Judge Peter Rook, described as "a series of sexual crimes of the utmost depravity". [15] Brothers Mohammed and Bassam Karrar received life sentences, with minimum tariffs of 20 years for Mohammed Karrar and 15 years for Bassam Karrar. Brothers Akhtar and Anjum Dogar received life sentences with minimum tariffs of 17 years. Kamar Jamil received a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 12 years. Assad Hussain and Zeeshan Ahmed were both jailed for seven years. [15] In a further trial involving 3 gang members in 2018, [40] Mohammed Karrar was again found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in 2019, while Bassam Karrar received 10 years and Anjum Dogar received 20 years. [41]
A serious case review of the Oxford sex gang commissioned by Maggie Blyth, independent chair of the Oxfordshire safeguarding children board, was released in March 2015. It reported that as many as 373 children, 50 of them boys, may have been targeted for sex in Oxfordshire in sixteen years. [42] The report criticized Thames Valley Police and Oxfordshire County Council for "many errors" and not acting sooner. Among the failings are a culture of denial among the professionals who blamed girls for precocious and difficult behaviour, blamed girls for putting themselves at risk of harm, tolerated underage sexual activity by girls with older men, and failed to recognize girls had been groomed and violently controlled. [43] The report called for research into why people of "Pakistani and/or Muslim heritage" constituted a significant number of the perpetrators. [13]
The report found no evidence of "wilful professional misconduct" and said that senior managers were not made aware of what was going on, and no one had been disciplined or sacked despite the errors made. The MP for Oxford East, Andrew Smith, called on the government to set up an independent inquiry. [43] Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking at a summit to address the issue after similar scandals in Rotherham and Oxfordshire, made a number of proposals, including up to five years in jail for teachers, councillors, and social workers in England and Wales who failed to protect children, unlimited fines for individuals and organisations shown to have let children down, and a national helpline to enable professionals to report bad practice. [44]
In December 2017, Quilliam released a report entitled "Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation – Dissecting Grooming Gangs", concluding that 84% of offenders were of South Asian heritage. [45] This review was criticised for its poor methodology by Ella Cockbain and Waqas Tufail, in their paper "Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the 'Muslim grooming gangs' narrative" which was published in January 2020. [46] In December that year, a further report by the Home Office was released, stating 'seems most likely that the ethnicity of group-based CSE offenders is in line with CSA more generally and with the general population, with the majority of offenders being White', and that it is not possible to conclude that Asian men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes. [14] [47]
In scholarly literature and criminology, gang rape, also called serial gang rape, party rape, group rape, or multiple perpetrator rape, is the rape of a single victim by two or more violators. Gang rapes are forged on shared identity, religion, ethnic group, or race. There are multiple motives for serial gang rapes, such as for sexual entitlement, asserting sexual prowess, war, punishment, and, in up to 30% of cases, for targeting racial minorities, religious minorities, or ethnic groups.
The relationship between race and crime in the United Kingdom is the subject of academic studies, government surveys, media coverage, and public concern. Under the Criminal Justice Act 1991, section 95, the government collects annual statistics based on race and crime.
The Rochdale child sex abuse ring involved underage teenage girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Nine men were convicted of sex trafficking and other offences including rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child in May 2012. This resulted in Greater Manchester Police launching Operation Doublet and other operations to investigate further claims of abuse. As of January 2024 a total of 42 men had been convicted resulting in jail sentences totalling 432 years. Forty-seven girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation during the initial police investigation. The men were British Pakistanis, which led to discussion on whether the failure to investigate them was linked to the authorities' fear of being accused of racial prejudice. The girls were mainly White British.
Punishment for rape in Pakistan under the Pakistani laws is either death penalty or imprisonment of between ten and twenty-five years. For cases related to gang rape, the punishment is either death penalty or life imprisonment. DNA test and other scientific evidence are used in prosecuting rape cases in Pakistan.
The Derby child sex abuse ring was a group of men who sexually abused up to a hundred girls in Derby, England. In 2010, after an undercover investigation by Derbyshire police, members of the ring were charged with 75 offences relating to 26 girls. Nine of the 13 accused were convicted of grooming and raping girls between 12 and 18 years old. The attacks provoked fierce discussion about race and sexual exploitation.
The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consists of the organised child sexual abuse that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England from the late 1980s until 2013 and the failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period. Researcher Angie Heal, who was hired by local officials and warned them about child exploitation occurring between 2002 and 2007, has since described it as the "biggest child protection scandal in UK history", with one report estimating that 1,400 girls were abused by "grooming gangs" between 1997 and 2013. Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers. From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16. From January 2011 Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012 that the abuse in the town was widespread and that the police and council had known about it for over ten years.
The Telford child sexual exploitation scandal is an ongoing scandal spanning over several decades in the United Kingdom involving a group of Pakistani men who were convicted of engaging in sexual contact with local female minors between 2007 and 2009 in Telford in the English county of Shropshire. While media reports had suggested there were 100 or more victims and around 200 suspects, the Sunday Mirror reported in March 2018 that up to 1,000 may have been affected, with some even murdered, in incidents dating back to the 1970s. Social workers and police cast doubt on this report, denying that Telford had a "discernible problem compared to other towns".
Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom has been reported in the country throughout its history. In about 90% of cases the abuser is a person known to the child. However, cases during the second half of the twentieth century, involving religious institutions, schools, popular entertainers, politicians, military personnel, and other officials, have been revealed and widely publicised since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Child sexual abuse rings in numerous towns and cities across the UK have also drawn considerable attention.
The Bristol child sex abuse ring was a group of 13 men who committed sexual offences against underage teenage girls in Bristol, in Southwestern England. In November 2014, they were convicted of offences including rape, paying a child for sex, causing or inciting child prostitution, sexual acts with children and sex trafficking.
The Peterborough sex abuse case involved 10 men who committed sexual offences against under-aged girls, some as young as 12, in the English city of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. In a series of trials in 2014 and 2015, they were found guilty of rape, child prostitution and trafficking for sexual exploitation. Police had been alerted by the Rotherham and Rochdale child abuse cases to the possibility of abuse taking place.
The Banbury child sex abuse ring was a group of six men who committed serious sexual offences against under-aged girls in the English town of Banbury, Oxfordshire. In March 2015, they were found guilty of offences including rape and sexual activity with a child over a period extending from 2009 to 2014. Police in Banbury had drawn on the lessons of Operation Bullfinch, which targeted sexual abuse in nearby Oxford.
The Aylesbury child sex abuse ring was a group of five men who committed serious sexual offences against two under-aged girls in the English town of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. In July 2015, they were found guilty of offences including rape and child prostitution over a period extending from 2006 to 2012. The child protection charity Barnardo's stated that it had worked with the two girls in 2008 and referred one of them to Buckinghamshire County Council as in danger of child sex exploitation. The council did not respond adequately and, following the convictions, apologised to the two girls for its failure to protect them. It has now instituted a Serious Case Review to examine those failures.
The Keighley child sex abuse ring was a group of twelve men who committed serious sexual offences against two under-aged girls in the English town of Keighley and city of Bradford, West Yorkshire. In December 2015, they were found guilty of rape and other forms of sexual abuse by a unanimous jury verdict at Bradford Crown Court. They were sentenced in February 2016 to a total of 130 years in jail. The main victim, who had been targeted by ten of the men, was aged between 13 and 14 at the time of the attacks between 2011 and 2012.
The Halifax child sex abuse ring was a group of men who committed serious sexual offences against under-aged girls in the English town of Halifax and city of Bradford, West Yorkshire. It was the largest child sexual exploitation investigation in the United Kingdom. In 2016, the perpetrators were found guilty of rape and other crimes in several separate trials at Leeds Crown Court. In total, as many as a hundred men may have been involved in child abuse. Twenty-five suspects were charged by West Yorkshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service and 18 of these were found guilty, totalling over 175 years of prison time. A further nine men were convicted in February 2019 for grooming two underage girls in Bradford and sentenced to over 130 years in prison. The majority of those charged and later convicted come from the town's Asian community; there were fears that their arrests might impact race relations in the town.
The Newcastle sex abuse ring were a gang of seventeen men and a woman who sexually abused adolescent girls and young women from 2010 to 2014 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, after plying them with alcohol and drugs. The men were of Albanian, Kurdish, Bangladeshi, Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi, Eastern European and Pakistani heritage who were aged between 27 and 44. A British man of Indian heritage was also charged for conspiracy to incite prostitution and supplying drugs to a victim. The victims ranged in age from 13 to 25.
The Huddersfield grooming gang was a group of men who were convicted of sexual offences against girls in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. It is the largest gang ever convicted for sexual abuse in the United Kingdom. The offences took place between 2004 and 2011, and the men were charged following the Operation Tendersea inquiry by the police. The trials began in April 2017 and 20 men were convicted in 2018 in three separate trials. Since then, further men have been convicted in a series of trials, bringing the total number of perpetrators convicted to 41 by August 2021.
Sammy Woodhouse is an activist against child sexual abuse. She was a victim of the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal, which she helped expose by giving an anonymous interview to Andrew Norfolk of The Times. Woodhouse has actively supported pardoning child sexual abuse victims for crimes they were coerced into committing.
Margaret Oliver is an English former Detective Constable with the Greater Manchester Police. She is known as a whistleblower for exposing the poor handling of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring case by her own force.
Muslim grooming gangs in the United Kingdom refers to the phenomenon of groups of men, with heritage from predominately Muslim-majority countries or proclaiming to follow Islam, abusing children in group-based child sexual exploitation (CSE). The ethnicity and religion of perpetrators and the victims they abuse has been a focal point in discussions.
