Seven men convicted under the UK’s biggest investigation into child abuse have been jailed for assaulting two vulnerable girls in Rotherham.
Mohammed Amar, 43, Mohammed Siyab, 44, Yasser Ajaibe, 39, Mohammed Zameer Sadiq, 50, Abid Saddiq, 43, Tahir Yasin, 38, and Ramin Bari, 38, were jailed at Sheffield Crown Court on Thursday and Friday.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the victims were aged 11 and 15 when the offending began and both had spent time in the care system during the offending period.
The case was part of Operation Stovewood, set up after the Jay Report found at least 1,400 girls were abused, trafficked, and groomed by gangs of men in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
The men were imprisoned for between seven and 25 years after being convicted in June of offenses committed in Rotherham, in northern England, in the early 2000s.
The cases stem from the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) Operation Stovewood, a decade-long investigation into child sexual abuse that is the largest of its kind in UK history.
It began in 2014 following the publication of the Jay Report, which sent shockwaves around the country.
It found that at least 1,400 girls were abused, trafficked, and groomed by gangs of men in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
The report found that police and social services failed to put a stop to the abuse.
Some 36 people have been convicted so far as a result of the operation, according to the NCA, which investigates serious, organized, and international crime.
The latest convictions came at the end of a nine-week trial at Sheffield Crown Court.
The trial heard how the victims, who were aged between 11 and 16 at the time of the offenses and were both in the care of social services, were groomed and often plied with alcohol or cannabis before being raped or assaulted.
They would often be collected by their abusers from the children’s homes where they lived at the time, the NCA said.
