The Huddersfield grooming gang was a group of men who were convicted of sexual offences against girls in
Huddersfield
Huddersfield is a market town in the Kirklees district in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confluence into ...
,
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...
, United Kingdom. It is the largest gang ever convicted for sex 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 men convicted to 41 by August 2021.
A report released in June 2019 indicated that 15 of the 22 females involved were known to children's services. Although there was "sufficient evidence" that two girls were being sexually exploited, one as early as 2007, no action was taken by the
Kirklees
Kirklees is a local government district of West Yorkshire, England, governed by Kirklees Council with the status of a metropolitan borough. The largest town and administrative centre of Kirklees is Huddersfield, and the district also includes ...
Children's Services.
Trials
Twenty-seven men were accused of sexual offences including
rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...
and
trafficking
Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, substances, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.
There are various ...
against eighteen girls aged between 11 and 17, with two further women accused of child neglect. Due to the large number of defendants, the court proceedings against them were conducted in three separate trials.
Reporting restrictions on the trial were imposed in November 2017 under the 1981
Contempt of Court Act to avoid prejudice on subsequent trials.
However, the reporting restrictions were criticised by the
far right, who claimed that it was a cover-up as the defendants were Asian and Muslims, and that it amounted to "state censorship".
Far right activist
Tommy Robinson live-streamed video from outside the court on
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
during the second of the trials, filmed some of the accused and talked about Muslims and "jihad rape gangs", which led to his arrest and prosecution for contempt of court.
Twenty men were convicted in October 2018 of 120 offenses of rape and abuse against fifteen girls, and sentenced to a total of 221 years. Reporting restrictions on the trials were partially lifted in October 2018.
Sixteen of the gang were sentenced in October 2018, the remaining four were sentenced in November 2018. One of the convicted gang members, Faisal Nadeem, appealed against the sentence arguing that Robinson's live video had prejudiced the trial, but his permission to appeal was refused by a Court of Appeal judge.
Six separate trials had been held by February 2020, with 34 men convicted in total.
Another man was convicted in April 2020.
Perpetrators
A total of 29 people were arrested and charged by March 2017 under Operation Tendersea.
Most of the gang were
Pakistani and were from the areas of Huddersfield, Sheffield, Bradford and Dewsbury.
The ringleader of the gang, however, was Amere Singh Dhaliwal,
a Sikh man.
[ Quote: "In 2018, members of a 20-strong grooming gang in Huddersfield were jailed, and there were two Sikhs amongst them: Amere Singh Dhaliwal and Raj Singh Basran. Dhaliwal caused the most outrage within the Sikh community because at the time of the trial, he appeared as a turban-wearing, initiated Sikh. Some members of the community falsely suggested he was a Muslim who had converted to Sikhism. They made this claim to deflect negative attention away from the Sikh community, but also to strengthen their narrative that Muslim men were adopting the Sikh identity to harm the community".] He is a married father of two children and known by the nickname ''"Prestos"''.
In total 15 girls were abused. The first allegations to be taken seriously were made in 2011 when a victim wrote a letter to a judge about the abuse although no formal complaint was lodged at the time. A formal complaint was made in 2013 by another victim.
Twenty of the accused were first convicted on 19 October 2018 of 120 offences against the 15 girls.
One of the gang members, Sajid Hussain, fled during the trial and was sentenced in his absence. Two more men were sentenced in June 2019. Mohammed Akram was previously convicted and had his sentenced increased whilst Usman Khalid was sentenced to five years. A further five men were jailed in November 2019. Three of the men were not named for legal reasons whilst Umar Zaman fled to Pakistan and was sentenced in his absence. Zaman was later arrested and jailed when he tried to return to the UK in 2022.
Seven more men were convicted in February 2020. A man was convicted in April 2020 along with another previously unnamed man, Shaqeel Hussain, who was sentenced to a further 12 months.
Three men were sentenced in July 2021 for rape and grooming offences dating back to the 1990's. Three more men were sentenced in August 2021 whilst another man was further sentenced.
Remarks by Sajid Javid
After the reporting restrictions were lifted, the
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national s ...
Sajid Javid
Sajid Javid (; born 5 December 1969) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from June 2021 to July 2022, having previously served as Home Secretary from 2018 to 2019 and Chancellor of the Exchequer ...
sent out a tweet stating: "These sick Asian
paedophile
Pedophilia ( alternatively spelt paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty a ...
s are finally facing justice. I want to commend the bravery of the victims. For too long, they were ignored. Not on my watch. There will be no
no-go area
A "no-go area" or "no-go zone" is a neighborhood or other geographic area where some or all outsiders are either physically prevented from entering or can enter at risk. The term includes exclusion zones, which are areas that are officially kept o ...
s."
His referencing of the ethnic heritage of the offenders was strongly condemned by senior
Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
politicians
Diane Abbott,
Sadiq Khan
Sadiq Aman Khan (; born 8 October 1970) is a British politician serving as Mayor of London since 2016. He was previously Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting from 2005 until 2016. A member of the Labour Party, Khan is on the party's sof ...
and
David Lammy, who alleged that he was seeking “to pin the blame on
..one group” and pandering to the toxic racist agenda of the far right.
In a later interview with
Sky News, Javid accused his critics of being "oversensitive" and refused to apologize or withdraw his comment, saying: "When I made that comment I was stating the facts, and the sad truth is that if you look at recent high-profile convictions of gang-based child sexual exploitation there is a majority of people that come from Pakistani heritage backgrounds - that's plain for everyone to see."
In December 2020, a report by the
Home Office stated that a number of studies have indicated an over-representation of Asian and Black offenders in group-based child sexual exploitation. Most of the same studies show that the majority of offenders are White. The
Home Office report also stated the research on offender ethnicity is limited, and tends to rely on poor quality data. It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions about differences in ethnicity of offenders; it is likely that no one community or culture is uniquely predisposed to offending.
See also
*
List of sexual abuses perpetrated by groups
Following is a list of articles about notable sexual abuses perpetrated by groups, ordered by countries of occurrence: Oceania Pitcarin Islands
*Pitcairn sexual assault trial of 2004
Australia
*Ashfield gang rapes
* Catholic sexual abuse cases in ...
References
{{Child sexual abuse in the UK
2004 crimes in the United Kingdom
2000s crimes in the United Kingdom
2000s in West Yorkshire
2010s crimes in the United Kingdom
2010s in West Yorkshire
2010s trials
British people convicted of child sexual abuse
Crime in West Yorkshire
Grooming gang
Rape in the 2000s
Rape in the 2010s
Rape in Yorkshire
Sex crime trials
Sex crimes in England
Child sex rings
Pakistani-British gangs
Trials in England
Incidents of violence against girls