Latest Offenders Middlesbrough

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A TAXI driver who raped a teenage passenger in his car has been jailed for seven years.

Married Liaqat Ali, 42, was also banned from ever driving a taxi again for the sex attack on the lone girl.

He took advantage of the 16-year-old girl who got in his cab after celebrating at a birthday party with friends in Middlesbrough.

The teenager was picked up by Ali in his hackney carriage on Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough on March 2 this year.

Teesside Crown Court heard how the girl assumed she would be in safe hands getting into the licensed taxi.

She was clearly drunk and had been “half asleep”, with her head against the seatbelt during the journey.

But her trust was betrayed after Ali drove her to a secluded spot in Acklam instead of taking her to her home.

She had to get out to go to the toilet but when she got back in the vehicle he forced her to perform a sex act on him.

When she eventually got home she was screaming and pulling her hair as she told her mum about her ordeal.

Interviewed by police after his arrest, Ali accepted he had picked up the teenager but denied anything had happened.

He only later admitted there had been a sexual encounter after DNA evidence linked him to the crime. Even then, he claimed there had been consensual sex.

He repeated the claim during his trial at Teesside Crown Court last month.

Giving evidence through an interpreter, Ali claimed she had started touching him.

But the jury didn’t believe his version of events and accepted that the teenager, who is now 17, had been raped. Ali denied a charge of rape but was convicted by a majority verdict.

Judge George Moorhouse jailed Ali, of Abingdon Road, Middlesbrough, for seven years at Teesside Crown Court yesterday.

Prosecutor Christine Egerton also applied for an indefinite sexual offences prevention order (SOPO).

She said there was an element of breach of trust as the girl had felt she would be safe with the taxi driver.

The SOPO was granted, with a condition that Ali must not work as a taxi driver.

Judge Moorhouse told Ali: “You must never drive a taxi again. That will remain in force for the rest of your life.”

The judge said it was a very serious offence, telling the defendant: “You were in a position of trust and owed her a duty of care.

“You knew she was drunk at the time and to some extent you abducted her.”

Paul Abrahams, mitigating, said Ali was a family man of good character who had worked all his life.

His incarceration would have a massive impact on Ali’s wife and children, said Mr Abrahams.

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A 64-YEAR-OLD husband who downloaded scores of child pornography pictures has walked free from court still maintaining his innocence. Douglas Gaunt kept his freedom but still refuses to accept responsibility for his crimes in the face of unanimous jury verdicts on 16 charges. He was found guilty at Teesside Crown Court last month of making 59 indecent images of children by downloading them from the web. In courts often dealing with cases involving hundreds or thousands of child abuse images, these were deemed to be a small number of pictures. Judge John Walford said: The fact of the case is that were talking about two specific dates over 21 months ago and a small number of images, for the most part images of the lowest level of seriousness. He gave Gaunt a community order - as prescribed by sentencing guidelines and suggested by a probation report - with two years supervision. It will address the sort of factors that caused you to behave uncharacteristically, Im satisfied, on those two occasions, he added yesterday. Defence counsel Paul Cleasby said Gaunt continued to protest innocence but fulfilled his obligations for the sex offenders register, on which he will remain for five years. Mr Cleasby said: He is not somebody who ignores the authority of the court. He has reached 64 without any relevant previous convictions and has blemished his good character by his behaviour in June 2009. It is a very short window of offending. He added Gaunt found great solace in the support of his wife, he had not offended since and supervising him would benefit the public. Gaunt, who said he had no intention of having a computer in his home again, was also given a sexual offences prevention order. The prosecution had told jurors Gaunt, of Meadowview Road, Middlesbrough, was a man with a predilection for searching and looking for sexual images of children. The photos were found under Gaunts password-protected profile on the family computer after police searched his home on June 12, 2009. The trial heard how the investigation revealed searches for child pornography and links to 5,000 websites suggestive of child pornography, on Gaunts computer. Gaunts name, age, the area he lived and hobbies and interests like sex sex sex and young girls were registered on social networking sites. The police raid sprung from a probe into alleged communication between Gaunt and a convicted sex offender. In their online chats gauntdouglas, a user name linked to Gaunts email address and home, talked of young prostitutes on Teesside. Gaunt denied accessing, receiving, saving or searching for pictures of young girls or visiting chat rooms or social networking sites on the internet. He denied any knowledge of the pictures on his machine and said he didnt know who put them there, but insisted that it was not him. He commented of some of the images: Ive seen worse on the beach in Spain.