Locations
Dewsbury, Kirklees, West Yorkshire
Description
Three Kirklees brothers who groomed and sexually abused teenage girls have been jailed for a total of over 60 years.
Zafar Qayum, 42, and his brothers Ansar, 45, and Mohammed Jabbar, 41, all from Dewsbury were found guilty of a catalogue of sickening sex offences following a trial at Leeds Crown Court. Zafar was found guilty of six counts of rape, three counts of aiding and abetting rape and five counts of indecent assault, against three victims, Ansar was found guilty of four counts of rape and attempted indecent assault against two victims and Mohammed was found guilty of two counts of rape against one victim.
It was said the offences were committed between 1999 and 2004 against three girls who were between 13 and 15 when they were sexually abused. All girls were described as particularly vulnerable at the time they came into contact with the Qayum brothers. Police investigations began in 2017 after one of the victims reported what had happened to her.
The court said one of the victims came forward after she watched a documentary she realised what had happened to her could still be reported.
Jurors were unable to reach verdicts in two counts - one relating to Zafar and another relating to Ansar. These counts were instructed to lie on file.
As the trio were sentenced on Friday, the court heard how they had preyed on three teenage girls. Prosecutor Rupert John Doswell said the aggravating features in the case included the targeting of particularly vulnerable victims who were sometimes missing from home, and the fact Zafar instigated and encouraged his younger brother Mohammed to carry out his offending. Mr Doswell said: "He was the instigator and facilitator."
Mr Doswell said Zafar Mohammed was 20 at the time of the offending against two of the girls which went on for some years. He was between the ages of 23 and 25 when he abused another. Mohammed is now 41-years-old and was 21 or 22 at the time.
During the sentencing, the emotional victim impact statements of the three victims - now adult women - were read out to the court. In them, they told how the abuse had impacted their lives. One woman said she was a young teenager when the abuse started and has suffered with anxiety throughout her life. She said: "After the abuse stopped I would fly off the handle at the smallest of things. Nowadays, I feel void of emotions. Part of this is because of the medication I take for my mental health, I believe is due to the abuse I have suffered."
The woman says she still fears the Qayum brothers will come after her, and added: "The feeling has never left me. Even when cars pass my house slowly, I think it is them looking for me. It is always in my mind that they are coming back for me."
She also told how she remembered "kicking off" at school when some men tried to get her into their car and she was told off by a teacher who said she "shouldn't be getting into cars with Asian men" and that she was bringing shame to the school.
Another woman told the court how she was "exploited" by the Qayum brothers when she was 13. She said Zafar "made her feel special" and filled a hole in her life. She said throughout the abuse she became "less tolerant" of people and got expelled from school - hiding the fact from her father for three months. She said this led to her becoming a "prisoner in her own home" as she was "in fear of being mentally and physically tortured."
The woman said: "At the age of 17 the person who abused me stopped being part of my life and this pushed me into another relationship with another man who I would describe as abusive as well."
She said that after she gave evidence during the trial she felt for the first time her "voice was heard" and added: "I will never forget what happened to me but feel some sort of acceptance and after 20 years I can put this thing behind me and live my life with my family."
The Qayum's third victim told the court she had a "great, happy childhood" up until the age of 13 and her "teenage years very much destroyed my adult life." The woman said she "never really felt normal" and has had relationships with the wrong kind of people thinking "that was how a normal relationship should be."
She said: "I still have bad dreams about what they did and panic they will come and find me and hurt me. There is no way in this world my son would ever behave like these monsters. This part of my life has been kept in a locked part of my brain. They took my innocence and damaged me. I just think I will have to go with this life I have been given, to try my best to be happy and love myself."
Mitigating for Zafar Qayum, Katherine Pierpoint said he was 19 or 20 when the offences were committed and the "disparity was about five to nine years between the complainants. The disparity in age is not as great as you see sometimes in these cases and his age at the time may be linked to his level of maturity." She said there had been no offending since the offences had been committed and he is now "established as law-abiding and hard-working."
Ms Pierpoint said Zafar Qayum now has a wife and four young children who will be affected by his custodial sentence.
Fiona McNeil, for Ansar Qayum also put forward that the disparity in age between the brothers and their victims is not as great as those usually seen in other cases. The court heard that last year Ansar pleaded guilty to his involvement in a kidnapping offence that saw him and others take a 17-year-old and beat him following a collision with a Lamborghini car. Calls from Qayum's phone were made to the boy's parents to make demands.
He was jailed for 10 years and nine months for that offence.
Mitigating for Mohammed Qayum, Kitty Colley, said the victims told how he presented a different demeanour to that of his brothers. She said: "He was described by two victims in this case as not offending against these other girls but as present and himself relatively nave.
"The collective evidence suggests that he had been exposed to matters and not involved in offending against others by his brothers. One woman described his personality in stark terms and that was consistent across all complainants and the victim." The court was told Zafar Qayum's crimes of aiding and abetting rape related to encouraging sexual intercourse between Mohammed Qayum and one of the girls. Ms Colley said that on the first occasion of Zafar doing this, Mohammed "pretended and didn't go on that time to offend."
She said: "He was described as being the total opposite to his brothers and they [the victims] felt protected by him." She added that he is a man of good character, a dad and family man who helps care for the brothers' parents.
Zafar Qayum was jailed for 30 years, Ansar Qayum for 20 years - a sentence which will be added onto that which is already serving - and Mohammed Jabbar Qayum for 13 years.
As he sentenced them, Judge Marson said: "They were targeted and groomed for sexual gratification by the offer of alcohol, drugs and a more exciting way of life. They were paid insincere compliments. At one stage, (one victim) became pregnant and had an abortion when she was 14. Who the father was was not known."
The judge said it was only when one of the victims watched a documentary that she realised what had happened to her could still be reported. He slammed the three brothers as "cowards" for putting the victims through a trial. and added: "It is clear to me that your victims will never fully recover from what you did. Their experiences with you will haunt them and affect their lives in the future."
Speaking directly to Zafar Qayum, he said: "One [victim] was so vulnerable that she believed she was in a genuinely loving relationship with you. Over a period of years you controlled, abused her physically and used her for your own sexual gratification. Matters only came to an end when you completely destroyed the contents of her flat. I have no doubt that had she been in the flat that night you would have caused her significant physical harm. You aided and abetted your brothers to rape her. You took advantage of these girls while they were under the influence."
The judge said that in one of the victims' evidence she told how Zafar knew of her real age and would say: "We are here to f*** all of the white girls and f*** the Government." Judge Marson said the victim "saw that as a joke" but added that what happened to her and the other girls "was no joke."
Following the sentencing, Detective Chief Inspector Ian Thornes of Kirkless Police said: "This has been a deeply distressing and highly disturbing case involving the dreadful sexual abuse of young females by three brothers. The court heard some highly disturbing evidence of how poorly these young victims were treated with all three brothers being found guilty of encouraging the sexual abuse of victims.
"We welcome the substantial sentences handed down to them at court today and believe these reflect the gravity of the acts they committed. I want to praise the courage of the woman in this case whose determination to seek justice has ensured these men have been forced to account for their actions. We continue to urge victims to come forward and can promise all reports will be thoroughly and sensitively investigated."