A GROUP of child rapists and groomers who terrorised Rochdale have – six years down the line – STILL not yet been deported, despite not being born in the UK and despite the Home Office promising to do so.
Home Secretary Priti Patel is under growing pressure to deport members of the Rochdale grooming gang, including Qari Abul Rauf, who was seen and photographed in the town recently. Rochdale MP Tony Lloyd is angry at the years of delay, and says they should be removed as soon as possible.
One victim of the prolific abuse which saw some girls raped hundreds of times and passed around men like property, physically shook and wet herself upon seeing one of her abusers walking past her in Rochdale’s city centre.
Another said that she had ‘never felt so afraid’ after realising that the taxi driver she was locked in with on her way into town was her own abuser who had been recently released from prison.
Muslim preacher Qari Abdul Rauf and eight other predators are among the list of monsters bizarrely still walking British streets – their crimes dramatised in the BBC’s Bafta-winning Three Girls.
Rauf, 51, received six years after being found guilty of conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children under 16 and trafficking for sexual exploitation.
But after being freed on licence in November 2014 — after just two years and six months in prison — he returned home to his wife and five children, with the appalled British public promised that the child rapist and his counterparts would be stripped of their UK citizenship and sent back to Pakistan.
The group lost an appeal against the citizenship ruling in 2018, yet to date, no action has been taken, and victims continue to suffer severe trauma and fear upon seeing their abusers walking past their homes and down their streets.
Joining Rochdale MP Tony Lloyd and others in calling on Patel to send the rapists packing, prominent Tory and former MEP David Bannerman said: “I don’t understand the delay in deportation. I’m sure our Priti Patel will make it happen.
