Eight men in England were sentenced to jail for sexual offenses committed against two girls between 1996 and 1999.

Eight men in England were sentenced to jail for sexual offenses committed against two girls between 1996 and 1999. 

Five of those men were convicted in October: 

The other three men were handed sentences this month: 

(A brief aside: The current whereabouts of Fayaz Ahmed and Imtiaz Ahmed are unknown. There are suspicions that they fled abroad, and the police said there are “enquiries are ongoing to locate them.” Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the following: “If they are found to be in Pakistan and Islamabad won’t cooperate with our law enforcement we should suspend visas and aid.”)

Some of these sentences seem rather mild, especially for a crime as serious as rape. The BBC reported some of the disturbing details provided by one of the victims:

The victim said she was “plied with drugs and alcohol to numb the abuse”.

Giving evidence at trial, she recalled one instance where men had been “queuing up” in the corridor of a flat to have sex with her.

She said she was “groomed”, then “passed on to other men”, and later became addicted to alcohol and drugs, which she used as a “coping mechanism”.

“Nothing in this world can ever fix the damage I have been through — because of them I lost my identity.”

That victim is obviously correct: Nothing can undo the horrific abuse she endured. And that makes the short sentences so insulting. 

In addition to requiring suspiciously little jail time, the judge offered some observations. Again, here’s reporting from the BBC: 

Judge Ahmed Nadim said the girl’s mother had tried to report her missing to police “on a number of occasions”, but nothing was done.

Judge Nadim said police and social services were “either ill-equipped to properly understand what was happening at street level”, or “disinterested in addressing the needs of [the victims]”.

Yet we all know there’s a third option: The police and social-service workers worried about facing accusations of “racism” or “Islamophobia” at a time when we pretend that multiculturalism is an important virtue for a nation to uphold, and therefore the authorities deliberately looked away.