Schoolgirl, 13, 'gang-raped by boys who filmed ordeal on mobile phone'

A 13-year-old schoolgirl was gang-raped at knifepoint by three teenage boys who filmed the attack on a mobile phone, a jury heard today.

The girl, who had walked out of school after being bullied, was led to the eighth floor of a block of flats for the ordeal which was filmed by her 14 and 15-year-old attackers, it is claimed.

The alleged attack on an estate in Peckham, South-East London, on February 24 this year, was interrupted by teachers who came to the scene after a friend raised the alarm at school, Inner London Crown Court heard.

The four-minute video was apparently extracted from a phone belonging to one of three youths arrested.

The footage, played to the jury, shows one teenager pushing on the victim's chest as he rapes her, while his friend forces her to perform a sex act.

Jurors watched as the boy filming the incident reaches into frame to make an 'ok' sign with his fingers.

Two of the boys, who were sitting in the well of the court with their parents, bowed or covered their faces as the explicit video was played.

Tom Wilkins, prosecuting, told the jury: 'The Crown's case is that together in a group these defendants raped a girl who was at the time was 13, and they recorded it on a mobile telephone.

'Events started in the morning, shortly before nine o'clock.

'She had decided to leave school with a friend of hers.

'There had been some name calling of her and as she was leaving she saw these three defendants.

'They asked her where she was going and she replied: 'Home'.

'She never made it home. Instead she was taken to a block of flats.'

As she was led away she turned to her friend who saw her mouth the words: 'Don't leave me.' The friend waited outside the tower as she disappeared.

Before going in, one of the boys, now aged 16, asked her for oral sex and she refused, said the barrister.

He persisted, allegedly asking her to get into the lifts with him.

Mr Wilkins added: 'As she started to walk away, he said "You don't know what's in my pocket". A clear threat. Scared, she got into the lift with all three boys.'

A second boy, now 15, allegedly pulled out a flick knife which a third boy, now 16, took from him and played around with in front of her, it is claimed.

While the girl was subjected to the degrading assault on the eighth floor, her friend went to get help at school, jurors heard.

Shortly afterwards, it is claimed, the third boy spotted a teacher approaching the block and could be heard to say: 'Oh s**t, what are we going to do?'

Mr Wilkins said: 'There is a general panic and they hurriedly leave the block.' They took the lift back outside and fled on a bus, the court heard.

The teacher found the alleged victim on the estate and she was taken for medical help.

The prosecutor said an intimate examination revealed she had been subjected to sexual activity and was bleeding. continues here

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Sadistic pair jailed for horrific rape of young mum

Two knife-wielding burglars who gang-raped a young mother in her home as her young son begged them to stop have been locked up.

The drink and drug-fuelled pair took turns to rape the woman after horrifically killing the child’s pet in front of him.

Mansoor Shah, 18, of Glenlee Road, Great Horton, Bradford, was locked up indefinitely for taking the leading role.

Judge Jonathan Rose said Shah had taken “revolting pleasure” in the sadistic abuse of a terrified young woman.

Stefan Reed, 17, of Lister Avenue, West Bowling, Bradford, was sent to detention for nine years. Both pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary on November 10 last year and raping the woman twice.

Judge Rose said the break-in while the 22-year-old mother and her son slept was motivated by revenge and lust.

He told the teenagers, both handcuffed in the dock at Bradford Crown Court: “You took part in criminality so wicked, so cruel and so brutal that it will stagger and revolt all right-thinking people.”

Shah and Reed broke into the woman’s bedroom armed with kitchen knives.

Peter Moulson, prosecuting, said Shah put the mother through a six-hour ordeal after a row over a party. He threatened to “slice her up”.

Shah tried to force her to drink bleach and made her down vodka, then beat the child’s pet against a wall and stabbed it.

He shattered tubes from a sunbed and threatened to smash one over the woman’s head as her son screamed and begged, Mr Moulson said.

He tied them together with flex and struck her with a claw hammer, pulling out her hair.

He stabbed her after Reed, who laughed during her ordeal, insulted him. The pair ransacked the house, daubing it in paint.

They each raped the woman twice while the other stayed with the boy. She did not scream because she did not want her son to hear, the court was told.

The pair lit a gas ring and tried to set the kitchen on fire. While they were distracted, the woman fled the house with her son.

Reed had rings stolen from the woman on him when the pair were arrested the same day. continues here

Gang rape in London

A couple of days ago I published a brief post from South Africa which reported that one in 4 males admitted to being rapists. But rape in the city is not just happening on a large scale in South Africa. Here in London a recent Channel 4 Dispatches documentary highlighted the prevalence of gang rape by young boys. Rape in the City was produced by award winning Sierra Leonean journalist., Sorious Samura who despite being “shot at, spat at and abused” in the making of past documentary’s was still shocked by what he found. During the war in Sierra Leone, Samura had witnessed a gang rape, something he associated with war and not what he expected to find on the streets of London.

I felt so angry and hurt watching these young boys casually denigrate girls with their attitude and words – I find it hard to express my own feelings. Listening to a group of young boys who spoke of a “line up” where a line of boys stand in wait whilst a girl performs oral sex, was appalling. The boys did not even think there was anything wrong in setting up and coercing girls to have sex with them. For them the girls were just trash to be abused.there are a disproportionate number of young black boys involved in gang rape... Girls spoke of the horrific experience of being gang raped, one as a punishment for her comments about a friends boyfriend who was a gang leader. She was repeatedly raped by 4 or 5 boys who later called more boys to join in. The attitude of the boys was that it was the girls fault and nothing to do with them and that if a girl was amongst them then she was asking for it. On being questioned about STD’s one boy said he would ‘batter’ any girl that passed on a STD.

In the course of my research I have been shocked to hear victims and witnesses to gang rape talk about the incidence of this crime as if it were just a fact of urban life. Girls are passed around groups of boys. Sometimes these girls initially consent because they want to be popular, but the incident then turns nasty. Sometimes a girl unwittingly walks into a trap, innocently visiting someone’s house to listen to music or watch a film and then discovering that a group of boys are laying in wait. Occasionally the gang rape is used to punish a girl for talking out of turn……….

And yet in the course of my Dispatches investigation I have discovered that gang rape is becoming part of the fabric of life for some young people living in our cities. But it’s not gang rape as you might imagine – it’s not, in most cases, the seizing of girls off the streets by total strangers. It’s happening in homes and at parties between young people who are known to each other, who run in the same crowds. And what’s most disturbing to me is that it’s often just the result of a group of boys deciding to force sex on an unwitting girl, who doesn’t realise that the invitation to someone’s house to watch DVDs or to hang out in the local park is a set up for gang rape. It can happen because a group of boys is attracted to a particular girl or just because she has annoyed one of them.

It is again shocking to learn that gang rape is not even recognised as a separate criminal offence and each rapist is tried as having committed an individual crime. It’s also clear from his report that the police are less than enthusiastic about dealing with rape particularly when it happens in the Black community. Only a few police forces even bothered to respond to his requests for statistics on rapes and rape convictions. The London Metropolitan Police did provide records that showed 108 gang rapes[3 or more rapists] were reported in London in 2008 – from that alone its not exaggerating to state that the actual gang rapes are probably at least double that. Three quarters of the convicted rapists were young black men…

On the face of it, these figures may appear small, but they are nevertheless statistically significant when you consider that nearly three quarters of those convicted were black. Why the incidence should be higher amongst young black men I do not know, but the stats speak for themselves, and on the ground youth workers and community leaders confirmed our conclusions. Sheldon Thomas, a Brixton youth worker, acknowledges that there are a disproportionate number of young black boys involved in gang rape, and it’s something that’s of real concern to him, ‘because we’ve got a situation in our community that needs to be addressed. And I don’t believe that we are addressing it’.

But whilst I would agree that we need to address the disproportionate incidence within the black community, I think it would be wrong to label this as a black issue. What we need is for people from across all communities and public sectors to engage with this issue, and colour must not get in the way of that.

The silence around these crimes allows them to continue with impunity. The silence of the police who do not offer protection to those few young girls and women who report rape. One young girl in the programme reported the rape but had to withdraw the charges after she was threatened, had bottles and objects thrown at her by the rapists. Why was she and her family not protected. How is she supposed to live in the same community where she has to pass these young men daily? Women have always been at the forefront in the movement against violence against women. Is it not about time for men to take a stand against rape? Not just Black men but all men. The responsibility to protect young girls and take an uncompromising stand against misogyny and rape on estates, the streets and in the playground has to come from the local authorities, the police, the schools and the community. .continues here

Five men charged with rape

FIVE people have been charged after a woman was raped in Bolton.

The alleged incident took place on Friday when police were informed that a 23-year-old woman had been raped at a house in Bolton.

Olatunji Owolabi, aged 28, of Bradbourne Close, Bolton, is charged with rape and conspiracy to commit rape.

Afolabi Sanyoalu, aged 29, also of Bradbourne Close, Bolton, is charged with two counts of rape and conspiracy to commit rape.

Mozeare Kelvin Chinakwe, aged 26, of Brookhey Avenue, Great Lever, is charged with rape and conspiracy to commit rape.

Senthil Venkatchalam, aged 29, of Wigan Road, Deane, is charged with two counts of rape and conspiracy to commit rape.

Ganiyu Cote, aged 27, of no fixed abode, is charged with conspiracy to commit rape. continues here

Gang rape: Is it a race issue?

A high proportion of such attacks appears to be carried out by young black men, according to Metropolitan Police statistics. Sorious Samura investigates this horrendous crime – and what it says about Britain today

In 1999 I witnessed a gang rape in Sierra Leone. I was forced to watch a group of rebel soldiers taking it in turns to rape a young girl in front of an audience of jeering men. It was the height of the civil conflict and rape had become a devastating weapon of war. When I moved to Britain I believed I had escaped such horrific sexual violence. As my Dispatches investigation tomorrow night shows, I was mistaken. Gang rape is happening here – and what I have found most disturbing as an African is that a disproportionate number of these attacks are being carried out by black or mixed-race young men.


Towards the end of last year, police and child welfare experts working on Channel 4's Street Weapons Commission told us of their concerns about gang rape. Then two big cases hit the headlines.

In December, nine schoolboys, some as young as 13 at the time of the attack, were convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl. She was dragged between tower blocks in Hackney where she was threatened with a knife, hit and raped during an ordeal that lasted an hour and a half – some of which was filmed on mobile phones. In January, three men were convicted of gang raping a 16-year-old with learning disabilities for two hours before dousing her with caustic soda in an effort to get rid of the evidence.

How prevalent is this crime and why it is happening in Britain? Despite the seriousness of the crime, I was amazed to discover that no national statistics exist: gang rape is simply not recorded as a separate crime category. So over a period of several months we set about collating our own. "There was just loads of boys and the girl's tights were ripped up, like, she was bleeding as well, because I think she was a virgin, and they were just taking turns on her basically, and she was crying, and I didn't get involved because I thought if I get involved they're gonna turn on me."

We approached the Crown Prosecution Service, the Association of Chief Police Officers, all 50 police forces, crown courts, barristers and rape referral centres to try to establish the numbers.

One of the few police forces to have begun recording the figures of reported gang rape is the Metropolitan Police. In 2008 alone, they received reports of 85 gang rapes. Using the Met's definition of gang rape – those involving three or more perpetrators – we began to look at the number of convictions. We tracked down 29 cases, from January 2006 to March 2009, in which a total of 92 young people were convicted of involvement in gang rape.

One fact stood out. Of those convicted, 66 were black or mixed race, 13 were white and the remainder were from other countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Clearly this is not a crime exclusive to black communities, but I found it impossible to ignore the fact that such a high proportion were committed by black and mixed-race young men. As a black man as well as a journalist, I wanted to understand what lay behind such attacks. So I spoke to victims, groups of black and mixed-race teenagers, youth and social workers and community leaders.

The groups of young men I met in London expressed some profoundly disturbing attitudes towards girls and sex. The boys explained how they make arrangements for "line-ups" in which one girl has oral sex with up to six or seven of them at one time. These arrangements might be made at school or on mobile phones.

Sometimes these girls initially consent because they want to be popular. But these events can spiral into rape because the boys consider that any girl who is prepared to agree to a line-up can be considered fair game. One boy told me: "If she wants to go and meet a bag of boys then she's probably a jezzie [slut], and if she's going to a house it's over – she's going to get beaten [have sex]."

In other instances, as some of the victims in our film describe, girls can unwittingly walk into a trap, innocently visiting someone's house to listen to music or watch a film only to discover that a group of boys are lying in wait. Or they might be hanging out with friends in a park and suddenly realise they have become surrounded by a group of boys intent on sex.

For both boys and girls, the line between this sort of group sex and rape seems to be blurred. A girl might agree to have oral sex with two or three boys but then be ordered to have sex with six or seven. The teenage girls I met told me that boys simply don't understand what rape is. And yet this is a crime that can ruin lives and is punishable by life imprisonment.

Occasionally gang rape is used to punish a girl for minor transgressions against gang members. In one of my most shocking interviews, I met a girl who admitted she had helped to set up girls for gang rape. As the girlfriend of a gang member, she organised these rapes, partly out of fear and partly to fit in.

She admitted she was terrified of being raped herself and had walked away when witnessing a girl being gang-raped at a party because she feared she might be next: "There was just loads of boys and the girl's tights were ripped up, like, she was bleeding as well, because I think she was a virgin, and they were just taking turns on her basically, and she was crying, and I didn't get involved because I thought if I get involved they're gonna turn on me."

The victims' descriptions of their attacks are horrific. One young victim likened her attack to being "pulled and pushed around like a rag doll", while another 14-year-old girl described her ordeal when she was gang raped by a total of nine boys who told her that she was not the only girl they had attacked. In that case, nine boys were subsequently convicted of raping her. The youngest perpetrator was just 12 years old.

I found there was concern among black communities about this violence. The Rev Joyce Daley, from the Black Parents Forum in Hackney, told me that gang rape is not a rare or one-off phenomenon. It is happening on a regular basis. She said: "It could actually explode on our very streets." Steve Griffith, a youth worker in King's Cross, said: "I see too much abuse of young women on the streets."

Gang rape, while constituting only a tiny percentage of all rapes in the UK, is a horrible reality in this country. The nature of the crime is so appalling that much more research needs to be carried out into its causes. But what seems evident from my investigation is that the key to preventing it will be changing the way young men view women and the kind of group sexual activity they are engaging in at such a young age.continues here

Is gang rape a non-white phenomenon?

Brave mum tells of gang rape terror

A mum-of-three who was the victim of a horrific rape in Belfast has spoken for the first time about her nightmare ordeal — to warn other woman of the risk of such an attack. 


Mary Hodkinson is facing an agonising wait to see if she contracted Aids in the brutal incident which occurred in a house in south Belfast earlier this month. 

After the horrendous sex attack, Mary was thrown out on the street bleeding, battered and semi-naked. 

She also fears the sickening sex attack may have been filmed. 

A 31-year-old foreign national has already appeared in court in connection with the incident. 

Mary revealed to our sister paper Sunday Life that she made the choice to speak out to try and prevent another woman undergoing the same ordeal. 

The 33-year-old mother, from the Village area of Belfast, is just one of a growing number of women who have been raped in the south of the city in recent months. 

Revealing her ordeal unfolded after attending what she believed would be a house party, Mary said: “The only thing I am guilty of is meeting a couple of guys who were so nice and who told me they were living in my community. I walked back with them and they invited me in for a drink and told me there would be other people in the house. 

“I was going back to my area and I thought I would know people at the house and would be safe. 

"But once I got in, it was a different story and I think this man was waiting for me.” 

Mary was forced into a bedroom where she was beaten and raped. 

Admitting her world has been turned upside down since the attack, she continued: “I will never forget the evil in this man’s eyes and I can still hear his mates laughing as they kept the door locked. Once he got me into the room he turned the light off and when I tried to escape and turn it on again he started to beat me. 

“He smashed my head off the radiator before kicking me in the legs. 

“This man was huge and very strong. I tried to defend myself as best I could but I didn’t stand a chance. He was a monster. 

“He was yelling all sorts of abuse at me and when he was finished, he started hitting me again and threw me out on the street when I didn’t even have a chance to get all my clothes on. 

“They were all laughing at me as I was thrown on to the street in a distressed state and bleeding all over. The whole experience was terrifying and I couldn’t believe it when I noticed a video camera on top of a cabinet as I was being pushed out the room.  continues here

British journalism student gang-raped by asylum seekers in Calais squatter camp they call 'The Jungle'

A British student has been gang-raped by illegal immigrants in Calais, it has been revealed.

The woman was writing a story on asylum seekers for her journalism course when she was attacked, police said.

Up to 100 men have been rounded up as potential witnesses to the crime, which is alleged to have taken place in a notorious squatter camp nicknamed 'The Jungle'.

Police said the attack was of a particularly 'brutal nature'. The victim is still in Calais.

The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was described as 'a London student who had travelled to France to highlight problems surrounding clandestine immigration'.

A police spokesman added: 'She appeared to be working alone, which was clearly a very dangerous thing to do. 

'We fear that the men she was reporting on attacked her in the wood where they were staying.' 

The woman, who is thought to be in her twenties or early thirties, told locals she wanted to spend time with would-be illegal immigrants who were attempting to reach Britain by stowing away on lorries.  

The squatter camp is part of a disused an industrial zone called 'The Dunes' and is a short walk from the ferry port.

Up to 500 men live there, supported by local charities.  

Father Jean-Pierre Boutoille, of the refugee charity C’Sur, said: 'There are lots of journalists, including students, who come here to get to the heart of what’s going on, to write reports and produce films.

'When reporters contact us, we always ask to accompany them. We know the refugees as we see them everyday.

'We would never allow a young female adventurer in this wood, especially not at night. 

'On Tuesday we did not receive any requests for assistance, and nor did any other charities.' 


Yesterday some 100 would-be immigrants to Britain were rounded up by a force of French riot police.

Most of the men claimed to be from Iraq, Afghanistan or the Middle East, although police believe many were from eastern Europe and the Balkans.  

One, who asked not to be named, said: 'Yes, I saw a young journalist with a camera. Lots come this way.

'I don’t know who she was exactly, but she was young, perhaps 30, and a student from London. 

'The word is that something happened to her in the woods.' 

In 2005 a gang of immigrants was implicated in the rape of a resident of Oye-Plage, near Calais.  continues here

They shall allow them in, these predators, these dangers, lest their human rights be infringed but what of the potential victims, what rights have they, what rights have we, we must put up and shut up, we must permit the fox access to the hen-house. I cannot even comprehend the misery of the victim, the debasement she suffered, her fears now for her health, I hope, no I pray, that life will be kind, that she shall find a real man, not a monster, a fiend, as these men were, I hope that happiness comes her way, enough to at least help her find peace.

Yet why, why must this happen, why bring the jungle to the west, why must we, we of the west now face crimes once unimaginable, yes we have our own monsters, our own fiends, the tragic events in Jersey tell us that, yet never the prevalence, never the dangerous community as now. Once community was home, safety, now there is nothing left; now woods become places one must fear to trend, women assailed and childhood smothered by worried parents, because evil stalks the young.

Yet they say nationalism is evil, this power that would sweep away the criminal, the sexual predator, the purveyor of drugs, rip their world asunder and make anew this country, there would be no camps in Calais, no woods filled with alien danger, the people would again feel safe, be safe, whilst the criminal runs headlong. What a twisted world, what a twisted vision of human rights, when civility must play second fiddle to savagery, when the law-abiding must fear every corner , every shadow, scared to holiday and scared to walk, cities lost to crime and inhabited by marauding predators.

We can stop it, I promise you, we can, should fate give us chance place fear in the heart of evil and joy in the heart of our people, we can shake down this house of cards and run them out of office but we need you, the frightened, the victim, the angry, the disenfranchised, the stranger in their own land. We need the peoples mandate, the people’s permission, with that and only that change can come, I cannot lie, it won’t be easy, they have destroyed so much. Yet even now at such an eleventh hour there is chance, slight chance, take it or lose it, no more victims, no more lives destroyed by animals, by savages, by monsters.

Freedom from victim-hood is our offer, we united against any and all aggressors, be they from without or within, let’s stop letting such as they into our countries, let’s finally close the door and begin the much needed healing. 14