The Chief Executive of Oxfordshire County Council has insisted she will not be resigning after seven members of a paedophile ring were found guilty of child rape, trafficking and organising prostitution in Oxford.Sorry is not enough. They didn't act sooner because dhimmitude took precedence over justice at the time.
Joanna Simons said that although the council “take enormous responsibility for what's happened”, her “gut feeling” is that she will not resign.
Ms Simons said the council would be asking itself some “very hard questions” in the wake of the case, which involved girls as young as 11 being drugged and raped by members of one of Britain's biggest ever child sex gangs.
The crimes took place over eight years and social services and the police have apologised for not acting sooner.
Child protection experts said that the six victims of the ring were “let down by those who were meant to care for them and obvious signs of abuse were missed”.What if those other two are as guilty as the rest? If they are, then justice hasn't entirely prevailed. For now, we've got to hope that the other 7 will receive long sentences. But even then, the question remains if they'll actually serve the terms in their entirety.
The fact that the gang was able to continue its brutal sexual abuse despite the concerns of social workers and reports to police officers at a relatively early stage will now be the subject of an independent investigation.
The seven men, aged between 27 and 38, were warned to expect long jail terms for the gang's eight years of offending involving vulnerable young girls in Oxford. Judge Peter Rook told them: “You have been convicted of the most serious of offences. Long custodial sentences are inevitable.”
Two sets of brothers, Akhtar Dogar, 32, and Anjum Dogar, 31, and Mohammed Karrar, 38, and Bassam Karrar, 33, were convicted of sex crimes, along with Kamar Jamil, 27, Assad Hussain, 32, and Zeeshan Ahmed, 27.
Fighting broke out in the dock at the Old Bailey as Zeeshan Ahmed punched Mohammed Hussain, who was cleared of all charges. Another man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was also cleared.