A pair of Banbury men on the fringes of a sordid grooming gang that plied schoolgirls with drink, drugs and cash have been jailed.
Samuel Osei-Bempong’s victim, who fell pregnant to one of the leaders in the gang, described herself as ‘just a bit of meat’ to the men.
Now dad of three Osei-Bempong, 50, was handed 10 years for raping the teenager in the early 2000s. He was convicted of two counts of rape, and cleared of molesting another girl.
His co-defendant, Bashiru Umar, 53, who was arrested at Heathrow Airport on a layover flight from his native Nigeria to New York in April, was found guilty of indecently assaulting a third victim and jailed for three years.
Sending the men down, Judge Michael Gledhill KC described the actions of the grooming gang, whose leaders have fled the UK, as a ‘parent’s worst nightmare’.
“You, on the edges of what was happening, can only have known what was happening. You could not have been unaware of what was going on under your very noses,” the judge said.
“You may not have plied those girls with alcohol or cannabis, you may not have pressurised them to indulge in the sexual activity.
“But what you did was to take advantage of what you knew was going on around you, that these girls had been pre-programmed as it were to regard having sex with these older men as being perfectly normal and acceptable, and you had sexual relations with them.”
He said: “In the early 2000s, a group of men living and working in Banbury abused a large number of teenage girls and who were at school together and/or friends, again in Banbury.
“They were grooming those girls in order to use them for a sexual purpose.
“It is a parent’s worst nightmare; that when their children, particularly girls, who reach adolescence and want their independence and freedom as they grow up that they fall into the hands of older men – in this case in their 20s and 30s – who, knowing their vulnerability due to their age, seek to influence them, against their better judgment and their upbringing, to give sexual favours in return for money, alcohol and drugs.”
He cited the words of the victims. One said the men made the girls feel like they could trust them, while another described how she felt the girls were ‘put on a line-up for men to choose which girls they wanted for their sexual pleasure’.
Osei-Bempong and Umar’s sentencing hearing on Friday (October 6) followed a month-long trial at Oxford Crown Court, with jurors hearing from a number of girls who said they had been targeted by the wider gang.
The sexual abuse happened in properties around Banbury, including in Bretch Hill, Orchard Close and Woodfield, the court heard.
The girls, who were introduced through friends, were given ‘freely-available’ cannabis and alcohol. One described being in a perpetual intoxication-induced haze.
One victim, who had an abortion after falling pregnant to an alleged groomer still at-large, said: “I was just a bit of meat to them.”
The grooming came to light after one of the girls – now a woman – watched BBC documentary drama Three Girls, about the Rochdale grooming gang scandal.
Prosecuting, Kieran Brand told the sentencing hearing on Friday: “These were victims of a wider grooming gang. That is the way the case was put and it’s against that background these specific offences ought to be seen.
“These were girls aged [from] 14. They were, we submit, groomed. They were given alcohol, they were given drugs or at least free access to them by men who were significantly older than them.”
In mitigation, the advocates for both defendants asked the judge not to sentence their clients for the grooming activities of others, with Umar in particular described as keeping himself to himself when he lived at Orchard Close.
Both were now family men, responsible for supporting their families.
Umar’s apparent immediate remorse was described by his victim, his barrister told the court. “He looked sorry, like,” she had said. “His face was like ‘oh God, I’ve hurt you’.
Both Osei-Bempong, of Middle Barton, near Chipping Norton, and Umar, of no fixed address, will be on the sex offender register for life.
Welcoming the jail time, DI Nick Hind of Thames Valley Police said: “I am grateful to the victims in this case for having the courage to share their stories and for the careful consideration of the evidence by the jury over the last five weeks.
“Osei-Bempong and Umar now start lengthy sentences for abhorrent crimes they committed against children more than 20 years ago, which they undoubtedly thought that they would never face justice
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