Man who dragged schoolgirl into dark alley and raped her jailed 21 years later | UK News

A man who raped a 14-year-old girl in a Rotherham alley 21 years ago has been sentenced to prison.

Waleed Ali was in his early 20s when he saw the victim sitting alone by a fountain in the city centre sometime between March 2003 and March 2004, the National Crime Agency said.

He and a group of men approached the girl and asked her to come with him to a nearby alley, the NCA said. When she refused, Ali grabbed her arm and tried to force her to her feet.

The girl was ‘intimidated’ by the men and went into the alley where Ali raped her ‘out of sight of the public’.

Before his latest conviction, Ali had already been convicted of raping and sexually assaulting another 13-year-old girl in the same alley in early 2003, following an investigation by South Yorkshire Police, the NCA said.

The new arrest came as a result of the NCA’s Operation Stovewood investigation into historic allegations of abuse in Rotherham, Yorkshire, between 1997 and 2013 – the largest investigation into child sexual exploitation in the UK.

Ali, who is now 42, was arrested and questioned in September 2021 after a woman told Operation Stovewood officers she had been assaulted when she was 14 and had never reported it before.

During his interrogation, he told police that their questions made him feel “sick” and denied the crime.

Ali, from Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, was immediately sentenced to five years in prison after jurors found him guilty of raping a girl under 16 at Sheffield Crown Court on Friday.

Chief Investigator Stuart Cobb said: ‘After speaking to the victim, officers from the National Crime Agency gathered detailed corroborating evidence.

‘For 21 years the victim suffered in silence, but her courageous testimony combined with our investigative work has ensured that her attacker has been brought to justice.

‘I urge anyone who has been a victim of child sexual abuse, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred, to seek help and, if they feel ready, to report it to the police. We have specially trained officers to investigate such cases.’

Seven men were jailed on Thursday and Friday for sexually abusing two young girls in Rotherham in the 2000s as part of Operation Stovewood, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

The abuse began when one of the girls was just 11. Sheffield Crown Court said the defendants regularly drove to the victims’ cars and gave them cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis and money.

The girls were then abused, forced to perform sexual acts or raped.

Operation Stovewood was set up in response to the ground-breaking 2014 Jay Report, which found that at least 1,400 girls were abused in Rotherham by gangs made up of men of mainly Pakistani origin between 1997 and 2013.

Dozens of people have been convicted as a result of the operation, which the NCA says is the largest law enforcement operation of its kind ever carried out in the UK.

Last year, the NCA announced that new allegations would be dealt with by South Yorkshire Police rather than Operation Stovewood. The NCA said more than 1,100 children had been identified as being involved in the exploitation between 1997 and 2013, almost all of them girls.

The agency said it is committed to continuing the current investigations until the end of the criminal process, which is expected to last until 2027.

Previous estimates put the cost of Operation Stovewood at around £90 million.

According to the NCA, anyone who has been sexually abused as a child can report it to the police by calling 101 or visiting a police station.

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