The following was prepared by Tottenham Lad and entered into his blog on 7 March 2008.

http://tottenhamlad.blogspot.com/


"An anonymous reader of this blog recently left a link to a comment piece, from the Telegraph, that referenced a horrific crime that took place, a month or so ago, in the Tottenham Hale area of south Tottenham:

'In a north London suburb, a schoolgirl was beaten, gang-raped and then had drain-cleaning fluid poured on her body apparently to destroy DNA evidence.

In the eternal cesspit of senseless urban crime, I feel last week that a dreadful nadir of sorts has been reached, a benchmark of slaked lust and casual sadistic cruelty ... the attackers have been described as "five black youths'.' [1]

The Sun reported the story in a little more detail:

'A schoolgirl was raped by a gang who poured caustic soda over her body to destroy DNA evidence ... the gang [said to have been five black youths] beat the teenager before taking turns to rape her in an empty house in Tottenham...

Doctors feared the girl would die but she pulled through and is now stable in a burns unit ... a police source said: 'She has appalling injuries from which she will never fully recover'.” [2]

While both of these reports mentioned the ethnicity of the alleged rapists neither gave a description of the victim that include her own ethnicity; a point addressed later in this post.

Perhaps this attack was just an isolated incident, or a rare occurrence, as the media are apt to infer when a particularly horrendous crime takes place; though sadly events of this nature are not new as can be seen from Tottenham in 2006:

'Police are hunting [three black men] in connection with the vicious rape of a woman in an alleyway in Tottenham. They would not disclose the victim's age for fear of compromising the investigation'. [3]

Or indeed London as a whole.

From Hackney in 2008:

'A 14-year-old girl has been raped by a gang of youths in Homerton ... Detectives are urging anybody with information on the "heinous assault" to come forward. They have described the suspects as three black boys aged between 15 and 16 years old'. [4]

From Lewisham in 2006:

'He called the 25-year-old a 'white bitch' and drove her back to the Sydenham flat, where the accomplice was again waiting to pounce ... held a 7in long knife to the the sobbing woman's throat'. [5]

From Crystal Palace in 2005:

'A 16-year-old girl was bundled into a car while walking home and gang raped in a leisure centre car park.

The [four] suspects are said to be in their 20s. Two of them are described as black ... The other two are said to be light-skinned black males ... Police say the victim was white'. [6]

From Clapham, south London, in 2007:

'Four men who filmed themselves on mobile phones raping a teenager were given lengthy prison sentences yesterday ... [being] Idris Adeokun, Emmanuel Garrick, James Olamrewaju, and Jayce Baptiste'. [7]

From Tooting in 2007:

'A teenager has been jailed for 12 years for the "horrific and relentless" rape of a woman at a brothel. Jermaine Green, 17, was part of a group of up to six men who broke into the brothel'. [8]

From south London in 2007:

'Two schoolgirls were attacked during a 'terrible ordeal of rape, humiliation and degradation' after being lured to a park by a gang of boys, a court heard'. [9]

Some might say that this is purely a symptom of the state of the, so-called, 'inner city' areas of London such as Tottenham, Hackney, and Lewisham.

Though this somehow does not then explain the following crimes:

From Glasgow in 2007:

'A 30-year-old woman has been raped by a gang of four men in Glasgow. The men were described as being of Afro Caribbean appearance'. [10]

From Oldham in 2007:

'A 12-year-old girl was raped up to 15 times by four men after she was abducted as she asked for directions to her home ... [Shakil] Chowdhury was jailed for six years ... Detectives are still hunting the other members of the gang'. [11]

From Liverpool in 2006:

'A teenage girl was repeatedly raped and beaten [by three black youths] during a gang sex attack'. [12]

From Spalding, Lincolnshire, in 2005:

'Three men [from Iraq] who took part in a sex attack on a Lincolnshire woman have been jailed for a total of 24 years. Star Ahmad, Mohedin Amin and Sahid Sherwan were each given eight years after their behaviour was condemned by the judge as 'abominable'.' [13]

From Blackpool, Lancashire, in 2005:

'A 15-year-old was raped by a gang of four men at a house in Blackpool, a court has been told. Awat Ahmed ... was one of four Kurdish men ... [the] three other men wanted for the attack have not been traced ... Hana Zana Sahli, Karim Faraidon Nzar, Taha Abdulla'. [14] [15]

From Stanley, County Durham, in 2005:

'The 17-year-old was ... raped by a staff member after asking to use a toilet ... at the Spice Mahal takeaway, in Craghead near Stanley in County Durham ... Police named two of the men as Sarabjit Singh and Harjinda Singh ... both men [were] the subject of immigration applications'. [16]

Others might suggest this is a modern phenomenon, a new type of crime, indicative of higher levels of crime in the country.

Though this is not borne out by these stories from the past two decades:

Six years ago from Kings Cross, London, in 2002:

'A minicab driver has been jailed for nine years for his part in the gang-rape of two Christmas revellers. Salam Rahman, Mohammed Elahi, and two other men, attacked their victims in separate incidents just before Christmas 2000'. [17]

Six years ago from Ilford, east London, in 2002:

'A 'degenerate' gang who raped and attacked young girls they picked up in a town centre were jailed for a total of 17 years ... Tunde Akinselure, Nester Soverall, Sood Ahmed, and Ramon Markins ... carried out a 'horrible catalogue' of crimes [on] three 14-year-old girls and one 13-year-old in Ilford town centre'. [18]

Seven years ago from central London in 2001:

'Three McDonald's employees [were] found guilty of plotting to gang rape a Cambridge undergraduate ... [the plotters being] Andrew Udenze, Sayek Miah, and Anthony Ugoh'. [19]

Eight years ago from St Leonards, Hastings, Sussex, in 2000:

'Three eastern european asylum seekers were being sought last night after a 20-year-old care worker was gang-raped in a Sussex seaside town'. [20]

Eight years ago in Ladbroke Grove, West London, in 2000:

'The victim told the court how she was surrounded and robbed before being thrown into the canal ... she was then caught, kicked and punched repeatedly and, at one stage, dragged naked along a gravel path, lacerating her bare skin. A 15-year-old [black] boy tore off her trousers and raped the woman ... [then] Marvin Edwards [black], 18, also raped her ... the 14-strong group ... looked on and shouted encouragement as the brutal attack unfolded'. [21]

Eleven year ago in Kings Cross, London, in 1997:

'Eight teenage savages convicted in 1997 of the horrific gang-rape of an Austrian tourist taking a midnight stroll in London ... snatched pretty mother of two Alexandra Sablatnig ... they attacked her chanting 'F*** the white bitch', kicked and punched her, stripped her naked then raped her repeatedly ... [she] was then thrown into a canal and left for dead'. [22]

'The [trial] judge said a particularly offensive aspect of the rape was the "racial element" in the way that the victim was described as a 'white bitch'.' [23] [24]

Lastly, twenty three years ago in Brixton, south London, in 1985:

'The [two English] girls, both aged 16, were walking home in the early hours after a night out when they were dragged into a damp, cold garage on the Stockwell Park council estate, where the gang lived. For two hours their attackers, who had abducted them only 100 yards from Brixton police station, took it in turns to rape them. One was raped 30 times, the other 15.'

In the immediate aftermath of the rape, Sophie changed from a wilful, streetwise and sociable teenager to a withdrawn, broken girl who was too frightened to leave her house and would have dozens of baths a day.

Convinced that the gang was going to find her and attack her again, she suffered 'horrifying' nightmares, flashbacks and acute anxiety'. [25] [26] [27]

This last crime only came back, relatively recently, to the media's attention due to the fact that the then leader of the gang, now with a new identity, was featured prominently in the BBC's coverage of the aftermath of the 7/7 London terrorist bombings, as a 'hero'. [28]

A paltry smattering of examples of gang rape from the period before the year 2000 may seem insignificant, but this is more a result an insufficient record of reporting, rather than a lack of real incidents.

An individual relying purely on the Internet alone for research encounters a problem when looking for crimes that took place before the very late 1990's, with the only other option being to manually comb the archives of local newspapers.

Exceptions to this, as exampled above, do exist, but mostly only due to their notoriety. Although sometimes, with luck, earlier reports of less notorious incidents of gang rape, such as the following from 1996 and 1997, can be found.

Birmingham, August 1996:

'Six teenage boys ... were convicted yesterday of subjecting three schoolgirls to a prolonged sex attack after dragging them off the street into a tower block. Two of the girls, one aged 13 and the other 15, were raped several times ... a second 13-year-old was indecently assaulted ... a woman on the balcony of a nearby flat heard one of the girls sobbing and pleading: 'Let me go.' [The rapists included] Jahmel Randall ... Dito Raphael ... Asher Clarke'. [29]

Shepherds Bush, west London, May 1997:

'A girl of nine ... was raped by [five] boys ... four aged 10 and one nine ... at her primary school ...