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 jailed.

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

He approached the girl with a group of men and asked her to go with him to a nearby alley, according to the NCA. When she refused, Ali grabbed her arm and tried to get her to stand up.

The girl was “intimidated” by the men and went into the alley where Ali raped her “away from public view”.

Before his latest conviction, Ali had been convicted of rape and indecent touching of a person in the same alleyway in early 2003 following an investigation by South Yorkshire Police, the NCA added.

The new arrest was the 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, now 42, was arrested and questioned in September 2021 after a woman told Operation Stovewood officers she had been attacked when she was 14 and had not previously reported it.

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

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

Lead investigator Stuart Cobb said: “After speaking with the victim, National Crime Agency officers carefully searched for corroborating evidence.”

“The victim suffered in silence for 21 years, but her brave testimony combined with our investigative work ensured that her attacker was brought to justice.”

“I urge all victims of child sexual abuse to seek help – regardless of how long ago the abuse occurred – and, if they feel ready, to report the incident to the police. The police have officers specially trained to investigate such cases.”

On Thursday and Friday, seven men were sentenced to prison as part of Operation Stovewood for sexually abusing two young girls in Rotherham in the 2000s, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) reported.

The abuse began when one of the girls was just 11 years old. Sheffield Crown Court heard how the defendants regularly gave the victims rides in their cars and gave them cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis and money, the CPS said.

The girls are then attacked, forced to perform sexual acts or raped.

Operation Stovewood was launched in the wake of the groundbreaking Jay Report, which found in 2014 that at least 1,400 girls in Rotherham were abused by gangs of men, predominantly of Pakistani origin, between 1997 and 2013.

Dozens of people were convicted as a result of the operation, which the NCA says is the largest prosecution operation of its kind ever conducted in the UK.

Last year, the NCA announced that new allegations would no longer be handled by Operation Stovewood but by South Yorkshire Police, saying it had identified more than 1,100 children involved in the exploitation between 1997 and 2013 – almost all of them girls.

The agency said it remains committed to conducting its ongoing investigations until the end of the criminal proceedings, which are expected to last until 2027.

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

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

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