An asylum seeker who raped a 13-year-old girl in a wood after grooming her on Snapchat has been jailed for nine-and-a-half years.
Abdul Khan, who told police he arrived in the UK in the back of a lorry from Afghanistan in 2015, attacked the teenager a decade later.
A trial last week heard how Khan used the messaging platform Snapchat to groom the teenager by telling her he was a 14-year-old boy – when he was actually 27.
The court heard he arranged to meet the teenager after school before taking her on a tram to the woods before raping her twice.
Jurors heard she fled following the incident, and later told her father what had happened. He called the police, and after Khan was arrested forensic tests matched his DNA on trousers belonging to the youngster.
Khan, now 28 and of HMP Nottingham, denied carrying out the sex attack at Clifton, on the outskirts of the city, as well as sexual communication with a child, sexual activity with a child, and meeting a child following grooming.
He had also pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice, after telling police when he was arrested that he had a different name and was just 15 – a lie he has ‘persisted with’ until the present day.
But Khan, who followed proceedings via a Pashto interpreter, was convicted of the offences on Friday at the culmination of a five-day trial.
The judge told Abdul Khan he had ‘deliberately concealed’ his true identity while grooming the teen on Snapchat
Khan was jailed for nine-and-a-half years at Nottingham Crown Court
Sentencing Khan at Nottingham Crown Court today, Judge Mark Watson told him the schoolgirl ‘thought she was communicating with a boy of her own age, because that is what you led her to believe’.
He said: ‘That was a lie. You deliberately concealed your true identity.
‘It was a lie you persisted in throughout these proceedings, even as far as today’s date
‘I am satisfied on the evidence that you are in your mid-twenties.’
Kevin Jones, prosecuting, told Nottingham Crown Court Khan’s immigration status was checked and it was confirmed that when he initially came into contact with UK authorities in 2015 he gave a date of birth of May 19, 1999.
Since then, he had given at least four other dates of birth to various agencies, with the year he was born ranging from 1998 to 2009.
Judge Watson said that upon meeting with Khan in person, it was ‘clear’ to the girl he was older than the age he had claimed to be.
But he ‘sought to appease’ her by saying he was actually 16, and then persuaded her away from her suggestion they go to a public skatepark, and to go to the woods instead, where it was his ‘intention to go on to have sex’ with her.
The judge told Khan: ‘Her fear came from the unknown rather than any positive act of yours.
She was, of course, a 13-year-old girl, and I find very much out of her depth. ‘She has on any view been profoundly affected, as her parents must also have been.’
In a victim impact statement read out by Dawn Pritchard, prosecutor for the sentencing hearing, the victim said she had been left unable to trust people, suffering flashbacks and did not wish to wear her school uniform any more, as that was what she had on when she was abused.
The court heard Khan was jailed for 23 months earlier this year at Derby Crown Court after being convicted of sexual communication with a separate child.
Judge Watson said the author of a pre-sentence report in that case said Khan was assessed as someone ‘unable to judge boundaries’, and presented a ‘high risk of causing harm to post-pubescent females’.
He added that Khan’s latest sentence meant he would be subject to automatic deportation to Afghanistan once he’d served two thirds of his jail term.
Khan, who covered his face with his hands as he was led out of the dock, was also ordered to register as a sex offender indefinitely.
Mr Jones had told jurors during the trial how Khan met his alleged victim after sending her a friend request on Snapchat using the name ‘Abs’ and pretending to be a teenage boy.
He’d previously been friends on the app with other pals of hers, and the pair began exchanging messages and pictures of each other – but Mr Jones said the girl ‘describes that this person sent photos of someone who was younger than himself, and she noted that when they did meet.’
He added the girl said the messages became more sexual, and Khan ‘manipulated’ her into sending an intimate image.
The court heard they met at a tram stop the following day, with the girl ‘somewhat surprised’ at Khan’s appearance, and went to the home of a friend of hers before going to the spot where the alleged attack took place.
Mr Jones said the victim described ‘trying not to panic’ as Khan removed her clothing ‘because she did not know if he had a weapon’.
Following the attack, the girl ran to a friend’s home, before telling her father what had happened when he called her and asked her to return home.
Mr Jones said her father ‘telephoned police to say what his daughter had just told him’ and officers attended the friend’s house and spoke to the girl.
The jury heard Khan was arrested later that day in relation to an unconnected matter, and his clothing and mobile phone seized.
When he was interviewed in relation to the alleged rape, Khan told cops his name was ‘Abs Leo’, said he was aged nearly 16, and claimed he had never met the girl, been to the wood where the incident took place, and was still a virgin.
Khan’s victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was in court with members of her family to see him sentenced.
In her victim impact statement she said she felt she had ‘lost her emotions’ and ‘felt scared of the world after it happened’.
Ms Pritchard, who summarised the statement, told the court: ‘That evening she felt she wanted to kill herself, and for a few months afterward she seriously self-harmed.
‘She says, ‘I never expected anything like this to happen to me, and don’t want it to happen to anyone else, because it is just wrong’.’
Andrew Wesley, defending, said Khan ‘persists with the identity that was put forward in the trial’ but that the judge ‘could be sure he had travelled to the UK from Afghanistan, arriving in 2015 on the back of a lorry’.
He added: ‘However old he was and for whatever reason he travelled, that must have been an arduous and long journey.
‘It is curious he continues to maintain that stance, and that may say something about him that has not been revealed by the court process. ‘
He knows he will be deported.’
