A gang who plied two teenage girls with alcohol and drugs before they were raped and sexually assaulted have been jailed for a total of 42 years.
The five men, all from Coventry, groomed their victims on Facebook before driving them to locations in the city where they were attacked. One of the girls regained consciousness while she was being attacked on the back seat of a car.
Waqaar Khan, Kadeem Bourne, Marcus Woolcock, Kenan Kelly and Zahid Chaudhary - whose addresses cannot be published for legal reasons - were found guilty of a total of 18 offences following a six-week trial which ended in December. All five men appeared for sentencing at Warwick Crown Court on Thursday.
The heaviest prison sentence was handed to Khan, 24, who will serve 14-and-a-half years after being found guilty of two counts of trafficking and three of rape. The group were charged in connection with offences against six girls, but were only found guilty of offences relating to two of them.
The gang were led by Khan who contacted teenage girls via Facebook in May 2015 and groomed them before arranging to meet them with the promise of gifts and shopping trips. Once they had been picked up and driven elsewhere, they were attacked, with one girl having her ordeal recorded on a mobile phone.
Khan, Bourne and Kelly were all ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for life, while Woolcock must sign for five years. The court heard how a number of references and letters had been sent to the court by family and friends of the defendants.
Three letters were sent on Khan’s behalf - from his mother, sister-in-law and a neighbour – which his barrister David Jackson said showed “another side” to him.
A trio of references for Bourne were also been sent to the court, which Tim Sapwell, Bourne’s representative, said showed the offending was “out of character” and that he had “expressed deep regret”.
Mr Sapwell had urged Judge de Bertodano to pass a sentence which “punishes [Bourne] but recognises the need not to crush him”.
The court also heard from Zahir Afzal, for Chaudhary, who said that Chaudhary’s involvement was the “most limited” of all the defendants.