CHILD ABUSER IMPRISONED FOR THREE YEARS

Ashraf Miah, aged 38, of Joseph Street, Bow E3, was sentenced to three years and three months imprisonment at Snaresbrook Crown Court on 7 January 2010 following 13 charges of sexual assault by touching, against six girls, one as young as 4-yearsold, in his care during 2005 and 2009. The offences happened when Miah was entrusted to teach the Quran to young females either at his home address or at their address.

The crimes came to notice when Miah was arrested in November 2009 for offences against two of the girls. During the investigation, dealt with by detectives from the Child Abuse Investigation Team, other children that had been taught by Miah were contacted and more offences came to notice, leading to his further arrest in January 2010. 13 charges followed in April 2010 when he appeared before Thames Magistrates’ Court. He was convicted on all 13 counts. He was sentenced to three years and three months imprisonment, put on the sex offenders register for life and is not allowed to work with children.

The officer leading the investigation, Detective Sergeant Martin Bird from the Child Abuse Investigation Team, said: “The tragedy of this case is that a highly respected member of the community took advantage of their position of trust. It goes to show that even if someone thinks they have got away with it at the time, young people are brave enough to come forward and testify at court.”

Facts and figures about child abuse

A significant minority of children suffer serious abuse or neglect, according to NSPCC research:

• 7 per cent of children experienced serious physical abuse at the hands of their parents or carers during childhood.
• 1 per cent of children experienced sexual abuse by a parent or carer and another 3 per cent by another relative during childhood.
• 11 per cent of children experienced sexual abuse by people known but unrelated to them. 5 per cent of children experienced sexual abuse by an adult stranger or someone they had just met.
• 6 per cent of children experienced serious absence of care at home during childhood.
• 6 per cent of children experienced frequent and severe emotional maltreatment during childhood.¹
• 16 per cent of children experienced serious maltreatment by parents, of whom one third experienced more than one type of maltreatment.

32,700 children on child protection registers in the UK as at 31 March 2003.

Nearly 79,000 children are currently looked after by local authorities in the UK.

Every week in England and Wales one to two children will die following cruelty.

There are on average 80 child homicides recorded in England and Wales each year.

Every 10 days in England and Wales, on average, one child is killed at the hands of their parent. An average of 35 a year over the past five years.

The people most likely to die a violent death are babies less than a year old, who are four times more likely to be killed than the average person in England and Wales.

Three-quarters of sexually abused children did not tell anyone about the abuse at the time, and around a third still had not told anyone about their experience(s) by early adulthood.

Over a quarter of all rapes recorded by the police are committed against children under 16 years of age.

31 per cent of children experienced bullying during childhood, a further 7 per cent were discriminated against and 14 per cent were made to feel different/an outsider. 43 per cent experienced at least one of these things during childhood.¹

NSPCC teams and Helplines accepted over 24,000 requests for help in 2003-4.

The National Commission of Inquiry into the Prevention of Child Abuse estimated that the cost of child abuse to statutory and voluntary agencies is £1 billion per year in the UK.