Judge criticises police response in rape case
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A judge has called for an inquiry into how police failed to come to the assistance of a teenage girl who had been kidnapped, repeatedly raped, severely beaten and forced into prostitution.
A judge has called for an inquiry into how police failed to come to the assistance of a teenage girl who had been kidnapped, repeatedly raped, severely beaten and forced into prostitution.
Judge Martin Reynolds called the police response "less than helpful and less than sympathetic" after the girl managed to briefly escape from her kidnapper, Agrol Xhabri, 22, and to call 999. She was told a patrol car would be sent but it never arrived and she was forced to return to where Xhabri had been holding her captive.
The judge said it was also a "cause for considerable concern" that when she managed to raise the alarm a second time three weeks later, police began a surveillance operation, during which time she was raped again, before they eventually managed to rescue her.
Sentencing Xhabri, an Albanian living illegally in Manor Park, east London, to 12 years, Judge Reynolds said he had done "incalculable harm" to the girl, a Latvian language student whom he snatched from her home, threatening to cut her "into little pieces" if she did not obey his orders.
Xhabri was convicted of raping, falsely imprisoning, making threats to kill and forcing the girl into prostitution after a trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London.
The girl had arrived in Britain last summer and was living with her father when she was introduced to Xhabri. A few days later, he turned up at her house, accompanied by men who appeared to be acting as bodyguards, who forced her to go with them. She was ordered to write a letter to her father, telling him that she had moved out.