Banbury men jailed for sexual abuse of schoolgirls in 2000s

From the Oxford Mail

A pair of Banbury men on the fringes of a sordid grooming gang that plied schoolgirls with drink, drugs and cash have been jailed.

Samuel Osei-Bempong’s victim, who fell pregnant to one of the leaders in the gang, described herself as ‘just a bit of meat’ to the men. Now dad of three Osei-Bempong (below right), 50, was handed 10 years for raping the teenager in the early 2000s. He was convicted of two counts of rape, and cleared of molesting another girl.

His co-defendant, Bashiru Umar (below left), 53, who was arrested at Heathrow Airport on a layover flight from his native Nigeria to New York in April, was found guilty of indecently assaulting a third victim and jailed for three years.

Sending the men down, Judge Michael Gledhill KC described the actions of the grooming gang, whose leaders have fled the UK, as a ‘parent’s worst nightmare’. He said: “In the early 2000s, a group of men living and working in Banbury abused a large number of teenage girls and who were at school together and/or friends, again in Banbury.   They were grooming those girls in order to use them for a sexual purpose.”

He cited the words of the victims. One said the men made the girls feel like they could trust them, while another described how she felt the girls were ‘put on a line-up for men to choose which girls they wanted for their sexual pleasure’

Osei-Bempong and Umar’s sentencing hearing on Friday (October 6) followed a month-long trial at Oxford Crown Court, with jurors hearing from a number of girls who said they had been targeted by the wider gang. The sexual abuse happened in properties around Banbury,

Prosecuting, Kieran Brand told the sentencing hearing on Friday: “These were victims of a wider grooming gang. That is the way the case was put and it’s against that background these specific offences ought to be seen. ”

The big grooming trial of the Banbury area is this one from 2015. While the Oxford Mail doesn’t give a link I’d say it is likely because of the dates and the mainly African rather than Pakistani or Middle Eastern names. 

Both Osei-Bempong, of Middle Barton, near Chipping Norton, and Umar, of no fixed address, will be on the sex offender register for life.