Bradford Facebook pervert jailed and will be deported for grooming teenage girl (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Bradford Facebook pervert jailed and will be deported for grooming teenage girl

7:30am Saturday 11th February 2012 in News By Tanya O'Rourke

A father-of-three who groomed a young teenager after meeting her on Facebook was jailed for 18 months and will be deported.

Khuram Shahzad, 37, was described by Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC yesterday as a “thoroughly wicked man”, after he admitted attempting to meet the girl following sexual grooming in September last year.

Bradford Crown Court was told the girl had initially told him she was 20, but when she revealed her true age, which was under 16, he continued the relationship, asking her to touch herself sexually and asking her to meet him.

The offence came to light when the girl was reported missing by her parents and was found by police travelling on a coach to Leeds on her own, prosecutor James Bourne-Arton said. She had been on her way to meet Shahzad, an engineer, who she had arranged to meet at a Bradford bus station.

The prosecutor said she had met him online six or seven months before, using different websites and eventually swapping phone numbers and talking on Skype.

When she admitted her age he suggested they meet up, Mr Bourne-Arton told the court. She said she went online that evening and he started stabbing himself, although Shahzad does not accept the incident happened.

The court heard he also threatened to kill himself if she did not visit him. He said he did not want to have sex, he just wanted to see her, but had asked her if she wanted to “do anything naughty”, Mr Bourne-Arton said.

Judge Durham Hall told Shahzad, who wept in the dock as he was sentenced: “You are clearly an emotional man and you subjected her to increasing, unfair, emotional pressure, coercion and blackmail.” He said when he knew her age Shahzad “was demanding she conduct explicit sexual displays over the webcam”, which she refused to do.

Sentencing Shahzad, of Talbot Street, Listerhills, to 18 months in jail, he said: “This is an increasing problem within this and national areas. It is not confined to any particular person, race or background but there is clearly a growing problem of grooming over Facebook or the like by older men of much younger children.”

Shahzad, who is married and has three children in Pakistan, will be deported after serving his sentence.

The court heard he had not gone looking to speak to a child and that he had not intended to engage in serious sexual activity.

Judge Durham Hall said it was “not quite the case of predatory grooming that I see so often in this area”.