Doctor locked up for rape of girl, 14

7:43am Friday 25th July 2008

A doctor who bound a 14-year-old girl with washing line and raped her has been jailed for 12 years.

The terrified girl hid in a wardrobe after calling 999 following her ordeal, Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday.

Mohammad Sajjad was led weeping to the cells after a judge told him his “deep remorse” was just self-pity.

Sajjad, a qualified doctor who was granted asylum in the UK, had been employed as a learning disabilities healthcare assistant in the Bradford area.

The court heard he three times tied the girl’s hands tightly with red washing line and bound her feet before stripping and violating her.

The girl told police she was a virgin before she was raped by the doctor. She said she cried as he attacked her.

Sajjad, 43, pleaded guilty to three charges of raping the girl between last December and February.

Prosecutor Richard Woolfall told the court Sajjad was a British citizen. He came from the Ukraine, where he had qualified as a doctor, leaving his wife and children behind.

A successful asylum seeker, he lived at Thornbury Crescent, Bradford Moor, at the time of his arrest.

Sajjad was employed as a healthcare assistant but had stopped working because of back problems.

Mr Woolfall said police responding to a 999 call found the distressed girl who told them she had been hiding in a wardrobe.

She showed officers the clothes line that had been bound tightly and painfully round her wrists.

Sajjad told police he was drunk on vodka and could not recall the rape. When confronted with the washing line, he said: “No comment”.

Jailing him Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC said Sajjad was an educated man of good character.

He had at first accused the girl of encouraging his advances, although he, in fact, enticed her.

“You wanted that young woman under your control for one reason,” the judge said.

“Such is the depth of her trauma, and the damage to her, that she cannot yet begin to express her feelings.”

The judge made a Sexual Offences Prevention Order against Sajjad without limit of time and banned him from ever working with children.

In mitigation Sajjad’s barrister, Rukshanda Hussain, said his temptation to deny the offences must have been enormous giving the effect they would have on his standing in society.

He had accepted full responsibility for his actions and was remorseful and ashamed.

Sajjad had been remanded in custody and it was his first taste of prison life, she said.

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