UK imam jailed for rape of 12-year-old

London, Dec 24: A Muslim cleric in Britain was jailed for 10 years on Wednesday for raping and sexually abusing a young girl pupil at the mosque where he was teaching her the Quran. Manzoor Hussain, 42, who was at the time imam of the mosque in a terraced house in Bristol, abused the girl when she was 12 over a period of nine months, but it was six years before she plucked up courage to tell her parents. Hussain left the mosque soon afterwards and has since been working as a taxi driver. Judge Graham Cottle told him that he had been convicted of an "appalling breach of trust" against a young girl who had no idea how to deal with the situation. He said: "You were the imam in the mosque. You were an elder in the community and a man to be revered and respected by the children you taught. It was quite clear from the victim's account at the time she had no idea how to deal with this situation. She was a frightened, confused and miserable child." During the two-week trial the victim said that the assaults began when she was a pupil at the Urdu-language Quran lessons at the mosque. She said that Hussain started by kissing her and went on to touch her under her clothing as she read passages of the Quran during a lesson while his activities were hidden from the other children by a bench. He went on to assault her indecently in an upstairs room. When she had turned 13, he took her upstairs in the mosque and raped her, she said. Hussain, who denied the charges, was convicted by a majority of 11-1.

(The Asian Age)