Mohammed Miah

Mohammed Miah, a 41-year-old serial sex offender from Rochdale, has been jailed for 12 years after being found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl in North Wales in 2007. The sentencing took place at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, where Judge John Potter highlighted Miah's 'dreadful record of sexual offending against children and young women'. This latest conviction adds to Miah's existing 23-year jail term for previous sexual abuse offences, with the new sentence running concurrently.

The offence occurred when Miah, who presented himself to the victim as 'Ali', met the extremely vulnerable 16-year-old girl just a day earlier. He bought her alcohol and drove her from Rochdale to a beach in North Wales, where he threatened to abandon her unless she engaged in sexual activity. Despite her tearful pleas to stop midway through the assault, Miah continued the rape. The victim, who had a chaotic lifestyle following abandonment by her parents in her early teens, came forward to police following the high-profile 2012 convictions of a grooming gang in Rochdale.

Miah's history of sexual exploitation is extensive. In 2005, he violently raped another vulnerable victim, aged 14 or 15, multiple times after purchasing vodka for her. Additionally, in 2009, he was convicted of attempting to abduct a 15-year-old girl by approaching her on the street in his car and falsely claiming her mother had instructed him to pick her up. Miah, a married father-of-four and former takeaway cook, was one of 10 men jailed in April for sexually abusing a complainant who reported repeated grooming by numerous men in Rochdale as part of Greater Manchester Police's Operation Doublet investigation.

Reporting restrictions that had previously anonymised Miah were lifted by the court following his conviction. Judge Potter described the victim in the 2007 case as 'extremely vulnerable' during the sentencing hearing. The operation was launched in response to the 2012 Rochdale grooming scandal, which brought widespread attention to the systemic sexual exploitation of young girls in the area.