A total of 25 men mostly of South Asian descent have been sentenced to a collective 346 years in prison over the “abhorrent in the extreme” rape, sexual abuse, and trafficking of girls between 1999 and 2012 in the North Kirklees area of West Yorkshire.
Operation Tourway, an investigation starting in 2015 focussing on the towns of Batley and Dewsbury, has jailed 25 men in connection to the “absolutely shocking offending” sexual abuse, rape, and trafficking of eight girls, whom the police said were treated as “defenceless commodities to be abused and traded at whim”.
The arrests took place in late 2018 and all 24 men — mostly of South Asian descent — were charged in December of 2020. The men were found guilty in a series of five trials at the Leeds Crown Court between 2022 and 2024, however, reporting restrictions were only lifted on Friday.
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