Anger as child sex victim is locked up overnight

The girl, who had committed no crime, was held for 20 hours in police cells on the orders of Judge Robert Bartfield, sitting at Bradford Crown Court.

Abid Miskeen, 32, of Little Horton Road, Bradford, was yesterday jailed for seven years for sexual activity with a child after being convicted the previous day.

During the three-day trial the girl, who was 14-years-old when Miskeen had sex with her in June 2013, disappeared when she was supposed to give evidence following a delay in the case.

Judge Bartfield agreed to a request from prosecutors to have the girl and other absent witnesses arrested by police and detained until she gave her evidence the next day.

He acknowledged in court that “some concern has been expressed about this”.

But sentencing Miskeen yesterday, the judge told him: “What’s plain is that had she not been present to give evidence, you would have walked free from the court last Thursday.”

The judge said that although the girl was technically a prosecution witness, she was required to be at court as part of the defence case and Miskeen could not have had a fair trial without her evidence.

He said it was believed the girl “still harboured strong feeling for the defendant” and that “her contact with other witnesses led the prosecution to believe she was seeking to influence them”.

West Yorkshire police and crime commissioner Mark Burns-Williamson said he would be seeking an “urgent explanation” from Chief Constable Mark Gilmore into “exactly how this distressing and disturbing situation arose”.

He said “I do not believe that a vulnerable young girl should need to be arrested and detained in the cells, when she is the victim in this type of case.

“There appears to have been a serious failing in the care and support provided to the victim. I have always said that victims and witnesses need to come first and must get the right help and support they need, and in the way they need it.

“As I understand it without the victim’s attendance, the trial may have collapsed and clearly a serious sex offender has now been found guilty, but it cannot be right that a young teenage girl gets arrested and put into cells overnight, when she is the victim and key witness, not the perpetrator.”

The judge heard how the girl was made pregnant by father-of-two Miskeen and later chose to have a termination. He told the defendant: “You befriended her, effectively groomed her into having a relationship with you and your intention was to have sexual intercourse with her.”

He heard that Miskeen, who had a string of previous convictions, was given a community order in 2012 for punching his partner and was in breach of this order at the time of the offence against the girl.

Superintendent Vince Firth of West Yorkshire Police, lead on sexual exploitation on behalf of the Bradford Safeguarding Board, said: “Miskeen befriended and proceeded to take advantage of a vulnerable young girl, who was not of consenting age.

“We are pleased with the sentence that has been passed down today and hope it will act as a deterrent to anyone thinking of committing a similar offence.”

Charity Victim Support was among those condemning the arrest of the girl.

Assistant chief executive Adam Pemberton said: “The spectacle of a child spending the hours before she gives evidence against her abuser locked up in cells at a police station and at court is nothing short of Dickensian and must never be allowed to happen again.”

A spokeswoman for the judiciary said procedures relating to the management of vulnerable witnesses were now being revisited following the trial.

She said: “It is a very unusual and exceptional step for young witnesses to be made subject to a witness warrant and held in custody in order to secure attendance at court.”