Groomed for Sex Then Thrown into a Canal and Killed: Life for Man Who Murdered White Girl for ‘Shaming’ Asian Family

A vulnerable teenager was stabbed and thrown into a canal to die after she brought ‘shame’ on an Asian family, a court heard yesterday.

Laura Wilson, 17, who was groomed for sex by a string of British Pakistani men, was repeatedly knifed by 18-year-old Ashtiaq Asghar.

He then pushed her into the water, using the point of the knife to force her head below the surface as she fought to stay alive.

Asghar was furious after the young mother revealed details of their sexual relationship to his Muslim family and was on ‘a mission to kill’, the court was told.

He exchanged a series of texts with married friend and mentor Ishaq Hussain, 22, who had also had an affair with Laura, and who the judge described as a man who regarded white girls as ‘sexual targets, not human beings’.

In one message, sent a day before he killed Miss Wilson, Asghar wrote: ‘I’m gonna send that kuffar (non-Muslim) bitch straight to Hell.’

In another he wrote: ‘I need to do a mission.’ He talked of buying a pistol and ‘making some beans on toast’, a reference to spilling blood used in Four Lions, a satirical film about suicide bombers.

Last night, Asghar was told he must serve a minimum of 17-and-a-half years after he pleaded guilty to murder and was jailed for life. Mr Hussain was acquitted of murder by joint enterprise after a retrial.

Sentencing Asghar, Lord Justice Davis told him: ‘I take the view you came under the influence of Mr Hussain who is something of a mentor to you.

‘He seems to have regarded girls, white girls, simply as sexual targets. He does not treat them as human beings at all. You got into that mindset yourself.

‘You no doubt once had feelings for Laura but treated her with contempt in the latter stages.’

The judge added: ‘I am sure there was a plan between you and Mr Hussain and that was a plan initiated by you.

‘You talked about getting out your hit list. Mr Hussain then encouraged you in it. I am quite sure he was lying when he said there was no plan.’

After killing Miss Wilson he went to a snooker hall ‘without a care in the world’ and tried to hide the evidence.

Miss Wilson was a troubled teenager who was first identified as being at risk of sexual exploitation by British Pakistani men when she was 12.

She had developed several links with Asian men in her home town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

In 2007, when she was 13, she and her family appeared on The Jeremy Kyle Show. During the programme–about out-of-control children–her sister warned her that ‘your attitude is going to get you in big danger’.

Workers at a child sexual exploitation project later sent a report to social services, but no action was taken to remove her from what became a continuing spiral of sexual abuse.

By the time she was 16, she had embarked on an affair with Mr Hussain, who was then 20 and already married.

She gave birth to a daughter in June last year, but Mr Hussain refused to accept that the child was his.

Four months later, and just days before she was murdered on October 12, she ‘shamed’ Asghar and Mr Hussain by informing their families of her relationship with both men.

She told Asghar’s mother she loved her son and ‘wanted to have babies’ by him. But Mrs Asghar was furious and attempted to hit Miss Wilson with a shoe, branding her ‘a dirty white bitch’ who should ‘keep your legs closed’, the trial was told.

Nicholas Campbell QC, prosecuting, said that in subsequent text messages Asghar mounted ‘a mission to kill Laura Wilson’.

Asghar and Mr Hussain had decided that Miss Wilson was ‘a loose cannon and they had to get rid of her’, Sheffield Crown Court was told.

Asghar then lured her to a late-night meeting by the Sheffield and Keadby Canal near her home and stabbed her several times. One wound was seven inches deep.

Rotherham Safeguarding Children Board, which co-ordinates agency work, undertook a serious case review after Miss Wilson’s murder but its findings have not been published.

Earlier this year, the issue of vulnerable white girls being targeted by Asian men for sex prompted Jack Straw, the former home secretary, to claim some British Pakistani men regard white girls as ‘easy meat’.

He spoke out after two Asian men who raped girls in Derby were given indefinite jail terms.

‘We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way,’ he said.