An asylum seeker rapist who was unmasked by Reform UK MP Lee Anderson after attacking a ‘vulnerable’ teenage girl whom he pounced on in a park has been given a 14 year extended sentence.
Pakistani national Sheraz Malik’s immigration status was exposed by Mr Anderson after the drunken victim was targeted by Malik and his friend last summer.
Birmingham Crown Court heard he took turns with his friend raping the teenager, before asking her: ‘Did you enjoy that?’
The distraught victim even begged a friend via text to ‘please help me’ as she was preyed upon by the men, jurors were told.
Malik was convicted of two counts of rape. His accomplice has been identified by police as an Afghan national who is believed to be abroad after going on the run. Efforts to track him down are ongoing.
Sentencing Malik this morning, Judge Simon Ash KC told him: ‘Rather than feeling empathy for your victim your feelings are of hostility and anger towards her.’
At the time of the rape in Sutton Lawn park in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, last June, Malik was living in a taxpayer-funded house of multiple occupancy (HMO), having spent periods living in Italy, Germany and France before arriving in the UK.
Mr Anderson revealed that he was an asylum seeker following the attack on the 18-year-old, who was alone at the time.
Lee Anderson first exposed Malik as an asylum seeker last year after he was arrested for targeting the 18-year-old woman when she was alone in Sutton-in-Ashfield
Judge Nirmal Shant KC imposed a reporting restriction postponing publication of Sheraz Malik’s immigration status until the end of the trial
But a reporting restriction was put in place by judge Nirmal Shant KC at Nottingham Crown Court in September last year, preventing any mention of the defendant’s immigration status until the trial concluded in January.
After the verdict, Ashfield MP Mr Anderson said: ‘It’s obvious that the police and the whole judiciary were very reluctant to allow the public the true identity of this vile creature. The public deserves better which is why I exposed the truth.’
In posts on X and Facebook last summer, Mr Anderson claimed he had been asked not to publicise the case by police for fear of jeopardising the prosecution.
He wrote: ‘Enough is enough… Why would it affect the trial… I will not shut up and do not care about the consequences.’ The posts triggered an anti-immigrant protest in Sutton-in-Ashfield.
Malik’s trial was later switched from Nottingham to Birmingham amid the increased publicity.
During the eventual six-day trial, jurors heard the victim had been at Sutton Lawn park with a friend when she was pounced on by Malik, who had been playing cricket with a group of men nearby.
Prosecution counsel Nicholas Corsellis KC told the jury that the victim had been drinking vodka and was ‘alone, drunk and was obviously a vulnerable person’.
Lee Anderson’s post on X – since deleted – triggered a protest in Sutton-in-Ashfield
Malik told jurors at Birmingham Crown Court the Home Office paid him £50 per week
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Judge ordered jury NOT be told that Pakistani national who raped girl in park was an asylum seeker
The court heard her friend left for a short period to meet another friend, and asked Malik’s group to keep an eye on her.
But instead, one of the men led the woman to a secluded area and raped her.
Malik, who told housemates he was smuggled into Britain in the boot of a car, then dragged her to a tree by her hair before carrying out his own sex attack.
Jurors were told Malik told the girl: ‘You’re going to take it like a slut’.
After Malik finished his sexual assault, the prosecutor said he asked her: ‘Did you enjoy that?’
Mr Corsellis continued: ‘Needless to say, she said ‘no’.’
The court heard that following the incidents, the woman had texted her friend saying: ‘Please help me’.
In court Malik, who admitted he had been smoking cannabis before the attack, was asked why he took advantage of the victim. He replied: ‘What else was I supposed to do?’ Asked how he arrived in Europe, Malik protested that the question was not relevant.
Legal argument took place without jurors present after Malik’s objection.
The prosecution argued that the question would provide evidence of Malik’s ‘considerable experience of life’, but the judge agreed that the issue was not relevant.
Malik, now 28, subsequently fled from his HMO in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, on a coach to Newcastle under a false name.
While giving evidence he was asked why a different name had been used to book him the coach ticket and replied that a friend had booked the journey for him, adding that the Home Office were ‘giving me £50 for every week’.
He was arrested in Newcastle almost three weeks later.
Malik, who was assisted in court by a Pakistani Pashto interpreter, told jurors the sex had been consensual. He said the girl had removed her own shorts and underwear.
The defendant, who grinned through part of his evidence, was cleared of a third count of rape.
Following the trial, the judge ordered reports on Malik to be conducted to assess his ‘level of dangerousness’ before he could be sentenced, after the prosecutor warned: ‘We know very little about the background of the defendant’.
At the time of the rape, there was no guidance for forces about disclosing ethnicity or immigration status of a person on charge.
But last August, the National Police Chiefs’ Council released new guidance stating that police may release the ethnicity and nationality of suspects after they have been charged.
In November the Law Commission said publishing suspects’ immigration status, ethnicity and religion ‘will generally not create risk’ of prejudicing their future trials.
Its review of contempt of court laws in the online age came after disorder across the UK in the wake of the Southport murders of Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and Bebe King, six, in 2024.
Then, false claims spread online that the perpetrator Axel Rudakubana, then 17, was an asylum seeker who had come to the country by boat.
