Woman wins 25-year fight to jail abuser
VICTIM FINALLY SEES PAEDOPHILE FACE JUSTICE FOR SEX ASSAULTS
A WOMAN who has been fighting for her childhood abuser to face justice since she was a schoolgirl has finally seen him jailed – more than 25 years after she first spoke out against him.
Imtinan Aljoffrey-Uppal was a well-respected computer scientist from a family who had fled Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda.
But, behind the mask of respectability, he was a predatory paedophile. Yet, the victim left scarred by his abuse was repeatedly told there just wasn’t enough evidence to bring him to justice.
The woman, who was a child in the 1980s when the assaults took place, gave statements to police twice in the nineties, and again in 2014.
When she first spoke out, she was a girl of 11. Despite her young age, she was determined to see justice done. But twice it was decided there was insufficient evidence to take the case to court.
In 1991 GMP investigated the case but chose not to refer it to the Crown Prosecution Service. In 1996 the police did refer the case to the CPS, who gave advice about the evidence to GMP, but again, no action was taken.
It wasn’t until late last year that Aljoffrey-Uppal, who is now 64 and from Stockport, was finally jailed. The result came after the woman’s 2014 account to police finally led to a prosecution being brought. But even then the ordeal wasn’t over – there was a two-and-ahalf year wait for the case to get to court, and then a trial ended with the jury unable to reach a verdict. Finally, after a second trial, Aljoffrey-Uppal was found guilty of five sexual assaults. When the victim originally told police about the abuse it was just two years after it had ceased. She first told a relative, who urged her to tell her mother.
“My mum was horrified and shocked but she believed me”, she said. “As a child you are conditioned to think that when you do something wrong you are accountable for your actions. So I couldn’t understand how this person could do something wrong and nothing happen.
“I went off the rails. I started not coming home from school. I had to see a psychiatrist.”
In 1996, after another person made allegations of historical sexual abuse against AljoffreyUppal, the woman was asked by police to make a new statement. She agreed, hopeful he would finally be prosecuted.
But the CPS decided not to proceed in either her case, or that of his other accuser.
In 2014, she tried again, prompted by the Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall historic abuse scandals. She called police using the 101 non-emergency number and made a third statement.
Even though her abuser was charged in April 2015, it was not until January last year that he went on trial. The jury found Uppal not guilty on one of the six counts of sexual assault, but failed to reach a decision on the remaining charges in that first trial.
A retrial was held in October and this time Uppal was found guilty of five counts of sexual assault. He received four years’ imprisonment for counts one to four and 12 months for count five, to run concurrently. He can expect to spend half that time in jail before being released on parole. He is seeking leave to appeal his conviction.
My mum was horrified and shocked but she believed me Victim of paedophile Imtinan Aljoffrey-Uppal