Brighton1961

Please read this. A brave teenage girl sat in courtroom 3 of Oxford Crown Court yesterday afternoon to see an Iranian small boat migrant jailed for 12 years and six months after he sexually attacked her on Valentine's Day last year. She was just 15 at the time of the attack. She is now 17. It has taken almost two years since that horrific event for her to finally see some justice. Amin Abedi Mofrad, 35, shouted that he was innocent when he entered the dock. He was told to be quiet by the judge as he continued to profess that he never attacked her. But a jury had unanimously convicted him in October after a six-day trial. His cruel and determined attack was detailed by the judge as she handed down the sentence. Mofrad had waited in the city centre on the night of the attack. The prosecution said he lured her into an alleyway and used her as a "sex doll". Mofrad, who required a Farsi interpreter throughout the trial and sentencing, appeared emotionless at first but shouted "lies!" as he was led from court. He was staying in an asylum hotel at the time of the attack on the vulnerable teenager. As the door slammed, the girl in the court and her mum waiting for her outside were left with a burning question: How had this been allowed to happen to them? How was a violent predator, jailed in Germany after 11 convictions for violence, allowed into Britain? And then how was he allowed to roam our streets — get arrested for a separate sexual assault — but still free to watch and wait and hurt our innocent children? These are the questions that the victim's mum has asked ministers at the Home Office. They have yet to respond to her. GB News was able to give the family some good news last night: Mofrad has been referred for deportation action. We will press the Home Office for updates on this and the family's broader concerns. They feel that the state has abandoned them and many other families. The small boats crisis is contributing to a severe decline in public safety. The risks are growing along with the number of reported incidents and attacks. These communities are terrified about who is being placed among them. Their fears are totally legitimate. Meanwhile, that teenage girl was sadly unable to deliver her impact statement yesterday. But the family has asked me to share it, so that this brave girl has the final word after her abuser shouted "lies" in the court. Here is what we should have heard in court yesterday. I struggle to find the words to start this. I've gone over in my head what I could say and how to explain something like this. Before I start I want to say that putting embarrassment to the side and showing vulnerability for strangers to hear has been really difficult along with trying to capture the darkness I have been living in within the last 16 months since this happened. There’s a kind of loneliness that goes beyond being alone in a room. It’s the kind where you’re surrounded by people but you’re stuck in a bubble. It’s where the world around you is moving but you can’t follow it. It’s where no one else can sit in your body and feel what it’s like to be you. It’s difficult to articulate the depth of the darkness this process, this pain and this constant fight to keep going is. It’s something I’ve had to face alone every memory, every night and every moment has been mine to carry and sometimes that’s the hardest part. Not just what happened- but the silence afterwards. The 14th of February 2024 was once a day that I believed symbolised love, connection and joy. It now marks the day where my life was forever changed. I was a child who believed in good people. I believed in kindness, the idea that if you treat the people who surround you with kindness, that would be reciprocated. I never thought that one night could change so much. It changed everything I knew about myself. My body became something I no longer wanted to associate with and my voice became something I no longer wanted because in the moment I needed it most it failed to protect me. It’s like looking in the mirror and not recognise the person staring back. Feeling like your body isn’t yours anymore like it belongs to the memory of what happened instead. Not even wanting to be associated with yourself because you feel so violated and disgusted to be you. Standing in front of the mirror and facing the reflection of that night is a pain I can’t avoid. It's a constant reminder that the past is engraved in who I am and accepting that truth is a struggle I face everyday. I was forced in a moment that didn’t end for me when he was finished. It followed me. When he was done he got to walk away but I was left to deal with the battle. I have been left to carry a trauma that invades every part of my life. While he was able to leave and return to his life without consequence, mine feels like it’s fallen apart. When I arrived back at school, I carried that silence with me where everything kept moving but I was stuck. My teachers still handed out assignments. Homework still had deadlines and life kept going on. I still tried to carry on. I thought that if I told people the extent of the darkness that was slowly consuming me they would see that moment on me too. I believed the anonymous corner of the internet would give me the comfort I needed to move on from what happened that night. I convinced myself that if I stayed quiet, if I stayed very brief, if I carried it alone it would go away. However, one thing I’ve really learnt is it doesn’t work like that. I had barely started to come to terms with what happened when I was in a system retelling my story. The police process became another layer of shame and confusion. It was something I was never prepared for. It could be a request for evidence or even a simple phone call that became a reminder that my life was reduced to interviews and court dates. Every call and message dragged me back to that night, I was pulled back and I couldn't move forward. What hurts most now is what my family went through. I didn’t just try to leave my pain behind but I nearly left them to pick up the pieces of it. That guilt is difficult to shake. The people who love me were hugely impacted by what he decided to do but also by my reaction to it. That is something I regret deeply. The ones who searched for me when they didn’t know where I was, who waited in the hospital corridors with fear in their eyes, who whispered prayers I’ll never hear. The same hands that once put a plaster on my scraped knees now held mine trembling. My dad - the man who used to lift me onto his shoulders so I could see the world from above now sat in a chair, staring at the floor, unable to fix what was broken inside. My mum - who once brushed the tangles from my curly hair and kissed my forehead before bed, now sat silently praying that her child wouldn’t disappear for good. My sister - who once begged me to play with her, who’d sneak into my room late at night to chat now watched her little sister fall apart. The impact on my school life has been huge. I fell behind massively and if I’m being honest catching up never felt like the priority. I would sit in class oblivious to what was happening because my mind was trapped somewhere else that I couldn't escape. There didn't feel like any point. I had let them down. I became someone I didn’t recognise. Someone I didn’t want to be. I stopped caring about my future. I lost friends. People started avoiding me. I could feel the way their eyes shifted when I walked into a room. They didn’t whisper but I knew what they were thinking. I could hear it in the silence. I was no longer the person I used to be and had become a reminder of something uncomfortable, something people didn’t want to acknowledge. After that night I changed, everything changed and there were no words to explain why I was different because I was ashamed of what had happened so instead of reaching out to them, I pulled away. I self destructed in the only way I thought how, it wasn't intentional,I just gave up caring. I sabotaged everything. My grades were non-existent because I wouldn’t turn up, I avoided my friends, I isolated myself. I felt like every time I tried to pull myself out I was hit with another wave of sadness. I couldn’t see a way out. I thought that maybe I deserved it. I didn’t know how to face what happened to me so instead, I turned to what felt like a way out and that was drinking. If someone told me when I was a child that drinking would have the presence it did in my life, I know I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have maybe felt offended but that is the truth I live with now.  It felt like a quiet way to disappear. It was a way to blur the things I didn’t know how to face. It started slowly I’d say when I’d only socialise to drink but it turned into something darker. The pain I felt from within, demanded to be drowned and I truly believed it to be the solution. I believed that alcohol was the answer, that it could silence the noise in my head, that it could take the ache away even if it was just for a bit. If I’m being honest it worked until it became the thing I lent on and then it became a lot darker. It filled the spaces where sleep wouldn’t come and where I felt peace had long abandoned me. I wasn’t drinking to have fun, I was drinking to chase numbness. I thought getting to the bottom of the bottle was outrunning the grief that had consumed me. That escape came at a cost. I inevitably started to change. I wasn’t the child who used to be full of light and laughter. That version of me slowly faded which meant my friendships began to shift. Looking back I know I became distant, unreliable, someone who seemed to be spiralling and in many ways, I think I was. I wasn’t the friend I once was and who I wanted to be. I became too consumed by everything I was trying so hard to bury. When you’re hurting that much you believe the people you love and care about would be better off without the broken version of you. I know it wasn’t my fault but knowing doesn’t take away the pain. Knowing doesn’t erase the shame, the humiliation, being forced to relive the worst moment of my life in front of strangers, to speak about something so deeply personal, so violating, so humiliating. It doesn’t erase the feeling of exposure. It’s the kind of thing you think lives far away from your own world but it’s now my reality. Reflecting on the trial starting, she said: I sat in a chair waiting, carrying the weight of everything I had been through and building up the courage it took just to be there. Just before I was about to go in it was adjourned for reasons outside my control. It was another moment where I felt out of control and another time my life was put on hold. At the time I got told I was being brave but I didn’t feel brave. I felt powerless and tired. That day became yet another reminder that this person still has influence over my life. Just by delaying, deciding and dragging things out. It feels like another act of control and that hurts in a way that’s hard to explain. I was still stuck in a cycle of waiting, wondering and reliving everything over and over in my head.  I refuse to let the person who did this to me keep that power. I’m doing it for freedom. So I can heal from this one day because more than anything I want to carry peace in a place that has been filled with such darkness for so long.