A man has been jailed in Bolton, Greater Manchester, after plying two 14-year-old girls with alcohol before raping and assaulting them.
Sultani Bakatash, 29, was sentenced to 14 years in jail after being convicted of two counts of rape, one of sexual assault and one of assault by penetration.
Bolton Crown Court heard how the girls were made to drink vodka and cola after being lured to Bakatash’s home, having been befriended by him on Snapchat.
The teenagers had been so intoxicated that they were in and out of consciousness, but one girl did manage to escape.
She knocked on a neighbour’s door, calling out that he was ‘trying to rape her friend’ and that she was ‘locked in’.
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‘He’s raping her,’ the girl called out to the neighbour after freeing herself from the flat at Georgina Court in Bolton.
Prosecutor Charlotte Rimmer told the court how Bakatash had encouraged the girls to drink while only taking small sips himself.
She described him as ‘a man, intent on sexual gratification, regardless of what they wanted’.
Bakatash claimed that the girls had initiated and consented to the sex but later said he couldn’t remember what happened and denied any sexual activity had taken place.
He had fled the property after the assaults and was arrested two days later, staying at his brother’s house.
The girls are said to have suffered severe psychological harm, with the incident likely to stay with them for life.
Judge Kenderik Horne ruled that Bakatash had ‘encouraged them to keep drinking’ and ‘did that so they would become so drunk they would not be able to stop you having sex with them.’
He continued: ‘You told the jury you had not engaged in any sexual activity. That was a lie, the jury saw through your lie.’
The judge added that Bakatash, originally from Afghanistan, may not be deported after serving two-thirds of his 14-year sentence due to his work with the British Army.
Bakatash’s lawyer, Umar Shehzad, said he had been shot and injured while working for the army in his home country.
He said Bakatash was ‘overwhelmed’ living in a foreign country, having fled Afghanistan after the Taliban took over in 2021.
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