LONDON, Oct 23: A British court jailed an elderly couple on Wednesday after a deaf and mute girl was trafficked from Pakistan to work as a servant and then repeatedly raped for nearly a decade.

Ilyas Ashar, 84, and his wife Tallat Ashar, 68, kept the girl in the cellar of their house in Salford, northwest England, after she was illegally brought to Britain in 2000 at the age of around 10.

Ilyas Ashar was jailed for 13 years for raping the girl from before the age of puberty until she was rescued in 2009, while his wife was jailed for five years for trafficking a person for exploitation.

The couple were also convicted of using the girl, who is profoundly deaf and cannot speak, to fraudulently claim more than £30,000 in welfare payments. The couple’s daughter Faaiza Ashar, 46, was sentenced to carry out community service after being convicted of giving false information to obtain benefits.

The victim cannot be named for legal reasons.

Prosecutor Peter Cadwallader praised the victim’s courage and “extraordinary resilience” in testifying in court. When she was rescued in a police raid in 2009, the victim did not know sign language.

British prosecutors and police arranged specialist support so that she could participate in the court proceedings, having an intermediary and a sign-language expert to help her communicate in court.

Speaking through an interpreter and using sign language, the victim described how she was hit with a rolling pin while forced to work for no money, made to sleep on a concrete floor in a bolted cellar and sexually abused

Sentencing the couple at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester, Judge Peter Lakin said the couple had subjected the girl “to a life of misery and degradation”.

“You, Ilyas Ashar, and you, Tallat Ashar, did not treat this girl as a human being. To you she was merely an object to be used, abused and cast aside at will,” he said.

The judge said neither Ashar nor his wife had expressed any remorse.

The girl had no family or friends in Britain and had never been to school there or in Pakistan but was taught to sign her name to claim state benefits, the trial heard. She wanted to return to Pakistan but was not allowed to.

Ashar routinely raped her, despite her efforts to fight him off, and he also beat and slapped her if she did not follow orders. The trial heard that the victim was now recovering with the help of social services.—Agencies