Taxi Driver Online

What can I say? How the hell can you protect vulnerable females when you have azzholes like this licensed and plying for hire?
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Birmingham Evening Mail

August 19, 2006, Saturday

HEADLINE: No place in our city for rapist monster;

CRIME: Sex beast cabbie set to lose taxi licence

BYLINE: Mark Cowan CRIME CORRESPONDENT

A PRIVATE hire driver who raped a teenage passenger will never again be able to work as a cabbie in the city, council chiefs pledged today.

Father-of-four Ghulam Haider was jailed for six years on Thursday for the horrific attack on the 16-year-old girl he was driving home.

Under council rules anyone with a conviction for violent or sexual offences is not allowed to hold a private hire licence in Birmingham.

Licensing bosses today reassured the Birmingham public that the 49-year-old sex beast would now almost certainly be stripped of his licence.

Coun Bruce Lines, vicechairman of the licensing committee, said passenger safety was paramount and the committee would now be asked to review Haider's licence.

"We take a tough line with things like this," he said. "Birmingham is probably the toughest anywhere in the country.

"It is up to the committee to decide what happens, but with that conviction it is more than likely his licence will be revoked. "Once he gets out, if he was to apply again it would go back before the committee but the chances are that he wouldn't get his licence back. "All the taxi drivers have criminal checks to decide whether they are a fit and proper person to hold a licence. With a conviction of rape I wouldn't have thought he would be granted one."

Haider attacked his terrified young victim outside a derelict church graveyard after he had picked her up from her boyfriend's home last September.

Haider, of Augusta Road, Acocks Green, was jailed after a jury found him guilty of indecent assault and rape at Birmingham Crown Court. He was also put on the sex offenders' register for the rest of his life.

Following his conviction, the victim's mum, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: "As parents when your children are put into a taxi you expect them to be safe. Now it's hard for us if our daughter goes anywhere. I would say to all girls out there, look at your driver's badge and try and take a number."
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Birmingham Evening Mail

August 18, 2006, Friday

HEADLINE: He got six years... I have a life sentence

IT should have been the end to a perfect night.

A city schoolgirl, just turned 16, had been out with her new boyfriend to celebrate a 40th birthday with his family.

Her taxi ride home would have been over in minutes, but instead it was to turn into the most terrifying ordeal of her life. What she thought would be a safe passage, with a trusted taxi firm used by her boyfriend for years, rapidly became every young girl's worst nightmare.

Her boyfriend texted her mum to say she was safely on her way but instead of reaching her Yardley home, the student was taken on a frightening detour to a derelict church graveyard where cabbie Ghulam Haider raped her.

As the brave youngster, now 17, recalls the moments after she left her boyfriend's house, past midnight, she is composed and calm.

But the brutal and humiliating attack that followed still haunts her dreams. She knows life will never be the same again and feels a change in herself. She says she is cold towards others now, even her mum.

Outside court the pretty teenager, dressed in blue jeans, grabbed her mother's hand to thank her for persuading her to go ahead with the traumatic court case. "It has definitely changed me. I'm less affectionate with everyone, even my mum. I can be so horrible and cold to people but before I wasn't like that," she said.

"When it happened it was like being frozen in time and as if it was happening to someone else. It was the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me. "I don't know what it would have done to me if he was found not guilty. It's been hard enough but it would have completely destroyed me.

"Six years is not long enough for something like that. I've got the life sentence, I'm stuck with this forever. But I want to put this behind me and just get on with my life."

The girl's 41-year-old mum said her daughter was never an "out-on-the-town girl" but after this she hardly goes out at all. She adds: "My daughter wakes up at night and sees his face over hers. "As parents when your children get put into a taxi you expect them to be safe.

"Now it's hard for us if our daughter goes anywhere. I would say to all girls out there look at your driver's badge and try and take a number.
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I hope other drivers will learn from this you have a responsibility for the safety of vulnerable passengers. I wonder if the council made that point clearly enough when issuing him with a badge. That having been said there was a similar incident round here a few years ago in that case the driver was transporting his stepdaughter to a residential school (on a county council contract) He lost everything as well as 3 years in jail.

Where a driver is entrusted with the safety of the girl and abuses that trust the sentences should be stiffer I think

What utter rubbish.

As far as I know not a single council will give a rapist who has just finished a 6 year stretch for rape a license.

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IDFIMH