Today’s sentencing of Hadush Kebatu for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in Epping is a disgrace and an outright insult.
This sentence doesn’t just spit in the face of the victims and their families; it tells every woman and child in this country that their safety, their innocence, and their rights are worth less than that of the unknown foreign men being placed in their communities.
Because let’s get real, people are being dragged through the courts and jailed for two or three years for saying the wrong thing online and on social media, yet this man sexually assaults a child and a woman, and he walks away with just 12 months. Twelve months. He’ll be out in just two or three. This is the state of modern Britain: upside down, rotten, and ruled by cowardice.
The judge himself said there was a serious risk of reoffending.
I was sitting with the young victim’s family today. They were upset, they were angry, and I make them right. They told me after court exactly how betrayed they felt, how hollow justice looks when their daughter’s life has been scarred and the man responsible gets a sentence shorter than some people get for social media posts.
This case is personal to me because I was outside the Bell Hotel back in July, calling it for what it was. While politicians and the media tried to sweep it under the carpet, I stood there with my phone, simply telling the truth, the truth that women and girls in Epping were at risk.
We had reports of harassment, intimidation, flashing, young schoolgirls being followed, having their Snapchats demanded, and even women having their car doors opened while they sat inside.
This wasn’t “fearmongering”. It was reality. And now the worst fears of local parents have come true: a 14-year-old girl sexually assaulted in broad daylight.
The Epping hotel migrant's sentence is an insult to every woman and child in this country - Adam Brooks | Crown Prosecution Service
Let’s be absolutely clear about this: Hadush Kebatu should never have been in Epping. He conned his way into the UK just days before.
He should never have had access to our streets, our women, our children. But because of a broken asylum system, because of weak politicians and cowardly judges, men like him are dumped in hotels, fed and watered by the taxpayer, with no proper checks, no proper accountability, and zero respect for our culture or laws.
When locals started speaking out, when mums and dads said, “enough is enough", we were branded as bigots. We were told we were “scaremongering” or “far right”.
Yet every single warning has now been proven right. And you wonder why hundreds of people are turning up outside the Bell Hotel week after week, refusing to back down. Because this isn’t abstract politics, this is about protecting our daughters, our wives, our sisters.
We’ve now reached a point where the people of Epping, and towns like it across Britain, no longer trust the police, the courts, or the politicians to protect them.
They know the system bends over backwards for migrants and asylum seekers, but turns its back on British women and children. And when those same communities protest, they’re the ones threatened with arrest. What a country we’ve become.
This Sunday, there will be another huge protest, and make no mistake, it’s not going away. Parents shouldn’t have to worry if their daughter is safe walking home from school. Women shouldn’t have to carry their keys between their fingers when they get into their cars.
Yet that’s exactly what’s happening, because dangerous, undocumented men have been dumped in our midst, and the state has abandoned us.
Hadush Kebatu’s pitiful sentence highlights exactly why Britain is broken. If a 14-year-old girl’s innocence is worth 12 months behind bars, then what message are we sending? The state values controlling speech online more than protecting children from predators.
That foreign criminals are shielded while British citizens are silenced. Women and children are expendable collateral in a government experiment gone wrong.
Enough is enough. The people of Epping have had enough. The people of Britain have had enough. We are sick of the excuses, sick of the weakness, sick of paying for our own communities to be destroyed. Our women and children deserve better.