A PREDATORY rapist who plied his young victim with alcohol has been jailed for seven and-a-half years.

Shibbir Ahmed, 58, was found guilty of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against a seperate young girl.

Restaurant manager Ahmed, who ran the Tandoori Villa in Stanway, prayed on the girls, enticing them to the premises with the promise of free booze or a job.

Diana Pygott, prosecuting, read statements from the victims at Chelmsford Crown Court on Friday.

The rape victim said: “I have suffered with anxiety and depression and I am taking medication for these conditions.

“I have not been able to engage with mental health services as I struggle to see and speak to people I do not know on a one to one basis.

“I struggle day to day to go out and do not go out socially.”

The woman, who is now 27, passed out at the Tandoori Villa on an evening between July 2007 and July 2008, when she was 16.

When she woke up, Ahmed, of Coronation Avenue, Colchester, was performing an indecent act on her.

The other victim was touched inappropriately over her clothing in July 2016, when she had gone for a job interview at the restaurant.

In her statement she said she struggles with the stigma surrounding what happened to her and found it hard to talk about.

She added: “When it happened it affected me. I shielded myself from my family.”

Sasha Bailey, mitigating, asked for leniency for Ahmed as he had type two diabetes and was the breadwinner for his wife and five children.

Judge Patricia Lynch sentenced Ahmed to seven years for rape, and six months for each of the sex assaults, to run concurrently. The rape sentence will run consecutively to the assaults sentence.

Judge Lynch said: “There is little or nothing I can say which is not in the statements of the two victims.

“This is a particularly serious case - your victims were vulnerable by virtue of their age.

“In so far as the rape victim, I’m of the view that you took advantage of her age, the fact she had been drinking, the fact you gave her the alcohol and the fact she drunk to the stage where she passed out.”

A Sexual Harm Prevention Order was put in place for ten years and Ahmed will be added to the Sex Offenders Register.

In January 2017, Ahmed was made subject to a risk order banning him from unsupervised contact with under 18s and from offering gifts or lifts to girls under 18.