School mentor jailed over abuse of five girls

A former learning mentor who sexually abused five vulnerable teenage girls who came to him for support at school has been jailed for eight years.

Emem Udaw, 51, touched the girls in intimate areas, made one of them touch him intimately and kissed another between 2002 and 2005 while he worked at Holland Park School in Kensington, west London.

The victims, including one aged 13 at the time of the offences, described Udaw as someone they trusted to look after them but said he, instead, exploited them when they were at their most vulnerable.

The defendant was convicted of 14 counts of indecent assault on a girl under 16, relating to 47 incidents, after a trial at Isleworth Crown Court in December.

At the same court on Thursday, as Udaw was surrounded by almost 20 family and friends, Judge Giles Curtis-Raleigh told him: "Your actions were predatory, directed against girls who had been referred or come directly to you because they were having problems in their lives and/or in the school where you were working as a learning mentor.

"In each case it was a flagrant, gross breach of trust."

Udaw was put on the sex offenders register for life and handed sexual harm prevention order to run for 20 years.

In a victim personal statement, one complainant told the court she sought Udaw out at a time when her father had moved away following an accident and his release from prison, and when she was also being bullied in school.

"I trusted him completely because I had known him since primary school," she said.

"When he started to touch me I felt confused, embarrassed, ashamed, betrayed and disgusted.

"Emem took advantage of me when I was at my most vulnerable, when I was reaching out for help and protection. The betrayal by someone I saw as safe has left scars."

After her statement, prosecutor Catherine Donnelly flagged that one of the defendant's family members was making a "rude gesture" towards the woman while she was speaking, and the judge ordered him to leave court and not come back.

Another woman, in a statement read out by Donnelly, said: "I had no support and no one was properly looking out for me."

The victim first thought of Udaw as a "trusted adult" and mentor who was "cool and approachable".

The abuse, she said, "left me seeing all men as predators not to be trusted".

Another complainant described how frightened and lonely she was when she first met Udaw.

"I came to this country as a teenager, I didn't know the language, the culture or the people," she said in a statement read out by the prosecutor.

"After difficult times with my mother and her boyfriend, I ended up in foster care.

"It was frightening and lonely a lot of the time. There was no one I could just talk to or rely on in the way that other kids can.

She added that the school stepped in to help her, and she believed Udaw was a trusted adult.

"To start with he seemed alright then I started feeling uneasy and anxious around him. He touched me inappropriately. I felt frightened, angry and vulnerable," she said.

Catherine Purnell, defending, said her client's crimes were followed by a "very long period of not offending".

"During that time, he grew up properly in a way that young men have to when they create and nurture a nuclear family who are everything to him," she said, adding the proceedings were "devastating" for his loved ones.

The historic abuse came to light in 2019 when one victim posted in a social media group about inappropriate behaviour by a former school employee, prompting other women to privately share similar experiences.

Three victims reported the abuse to police in January 2020 and two further victims came forward later that year.

Police interviewed Udaw who denied all allegations and claimed he acted as a role model but he was charged.

Holland Park School counts actress Anjelica Huston, TV presenter Miquita Oliver and politicians including former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi among its alumni.

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