Apostate Gone Wild

How a child prodigy at Oxford became a £130-an-hour prostitute


With the intellect to win a place at Oxford at the age of 13, Sufiah Yusof should, by now, be carving out a high-flying career for herself.

But a decade after hitting the headlines thanks to her remarkable aptitude for mathematics - and days after her father was jailed for sexually assaulting two teenagers - Miss Yusof has been exposed as a £130-an-hour prostitute.

The revelation completes a sad fall from grace for the family who were hailed the brightest in Britain after Miss Yusof and two of her siblings won university places by the time they were 16.

Calling herself Shilpa Lee, 23-year-old Miss Yusof advertises her body on an internet sex site and operates out of a back street flat in Salford. Yesterday, a friend of the former child prodigy said of her downfall: "It is all desperately heartbreaking.

"With her amazing brain she should be able to make money any way she wants. But instead her life spiralled completely out of control.

"Sufiah has suffered so many knocks in her life. I just hope she can drag herself out of this life she has got herself into.

"She is such a good person and deserves a much better life than this. Her gift really has been a curse."

On the website, she describes herself as a '"very pretty size 8, 32D bust and 5ft 5in tall - available for booking every day from 11am to 8pm".

She adds that she is a "sexy, smart student" who prefers "older gentlemen". When an undercover reporter visited her at the flat, Miss Yusof stripped naked and gyrated on a bed as she reeled off her list of services.

Miss Yusof was pictured as a child smiling innocently outside St Hilda's College, Oxford, after winning her place to study maths in 1997. But she ran away three years later, aged 15, claiming her parents had placed her under intolerable pressure to succeed.

She was found by police 12 days later working as a waitress at a Bournemouth internet cafe but refused to return to her parents, who had given up their jobs to educate their five children at home.

Miss Yusof was taken in by a foster family and shortly afterwards sent a searing email to her parents, documenting the "living hell" she said her father - a private tutor - had created.

She wrote: "I've finally had enough of 15 years of physical and emotional abuse."

She accused her "controlling and bullying" father of forcing her to work in the cold to aid concentration and added that she never wanted to see him again.

In 2004, she married trainee lawyer Jonathan Marshall, but the couple divorced 13 months later.

In January, the Daily Mail revealed that her father Farooq had been remanded in custody after admitting sexually assaulting two girls, both aged 15.

Appearing under his real surname of Khan, he was jailed for 18 months at Coventry Crown Court last week after a judge heard how he had groped the two girls when he was home tutoring them at maths.

He had previously been jailed for three years in 1992 for his part in a £1.5million mortgage swindle involving several family members.

Yesterday the News of the World described how Miss Yusof was armed with three mobile phones as she welcomed an undercover reporter who was posing as a client at her flat.

The once strict Muslim stripped out of her tiny skirt, leather boots, tight T- shirt and red matching underwear as she detailed her £130-an-hour rate.

She claimed to be studying for a masters degree in economics on a part-time two-year course in London and added: "I've got exams coming up and I'm thinking, 'Oh my God!'."

Yesterday, her mother, Halimahton, 51, a scientist, said she had no idea her daughter was working as a prostitute.

Speaking from her home in Coventry, Mrs Yusof said: "I didn't know anything about that. I am not in touch with Sufiah any more. I have got no comment."

Miss Yusof's brother, Iskander, aged 12, and sister Aisha, 16, started at Warwick University in 1998, making them the youngest brother and sister to study together at university at the time.

Sounds like an 'honor killing' in the making.

Via The Daily Mail.

UPDATE: Don Surber links. Thanks!

ROP Rides Again

THE PRICE OF FAITHLESSNESS
Iran to Punish Apostasy with Death
Apostasy -- or the formal renunciation of religion -- is already punishable in Iran with death. But now, Iran wants to make the death penalty for apostasy part of the penal code. The European Union is concerned and has asked Iran to reconsider.

The European Union this week sent a letter to authorities in Iran expressing its concern over a proposed change to the penal code that would make apostasy punishable by death.

The EU is responding to news that the Islamic Republic is planning to subject "apostasy, heresy and witchcraft" to the Hudud -- the body of fixed punishments assigned to crimes that are considered violations of the "claims of God." Other Hadud crimes include alcohol consumption, theft, highway robbery and illegal sexual intercourse.

As the news agency Reuters reported earlier this week, the EU, which opposes the death penalty as a matter of policy, expressed "acute concern" over the proposed penal code revision.

"These articles clearly violate the Islamic Republic of Iran's commitments under the international human rights conventions," Slovenian leaders, who currently head the rotating EU presidency, wrote in a statement.

"The EU calls upon the Iranian authorities, both in government and parliament, to modify the draft penal code in order to respect the obligations."

The death penalty has already been applied to apostates in Iran -- but this was never, since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, institutionalized as a matter of legal practice.

Iran typically dismisses Western criticism of its legal system, claiming that Islamic law is fundamentally different.

The main concern seems to be arising from the Baha'i faith, which forms a religious minority in Iran but, unlike Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism, is not officially recognized by the regime.

On Thursday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the Baha'i community in Germany is particularly worried about the fate of three Iranian Baha'i, who were arrested in 2006 in the southern Iranian city of Schiras for having founded a center for Baha'i children and youth. They were sentenced to four years imprisonment and are said to be in a secret service rather than normal prison.

At the beginning of February, the EU officially protested the sentence and expressed its concern about the "worsening situation for ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, in particular that of the Baha'i." The Iranian court defended its decision on the basis that the Baha'i, in promoting their faith, were spreading propaganda "against the Islamic regime."

The Baha'i faith developed out of Shia Islam in the 19th century and its followers have been subject to discrimination for generations.

Religion of Peace™

Via Spiegel International