August 2005 Man jailed over child abduction A man who kidnapped a 13-year-old girl with learning difficulties before sexually assaulting her, has been jailed for two years. Reger Salah, 25, from Hulme Street in the Coppice area of Oldham, pleaded guilty at Manchester Crown Court. The child went missing after she wandered out of the house on her own, sparking a massive police hunt. She disappeared for 30 hours before police got a phone call saying a motorist had found her by the roadside. ‘Vulnerable’ Salah, a failed asylum seeker originally from the Kurdish part of Iraq, kidnapped the girl from a park, took her to his flat and sexually assaulted her on 13 March 2005. Her family reported the child missing, before she was found by a driver by the roadside. He pleading guilty to offences of sexual activity with a child and abduction. Salah claimed the girl initiated sexual activity. Salah was jailed for two years, banned from working with children indefinitely, and was also placed on the sex offenders register. Judge William Morris said to Salah that he knew the victim “was a girl with her own difficulties and of some vulnerability”.