Seven men used teenage girls as ‘sex slaves' in Rochdale
Seven Asian men have been convicted of the sexual exploitation of two white teenage schoolgirls in Rochdale.
The abusers preyed on the vulnerabilities of the victims to groom them as 'sex slaves' from the age of 13 in the Greater Manchester town between 2001 and 2006.
Both girls had 'deeply troubled home lives' and were given drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, places to stay and people to be with, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard.
Soon afterwards, they were expected to have sex 'whenever and wherever' the abusers and other men wanted, in filthy flats, on rancid mattresses, in cars, car parks, alleyways and disused warehouses.
Jurors deliberated for three weeks before delivering unanimous guilty verdicts on Friday.
Three of the abusers, Mohammed Zahid, 64, Mushtaq Ahmed, 67, and Kasir Bashir, 50 – all born in Pakistan – were stallholders at the town's indoor market.
Opening the prosecution case in January, Rossano Scamardella KC said Rochdale had been 'blighted' by child sexual exploitation and that one of the two complainants, Girl A, was abused by many other Asian men.
Girl A told the jury she could have been targeted by more than 200 offenders as her phone number was swapped but said 'there was that many it was hard to keep count'.
The court heard that she told local children's services in 2004 that she was 'hanging around' with groups of older men, drinking and taking cannabis.
Giving evidence, Girl B said she was living in a local children's home when she was preyed on by Zahid, Ahmed and Bashir.
She said she presumed various agencies knew what was going on as police regularly picked her up after social workers labelled her a 'prostitute'.
Girl B told the hearing she had since read her file held by Rochdale social services which she said stated she had been selling herself for sex from the age of 10.
Both complainants denied claims from defence barristers that they fabricated the allegations to secure compensation.
Father-of-three Zahid, known as Boss Man, gave free underwear from his lingerie stall to both complainants, and also money, alcohol and food in return for the expectation of regular sex with him and his friends.
In 2016, Zahid was jailed for five years in an earlier grooming gang case after he engaged in sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl he met when she visited his stall to buy tights for school in 2006.
Bashir did not attend the current trial, and jurors were ordered not to speculate why, but it can be revealed that he absconded while on bail before the trial got under way.
It can also be reported that Mohammed Shahzad, 44, Naheem Akram, 48, and Nisar Hussain, 41, were remanded in custody with their bail revoked in January before the jury was sworn in.
Police received intelligence that the three Rochdale-born taxi drivers were planning to leave the UK and had already paid a deposit for their transport, the court heard.
All three denied the accusation, but Judge Jonathan Seely said the court was not prepared to take a risk that they too would abscond.
A seventh defendant, Pakistani-born Roheez Khan, 39, also featured in another previous Rochdale grooming trial in 2013 when he was one of five men convicted of sexually exploiting a 'profoundly vulnerable' 15-year-old girl in 2008 and 2009.
Khan was jailed for six and a half years for engaging in sexual activity with a child and witness intimidation.
The convictions are the latest under Operation Lytton, the most recent in a series of major investigations either launched, aborted or relaunched by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to deal with gangs acting 'in plain sight' decades earlier.
Operation Augusta, an investigation into grooming in south Manchester by Asian men was launched in 2004-5 after the death of Victoria Agoglia, 15, on Sept 29 2003.
She was in care but died after being injected with heroin by a man more than 30 years her senior, and had reported being raped.
GMP identified 97 grooming suspects and 25 child victims, all under the care of Manchester city council, but at a joint police and council meeting in 2005, bosses decided to abruptly shut down the operation.
Minutes from the meeting, taken by the police and the council, both disappeared. Two senior officers in the meeting were later promoted to chief constables, Parliament heard.
More grooming gang offences in Rochdale were investigated in 2008, but the Crown Prosecution Service made the decision not to proceed to trial on the basis that it viewed the main victim as 'unreliable'.
GMP later launched Operation Span, investigating offences between 2010 and 2012. It resulted in the conviction of nine men from Rochdale following a high-profile trial at Liverpool Crown Court ending in May 2012.
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