Rochdale grooming trial: Sex gang guilty of preying on teenage girls

A GANG of nine Asian men has been found guilty of plying white girls as young as 13 with drink and drugs so they could “pass them around” and use them for sex.

But police investigating the crimes denied there was a “racial or cultural” issue and said it was about adults abusing vulnerable children.

A chance to stop the gang was missed in 2008 by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) who have apologised for their failings.

The five girls were targeted by Kabeer Hassan, Abdul Aziz, Abdul Rauf, Mohammed Sajid, Adil Khan, Abdul Qayyum, Mohammed Amin, Hamid Safi and a 59-year-old man who cannot be named, Liverpool Crown Court was told.

The 11-week trial heard that the men – all from Pakistan, apart from Safi, who is from Afghanistan – groomed and “shared” young white girls because they were “easy to exploit”.

It took the jury of three men and nine women 21 hours and 22 minutes to reach all their verdicts. Judge Gerald Clifton adjourned sentencing until today.

The offences happened in and around Rochdale in 2008 and 2009. The father of one victim told the court that he joined the BNP after he heard what had happened to his daughter.

At the start of the trial, Rachel Smith, for the prosecution, said the girls – aged between 13 and 15 – were given alcohol, food and money in return for sex but that there were times when violence was used.

Only one of the girls was in care at the time of the abuse, but all were said to have been known to social services at some point in their childhood.

Police said the victims were from “chaotic, council-estate” backgrounds. The girls were targeted in “honeypot locations” where young people congregated, such as outside takeaways.

The court was told some of the defendants paid the girls and took payments from other men to whom they supplied the girls for sex.

It heard that the men knew each other and that the abuse began at the Tasty Bites and the Balti House takeaway outlets, both in Market Street in the Heywood area of Rochdale.

The takeaways are now under new management, police said.

The defendants, some of whom worked as taxi drivers and takeaway workers, were known to the girls by nicknames such as “Master” and “Tiger”.

One girl, who was 13 when the abuse began, told police that the men she met were “friends” who looked after her, and “her number would be passed around amongst the Pakistani men in her area”.

The 59-year-old man was found guilty of conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children under the age of 16, two counts of rape, aiding and abetting a rape, one charge of sexual assault and an allegation of trafficking for sexual exploitation.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is spearheading an investigation into the botched inquiry. The first victim, who was 15 when the abuse began, told the police what had been happening, but her complaint was not taken seriously and she was abused by the gang until December 2008, when she became pregnant and moved away.

The trial was delayed by two weeks when two Asian barristers quit the case due to pressure from far-right groups outside Liverpool Crown Court, a protest that spilled over into disorder on the streets of Heywood, Greater Manchester. It also emerged yesterday that a tweet from BNP leader Nick Griffin almost led to the collapse of the trial.