Teen victim of Rotherham sex abuse gang 'had sex with at least 100 Asian men'

A teenage victim of a Rotherham sex gang convicted today told their trial she had sex with ‘at least 100 Asian men’.

Seven men were found guilty on Monday of sexually exploiting vulnerable teenage girls, following a huge National Crime Agency investigation.

During their trial at Sheffield Crown Court, one complainant said she had sex with dozens of Asian men before she was 16.

Another victim gave evidence saying she was gang-raped in a forest and threatened with being abandoned there.

The harrowing testimony emerged during the first prosecution arising out of Operation Stovewood, the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation in the South Yorkshire town which has identified more than 1,500 victims.

The jury in the trial which finished on Monday heard how girls, who are now in their 30s, were ‘lured by the excitement of friendship with older Asian youths’ but then sexually assaulted and passed between men.

Prosecutors said the five complainants in the trial were easy to target because they needed to be loved.

Michelle Colborne QC, prosecuting, said: ‘When they were in their teens, they were targeted, sexualised and, in some instances, subjected to acts of a degrading and violent nature at the hands of these men who sit in the dock.’

She said: ‘None of them had the maturity to understand that they were being groomed and exploited.’

The prosecutor said they ‘believed sex of some kind or other was a necessary price for friendship’.

The jury of nine men and three women was told how girls were given alcohol and drugs before they were passed between men in the town.

‘They each suffer the emotional effects of that abuse to this day,’ Ms Colborne said.

The prosecutor said: ‘The girls were enthralled by older, Asian men, men who had cars and seemed exciting to them.

‘They thought they were living the high life.’

Seven men were convicted of sexually exploiting vulnerable teenage girls at Sheffield Crown Court. (PA)

Ms Colborne said they were ‘frequently in cars stopped by the police but this did not deter the abusers’.

This investigation was set up in the wake of the 2014 Jay Report which laid bare the shocking scale of exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 and failure of police and social services to intervene.

The seven men who were convicted on Monday were told by Judge Sarah Wright they will be sentenced on November 16.

They were all remanded in custody.

Mohammed Imran Ali Akhtar, 37, of Godstone Road, Rotherham, was found guilty of one rape, one charge of aiding and abetting rape, three indecent assaults, one charge of procuring a girl under 21 to have unlawful sexual intercourse with another and one sexual assault.

Nabeel Kurshid, 35, of Weetwood Road, Rotherham, was found guilty of two rapes and one indecent assault.

Iqlak Yousaf, 34, of Tooker Road, Rotherham, was found guilty of two rapes and two indecent assaults.

Tanweer Ali, 37, of Godstone Road, Rotherham, was found guilty of two rapes, two indecent assaults and one charge of false imprisonment.

Salah Ahmed El-Hakam, 39, of Tudor Close, Sheffield, was found guilty of one rape.

Asif Ali, 33, of Clough Road, Rotherham, was found guilty of two indecent assaults.

Ajmal Rafiq, 39, of Warwick Street, Rotherham, was acquitted of all charges.

An eighth defendant, who cannot be named, was found guilty of two rapes.