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Rotherham child abuse trial: four men and two women found guilty Rotherham child abuse trial: four men and two women found guilty
(about 1 hour later)
A gang of four men and two women, including three brothers, have been convicted of serious child sexual abuse crimes over more than 10 years in Rotherham. A gang of four men and two women, including three brothers, have been convicted of serious child sexual abuse crimes over more than 10 years in Rotherham in the first such trial since the Jay report into extensive child exploitation in the town.
They targeted 15 vulnerable girls, one as young as 11, subjecting them to brutal and degrading acts between 1987 and 2003. It can now be revealed for the first time that 15 vulnerable girls, one as young as 11, were subjected to brutal and degrading acts between 1987 and 2003.
The abuse was orchestrated by Arshid Hussain, 40, who was found guilty of more than 20 counts including multiple counts of rape and indecent assault in addition to false imprisonment, abduction of a girl, and aiding and abetting rape. The abuse was orchestrated by Arshid Hussain, 40, who was found guilty of 23 counts including multiple counts of rape and indecent assault in addition to false imprisonment, abduction of a girl, and aiding and abetting rape.
His brother Basharat was found guilty of 15 counts including multiple counts of indecent assault, indecency with a child and threatening to kill a brother of one of his victims. A third Hussain brother, Bannaras, pleaded guilty to 10 offences before the three-month trial started. His pleas can be reported for the first time. Now in a wheelchair after he was shot in the stomach, he was not present in court to hear the verdicts. He was connected to the court from his home by video link but slept throughout the return of verdicts.
His brother, Basharat, was found guilty of 15 counts including multiple counts of indecent assault, indecency with a child and threatening to kill a brother of one of his victims. A third Hussain brother, Bannaras, pleaded guilty to 10 offences before the three-month trial started. His pleas can be reported for the first time.
Their uncle Qurban Ali was found guilty of one charge, conspiracy to rape.Their uncle Qurban Ali was found guilty of one charge, conspiracy to rape.
Arshid Hussain was found guilty of 23 offences, Basharat Hussain of 15, Karen MacGregor of four and Shelly Davies of two. Two other defendants, Sajid and Majid Bostan, were acquitted of all charges.
Now in a wheelchair after he was was shot in the stomach, Arshid Hussain was not present in court to hear the verdicts. He was connected to the court from his home by video link but slept throughout the return of verdicts. Karen MacGregor, 58, lured two of the victims into her house, befriending them and behaving like a second mother but then forced them into sexual relations with men who would hang around the house.
Karen MacGregor, a middle-aged woman, lured two of the victims into her house, befriending them and behaving like a second mother but then forced them into sexual relations with men who would hang around the house.
She was convicted of conspiracy to rape, false imprisonment and procuring one of the women to become a common prostitute.She was convicted of conspiracy to rape, false imprisonment and procuring one of the women to become a common prostitute.
Shelley Davies, who had been portrayed by her barrister as a victim, lived with MacGregor for a time and was found guilty of procuring one of the victims to become a common prostitute, and false imprisonment.Shelley Davies, who had been portrayed by her barrister as a victim, lived with MacGregor for a time and was found guilty of procuring one of the victims to become a common prostitute, and false imprisonment.
Two other defendants, Sajid and Majid Bostan, were acquitted of all charges. One of the victims described MacGregor’s house as like something out of “Hansel and Gretel”, inviting to begin with but soon descending into terrifying sexual crime. She told the jury how she felt MacGregor was like a second mother, listening to her problems, buying her food and clothes. But within days she was assaulted. She was plied with vodka and after passing out awoke to find a man abusing her.
The trial is the first since the Jay report into extensive grooming in the town. Hussain was a known criminal in the town with a string of convictions. He was described by the prosecution as “domineering and in some instances brutal” to his victims, sometimes using them as sex slaves to settle his debts.
He denied sexual activity with eight of his nine victims and said sexual relations with the ninth, which started when the girl was 14, were consensual.
But the jury heard he passed the lead victim around among his brother and friends and arranged for her to be abused in flats, garages and houses in the Rotherham area. She was also bundled into the boot of a car and taken to Tottenham in north London where she was forced to have sex with five men to clear his debts. She was in the care of the local authority at the time.
The violence against her became regular and no one in the victim’s care home expressed concern when she returned bloodied or shaken from encounters. The jury heard that Hussain climbed up the drainpipe at a children’s home to get to one of his victims.
Five of the girls became pregnant as a result of the abuse, two at the age of 14. Two of them gave birth.
Basharat Hussain’s first victim was just 12 when he picked her up from a children’s home and forced her into oral sex. She described the “awful conditions” she lived in and how she was lured to Blackpool by two of his friends, locked up in a room above a restaurant and made to “pay her way” with sex. Basharat groomed another victim by showering her with gifts including perfume and mobile phones.
The 12th victim endured horrific abuse at the hands of Basharat who would slap, punch, kick and spit at her. He called her a slag, threatened to harm her family if she did not go out with him and said he would burn her brother’s house down. He told her he had shovels in the boot of his car and she could dig her own grave. He also threatened to kill her brother.
The trial is the first of its kind since Prof Alexis Jay published her damning report into child sex exploitation in Rotherham, which said 1,400 children had been abused by gangs of mainly Asian males in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham and shadow minister for preventing child abuse, said she was no longer shocked by the past systemic failings of authorities in the town. “I find it incredibly frustrating because these are paid professionals but I think the thing that shocked me is that people think this can happen only in Rotherham. It will be happening in every town across the country, there’s no doubt about it,” she said.
“There’s a reason it’s in towns and not cities. If you think of Rotherham, Rochdale, Derby, Peterborough – it’s because it’s easier for a gang to get hold of a whole town. If there were more people coming in and out of the town, if it was more savvy, I don’t think it would have been allowed to go on.”
Alan Billings, the crime commissioner for South Yorkshire police, said the men had brought “so much misery and cruelty to these young women” and the verdicts would send a message to other potential child abusers that they will be prosecuted.
He said the girls’ childhoods had been lost and paid tribute to their courage in going to court. He acknowledged the “institutional failures of the past” and said he hoped what happened today would begin to put right some of the injustices of the past.”