Eight men from Rochdale have gone on trial accused of grooming and abusing two young girls, after one of the alleged victims took a parenting course as an adult and made graphic claims about being exploited from the age of 12.
She and a friend were treated as “mere objects for the defendants to use, abuse, humiliate then discard” from the ages of 12 and 13, a jury at Manchester Minshull Street crown court was told.
The men deny 80 counts dating back to 2002 and 2006, when some of the defendants were teenagers. The men are now aged 34 to 67.
The younger woman told police she was abused daily from the age of 12 after meeting Mohammed Ghani, who was then 17 or 18. She said she initially thought the pair were in a “genuine relationship”. He would collect her from school, she told police.
She described how, as well as raping her regularly, he would “offer her out” to his friends in parks, in an underpass, up on the moors and at other public places in the Rochdale area.
If she refused to have sex with one of them, he and his friends would humiliate her, it is claimed. On one occasion, a number of men, including another of the defendants, Aftar Khan, allegedly urinated on her from a wall as she gave oral sex to another man. The humiliation came after she refused to have oral sex with Khan, the court heard.
“Ghani and his friends laughed at her as she left the park covered in urine,” the prosecutor Neil Usher told the court. “She describes the experience as degrading and feeling like a piece of meat.”
Khan, now 34, would have been a teenager at the time, and the girl was 13 or 14. He denies three rapes, three counts of indecency with a child and two counts of penetrative sexual activity with a child.
On another occasion, one of Ghani’s friends is said to have pulled the girl’s trousers down when she had passed out from drinking vodka and assaulted her with a brandy bottle. Another man allegedly filmed the humiliation, with Ghani’s friends – including fellow defendant Insar Hussain – heard laughing in the background. The girl later became aware that the video had been circulated widely in the Rochdale area, the court heard.
“Following this incident, Mohammed Ghani’s group threatened her that if she didn’t agree to have sex with them, they would send the video to her mother,” Usher told the jury.
On another occasion, Ghani took her up to Syke Moor above Rochdale to drink vodka and have sex with him and his friends. She told police she reluctantly agreed to have sex with Hussain while Ghani and another man, known as Doc, laughed at her. Hussain “high-fived” his friends after having sex with the then 12-year-old girl, the court heard.
When she refused to have sex with Doc, she was called a “bitch” and a “slag” and thrown out of the car, the court heard. Ghani drove off, leaving her to walk home alone.
Ghani’s older brother, Jahn Shahid Ghani, 49, is also on trial, accused of eight counts of rape, eight counts of penetrative sexual activity with a child and one count of causing a child to engage in sexual activity. He is accused of forcing the younger girl to have a threesome with him and an older woman, and filming the abuse.
Hussain is also accused of trafficking the younger girl, by arranging for her to have sex with a much older man called Mohammed Iqbal, who is now 66 and would then have been about 50. Iqbal denies two counts of paying for sexual services of a girl under the age of 18.
Greater Manchester police started investigating the alleged abuse in 2015, after the younger woman, by then 25, went on a parenting course. As part of the course, she prepared a written presentation, which included this passage: “I was abused daily for six years. I was 12 when they began to abuse me, feeding me alcohol and drugs, abuse me and pass me on to their friends. I had no choice but do what they say or I would be beaten and raped. They did as they pleased, they made videos of me to use as blackmail. If I told anyone, they would share the videos. They sent the video around Rochdale anyway and I was branded a slag for it.”
The jury heard that when she was 14 or 15, Ghani got her drunk and asked her to have sex with his cousin in Springfield Park in Rochdale.
“This man was in his mid-30s and was on holiday from Pakistan. Ghani asked her to have sex with him because he had never had sex with a white girl before. Ghani said she had better not let him down, and she should ‘do it for the team’. [The complainant] has said at the time she would do anything for him, not appreciating at that age the consequences of what she was doing,” Usher told the jury.
Afterwards, Ghani asked her to marry the man in return for £5,000 so that he could gain UK citizenship, the court heard. She refused.
The complainants had “very troubled childhoods”, Usher said. The younger girl had a “strained relationship” with her mother and would drink and smoke cannabis from the age of 12. In a three-year period starting when she was 13, the other girl was reported to the police as missing from home on at least 83 occasions.
“The prosecution say each defendant exploited the fact that the two girls were plainly very young, vulnerable and damaged children, for their own sexual gratification. The girls were mere objects for the defendants to use, abuse, humiliate then discard,” Usher told the jury.
Mohammed Ghani, 37, of Bamford Way, Rochdale, denies 10 counts of rape, five counts of penetrative sexual activity with a child, two counts of sexual activity with a child, two counts of indecency with a child and two counts of buggery.
Insar Hussain, 36, of Bishop Street, Rochdale, is accused of seven counts of rape, two counts of sexual intercourse with a child, three counts of indecency with a child, four counts of penetrative sexual activity with a child and trafficking a person for sexual exploitation.
The other defendants are Ikhlaq Yousaf, 37, and Ali Razza Hussain Kasmi, 34, and Martin Rhodes, 39. The trial continues.
