A care worker accused of grooming and exploiting two underage girls in Rochdale has told a court they were his “friends with benefits” and he thought they were over 16.
Jahn Shahid Ghani, 50, said he was about 32 when he had ecstasy-fuelled sex with the girls when they were only 14 or 15 – including threesomes with one of his adult girlfriends.
He told Manchester Minshull Street crown court that he thought the complainants were over the age of consent because they had jobs and wore makeup.
He described one, Girl A, as the “life and soul of the party” and the other, Girl B, as a “proper party girl”. He said he was friends with Girl A until his arrest in 2016, and he accused her of lying about him “for financial reasons”, in order to get compensation.
Jahn, known to the girls as John, worked shifts at a residential home for adults with learning disabilities at the time.
Girl A told the jury she was 14 when first met Jahn in the winter of 2004 via his younger half-brother, Mohammed Faisal Ghani, who is also on trial. Jahn is the only one of the eight defendants to give evidence so far.
Girl A said she went to Jahn’s flat above a butcher’s shop in Rochdale where he got her drunk and then pestered her to give oral sex to an adult woman she had never met before.
Giving evidence on Tuesday, Jahn denied that this had happened. The woman has already given evidence for the prosecution to back up Girl A’s claims.
Another woman has also given evidence about having sex with Girl A and Jahn together at another flat in the Whitworth area of Rochdale.
Jahn admitted to several such threesomes but said he thought Girl A was over 16 at the time.
He told the jury he met Girl B via Girl A and thought she was “18 or 19”. He described going with her to McDonald’s and said he was impressed because she paid for both of their food. “It was good,” he said. “She was independent.”
Soon he was having sex with both girls – separately – in an arrangement he described as “friends with benefits”.
He said he “made a mistake” by overestimating her age, and he accepted that she was 15 at the time.
The jury has seen notes from Rochdale council’s crisis intervention team from 2005, which record that Girl B had a boyfriend called “John” who was 32 and who she said was “really nice because he gives her pills”. Jahn accepted that he must have been the John in question because the notes correctly included details of his car at the time, plus its number plate.
He said the sexual relationship with Girl B lasted about two months, coming to an end when he developed genital warts. “My penis went half black and I was out of commission for six to eight weeks,” he told the jury.
Jahn Shahid Ghani denies 17 sexual offences and Mohammed Faisal Ghani denies 21. These include rape, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and penetrative activity with a child. The eight defendants deny a total of 80 charges.
The trial continues.
