A woman has told a court she was groomed and abused in Rochdale by 50 men from the age of 12, and said she was “not in it for the money”.
The woman, known as Girl A to protect her identity, denied she was making false allegations in order to claim compensation as she began to give evidence at the trial of eight of her alleged abusers.
Testifying behind screens at Manchester Minshull Street crown court on Tuesday, the woman described how the abuse had “ruined” her life. She said she could no longer go into Rochdale because people there call her a “slag”.
She said: “It’s a horrible thing to go through. I struggle to go out because of these men. I think they are going to get me, that they are going to put me in the back of a taxi. I can’t even order a takeaway. I’ve got the same face now as I had when I was 12. I can’t hide.”
She added: “They have ruined my life.”
She told the jury the abuse began in 2002, when she was 12, and she met one of the eight defendants, Mohammed Faisal Ghani, who was 17 or 18 at the time.
She the told the court that she had a “major crush” on him, but that he went on to rape her in locations all over Rochdale, along with his elder brother, Jahn Shahid Ghani, and six other men currently on trial.
Faisal Ghani, now 38, denies 21 sexual offences against Girl A, insisting that they were in a brief relationship and had consensual sex only after she turned 16. Shahid Ghani denies 13 charges.
The jury heard that two men, Gul Zaman and Mohammed Ishaque, have already been convicted of raping Girl A, and that she was awarded £27,500 for their crimes by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA).
Cross-examined by Faisal Ghani’s lawyer, Claire Wade, the woman accepted that she had put in another CICA claim in relation to the “5o” other men she accuses of grooming and abusing her, rejecting their first offer of £22,000. Explaining why she asked for a review of the offer, she said: “These men are 10 times worse than [Zaman and Ishaque].”
She told the jury that she deserved more, because she was going to have to testify at five trials – “It’s split into five trials because there are 50 different men,” she said.
The jury heard that the woman had messaged someone on Facebook to say that she was “getting a lot of Pakis done” for abusing her, and that she was expecting a “huge payout” as a result.
In one of the messages she suggested she was going to write a book about her ordeal. “I want to put my name out there. I will go on telly – Loose Woman, This Morning, Good Morning Today or whatever it’s called,” she wrote.
Under cross examination, she dismissed the messages as “drink talk”, and insisted she did not now plan to go public with her story.
She denied that she was lying in order to claim compensation, telling Ward: “You’re making me out to be some big bad evil person … You seem to be thinking I’m in it for the money. I’m in it because these men are traumatising me.”
The court heard that in January 2020 she contacted a man called Aaron Lambo, who she described as an “influencer” who had made a documentary about his own abuse, telling him that she was involved in “the biggest single case ever in the UK”.
The trial continues.
• This article was amended on 7 June 2023. An earlier version said that Mohammed Faisal Ghani’s lawyer was Claire Ward, instead of Clare Wade.
