A schoolgirl from Rotherham, England, who was s*xually assaulted by multiple men was forced to have an abortion several months later by her parents.
Nabeel Kurshid, 34, Iqlak Yousaf, 33, and a third man are accused of taking the 14-year-girl (at the time) to Sherwood Forest and threatening that they will leave her there alone if she did not have intimate intercourse with them. The three men are said to be part of a group eight men from Rotherham who had been targeting girls who are ‘easy to exploit because they wanted to be loved’.
The incident took place sometime between August 2002 and August 2003, according to the prosecutors at Sheffield Crown Court.
Michelle Colborne QC, the prosecutor said that the girl was given a high dose of cannabis and was ‘high as a kite’. According to the prosecutor, each defendant took turns in having intimate intercourse with the girl, and she was warned she had to do what she was told or she would be left there.
During the alleged attack, the girl was bitten and she had marks on her neck.
Ms. Colborne said:
“The defendants ensured her compliance by giving her drugs and threatening to abandon her in the forest. She became pregnant as a result of the group rape. Her parents forced her to have a termination. She suffered a great deal of psychological trauma as a result.”
The teenager, who is now in her thirties, was very vulnerable at the time and had a history of being exploited.
“She was passed from one group of Asian males to another and, over time, was very seriously abused.” – Ms. Colborne told the jury.
The girl’s parents found out about the exploitation but were very unsupportive. They verbally abused the girl and often locked her out when she arrived home late.
Yousaf and Kurshid both deny the alleged assault.
The group of eight men allegedly took their victims to parks, abandoned buildings and ‘secluded locations’ where they would carry out s*xual abuse. They were arrested as part of the Operation Stovewood, an investigation that was launched after the Rotherham grooming scandal.
They are facing a total of 28 counts of s*xual abuse of five girls over a period from 1998 to 2003, and the charges include r*pe, aiding or abetting r*pe, supply of controlled drugs and false imprisonment.
Prosecutor Michelle Colborne QC told the jury that the girls were ‘ostracised’ from their lives by the defendants:
“When [the girls] 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 in dock.
These were local girls with unsettled home lives.
They were lured by the excitement of friendship of older Asian youths.
None of them had the maturity to know they were being groomed and exploited.”
Miss Colborne told the jury that the girls were ‘enthralled’ by ‘older Asian men’ and they believed they were ‘loved’. All of the victims were easy to exploit because they needed to be loved.
She told the jury that five of the men, led by Mohammed Imran Akhtar, were friends who were ‘content to pass the girls around’.
Five of the men, led by Mohammed Imran Akhtar, were friends and were ‘content to pass the girls around’.
Akhtar faces four counts of indecent assault, one of r*pe, one of procuring a girl under 21 for unlawful intercourse with another, one of s*xual assault and one of supplying a controlled drug.
All of the accused deny the allegations against them. The trial continues.