'What they did to me was evil. They ripped away all my dignity, my last bit of self-esteem': First victim to speak out against sex gang relives terrible ordeal

Harrowing: The girl, who was 15 when the abuse began, has spoken of her ordeal at the hands of the sex abuse gang (picture posed by model)

 

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Young and naïve, she was one of the many victims of the sex grooming gang – but was the first to speak out against their horrific abuse.

Her nightmare began when she was only 15. A troubled teenager, she decided to move out of her parents’ home to live with an older girl.

‘She introduced me to these men and we’d get free alcohol and cigarettes and food and free taxis and things,’ she said.

‘At first I thought it were great because nothing had happened, like nothing sexual. I just thought “I can get all this stuff for free”.’

But one day things took a sickening turn for the worse.

The older girl took her to a kebab shop and introduced her to staff who plied them with vodka and food in an upstairs room. She said: ‘It made me feel like I was pretty.

‘I never thought they’d do what they did to me because you don’t think that do you?’

On one visit an older man asked her to go upstairs with him for a chat.‘I didn’t really think anything of it,’ she said. ‘Then he was basically saying about all the things he’s bought for me and he wants something back for it. Then I was saying “No”, like, I was kind of saying it like in a giggly way.

‘I felt like if I’d said it nastily to him he could have hurt me. I tried to say no in a nice way, but he just weren’t having it.’

It was then, she says, the older man forced himself on her and raped her on a mattress.

She said: ‘I just think what they did to me was evil. They ripped away all my dignity and all my last bit of self-esteem and by the end of it I had no emotion whatsoever because I was used to being used and abused daily.

‘It was just blocked out, it was just like it wasn’t me any more. They just took everything away and hopefully they’ll pay for what they’ve done.’

Ashamed, she felt unable to turn to her parents and, intimidated by the older girl, she felt powerless to stop the abuse when it happened again and again, often every day.

She said: ‘At first I felt really bad and dirty and ashamed, but after a while it had been going on for so long and so many different men and that it just became, like … I didn’t feel anything towards it any more.

‘It weren’t me any more. It just became like something I had to do and I just couldn’t get out of it. Like once you’re in it you’re trapped. It just became like a daily life.’ 

Grooming: Takeaway shop Balti House in Heywood, Greater Manchester, where girls were targeted by the gang. The shop is under new management now


One night she got drunk and went round to the kebab shop to confront the two men. ‘I’d got really drunk and … I’d gone in and I’m really drunk and I’m angry and I smashed the counter in the takeaway and they rang the police and got me arrested.’
She told the police about the sex attacks and was able to provide forensic evidence from her underwear.

Although she didn’t see the original two men again, back on the street the abuse continued and began to escalate.
‘It just started again with different men and more men this time and that’s when it started becoming like up to five men a day.

‘It weren’t me any more. It just became like something I had to do and I just couldn’t get out of it. Like once you’re in it you’re trapped. It just became like a daily life’
‘They would arrange with the girl and they’d arrange a time and they’d come and pick me and her up and we’d go to the place, a flat or a house, and there would be different men there waiting.

‘There were quite a few men who would be there quite a lot and there’s other men who would pick us up and take us to different places for the other men waiting. But there was also a lot of men that I’d only see once or twice.
‘Towards the end, it could be up to five men in a day, sometimes every day, at least four or five times a week.’

The abuse only came to a halt when she became pregnant and social services stepped in. She said: ‘Social services got involved through school because Asian men were picking me up and dropping me off and I was coming into school dirty and smelly and smelling of alcohol sometimes and then I got pregnant.

‘Social services said to me that if I don’t leave that house they’ll remove my baby at birth and I were frightened to go because I didn’t know what they would do ... the men. They would come and find me.

‘But I went to live with my mum and dad. But after I moved back in I was getting phone calls … taxi drivers were parking outside my mum’s house just watching the house and I recognised them and that went on for months. I would not go out of the house on my own for nine months without my mum or dad because I was frightened what could happen.’

Gulity: Mohammed Amin, left, 45, was found guilty of conspiracy and sexual assault today, while Abdul Qayyum, 44, right, was found guilty of conspiracy

Police launched their first investigation in August 2008 and took DNA swabs from the girl and arrested two men. A file was passed to the Crown Prosecution Service which recommended no action.

The child sex ring was free to carry on and was not stopped until 2010 after a review of her case by senior prosecutor Nazir Afzal. The girl says she was devastated by the original CPS decision. She said: ‘I felt let down. I don’t feel that the police have let me down because I know that they did all they could. It was the CPS (who) would not take it.’

She said the phenomenon of Asian men preying on young, vulnerable girls was now commonplace, adding: ‘People should know about this because it is common, it’s going on everywhere and people need to know so they can spot the signs.’

‘You think of Muslim men as religious and family-minded and just nice people. You on’t think … I don’t know … you just don’t think they’d do things like that.’

She added: ‘In my situation it was all the men were Asian and all the girls were white, young schoolgirls. I think white girls are more vulnerable because of drinking and Asian girls don’t do anything like that, do they?’




Abuse: This takeaway - now under new management - was at the centre of the abuse ring in its previous guise of Tasty Bites

When the CPS reconsidered the case and decided to prosecute she was delighted and hopes it will prevent girls falling victim to this type of sexual crime in the future.

She says she wanted ‘people to recognise that this does go on a lot and that it’s white girls that are targeted by Asian men. And the jobs that they have – taxi driver, takeaway shop – it makes it easier for them to do what they do.’

She believes the convicted men were just a handful of the number of abusers. ‘There’s a lot more that I know myself,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know how many that I had to sleep with.’

She says the men that abused her had driven her to the brink of suicide. She hopes she can now slowly rebuild her life and wants to study to become a social worker.

‘It will always be there but I know how to deal with it. I’ve had a lot of problems in the past, suicide attempts and all sorts … but I think now I know that something’s being done to prevent it happening again.

‘It’s a relief really because I don’t want any other girls to have to go through that.’

Culled from The Daily Mail UK.

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Simply Cheska...