Jury Out In Manchester Child Sex Ring Trial

1 May 2012, 17:18 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

The jury, in the trial of 11 men from Greater Manchester accused of being part of a child sex ring, has retired to consider their verdict.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that five girls were “shared'' by Kabeer Hassan, Abdul Aziz, Abdul Rauf, Mohammed Sajid, Adil Khan, Abdul Qayyum, Mohammed Amin, Qamar Shahzad, Liaquat Shah, Hamid Safi and a 59 year old man who cannot be named for legal reasons.

The nine-week trial heard that the men - who are all from Pakistan, apart from Safi who is from Afghanistan - groomed the teenage girls because they were vulnerable.

The jury of three men and nine women was told that the men, all from the Rochdale and Oldham areas, plied the girls, some as young as 13, with fast food, drink and drugs so they could “pass them around” and use them for sex.

The trial heard that one 13-year-old victim fell pregnant to one of the defendants and had the child aborted and another teenager recalled being raped by two men while she was “so drunk she was vomiting over the side of the bed”.

The father of one of the victims told the court he joined the BNP after he heard what had happened to his daughter.

At the start of the trial Rachel Smith, for the prosecution, told the jury: “The events and circumstances described by the girls are at best saddening and at worst shocking in places. No child should be exploited as these girls say they were.”

The court heard that some of the girls were raped and physically assaulted and some were forced to have sex with “several men in a day, several times a week”.

The 59 year old along with Hassan, 25, Aziz, 41, Rauf, 43, Sajid, 35, Khan, 42, Qayyum, 43, Amin, 44, Shahzad, 29, Shah, 41, and Safi, 22, all deny conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children under the age of 16.