Girls aged just 13 ‘were passed around for sex’

Five girls from broken homes 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, Liverpool Crown Court was told.

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

Rachel Smith, opening the case for the prosecution, told the jury: “Some of you may find what you are about to hear distressing. 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”.

Miss Smith said the girls – aged between 13 and 15 – were given alcohol, food and money in return for sex but that there were times when violence was used.

“There were also occasions on which one or more of the girls were so incapacitated by alcohol and/or drugs that they were incapable of having any control over whether or with whom they had sexual intercourse,” she said.

The offences are said to have happened in and around Rochdale in 2008 and 2009.

The court was told some of the defendants paid the girls and took payments from other men to whom they supplied the girls for sex.

Hassan, 24, Aziz, 41, Rauf, 43, Sajid, 35, Khan, 42, Qayyum, 43, Amin, 44, Shahzad, 29, Shah, 41, and Safi, 22, are charged with conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children under the age of 16.

They have all pleaded not guilty along with the 59-year-old man who cannot be named for legal reasons. He also denies two counts of rape, aiding and abetting a rape, one count of sexual assault and an allegation of trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation.

The court heard the men, originally from Pakistan, knew each other and that two of them worked in takeaway restaurants in Rochdale. Four of the other men worked as cab drivers at local taxi firms, one was a student and four were jobless.

The men were known to the girls, who were not in school, by nicknames such as “Master” and “Tiger”, the court was told.

Miss Smith said they were the “sort of children who were easy to identify, target and exploit for the sexual gratification of these men”.

The court heard that a 14-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a man while another watched and said: “I want a turn, I want a turn”.

The girl told police she would get “proper hammered” and she “lost count of the number of times she had had sex with men” when she did not want to do so.

Miss Smith said: “She was unable to describe all of the men but said she would regularly find herself drunk to near-unconsciousness, waking up with men having sex with her.”

The same girl said she was raped by Abul Aziz in his taxi in December 2009 and afterwards he told her she no longer needed to pay a taxi fare.

She also described an occasion when Liaquat Shah raped her while Hammid Safi watched.

The girl also said the two men raped her while she was so drunk “she was vomiting over the side of the bed” after drinking Sambuca, vodka, beer and Jack Daniels.

She told police: “There was nothing I could do, I was throwing up, I just kept throwing up... And I felt like I couldn’t move.”

Miss Smith said: “They saw her being sick and each raped her. Afterwards they left and she cried herself to sleep.”

The trial continues.