Vulnerable children’s home girl ‘alone in world’ raped and abused by multiple men
A vulnerable girl was “raped and abused by multiple men over several years” starting when she was 11 or 12 years old, a jury has heard.
The victim was “deliberately targeted by men who wanted to use her for their own sexual purposes” throughout her childhood, prosecutors told Leeds Crown Court on Monday.
Opening the trial of Mohammed Akram and Usman Khalid (pictured), Richard Wright QC, prosecuting, told the jury: “We say that both of the men in the dock had sexual contact with her when she was just 12 and they knew how old she was.
“They each, on separate occasions, took her out of the children’s home where she was living without permission and with a sinister, ultimately sexually motivated, purpose.”
Mr Wright told the jury: “This case concerns the cynical sexual exploitation of an extremely vulnerable young girl. Throughout her childhood she was deliberately targeted by men who wanted to use her for their own sexual purposes.”
The prosecutor said: “This case concerns her childhood when, as you will hear – and it is important that you understand that there is no dispute about this – she was raped and abused by multiple men over several years. That abuse began when she could properly be described as a little girl.”
Mr Wright said the girl was groomed in the Huddersfield area of West Yorkshire.
He told the jury that the girl “found herself drawn into a world in which she had little or no control of her life and was utterly unable to make truly free or informed choices about anything where sex was concerned.”
He told the members of the jury that they may wonder why no-one in her family, the social services department or in the police was looking after the girl’s interest.
Mr Wright said: “The sad truth is that she was, at the time of these offences, alone in the world. Her mother was a hopeless addict who was utterly unable or unwilling to care for her.
“Instead she fended for herself on the streets, in pubs, in taxi offices and in takeaway shops. Living by her wits and befriending men in the hope that they might feed her, or care for her, but as you will hear that was the last thing they did.”
Akram and Khalid went on trial on Monday along with two women – Shahnaz Malik, 57, of St Anne’s Avenue, Huddersfield, and Naveeda Habeeb, 40, of Prince Wood Lane, Huddersfield – who are both charged with child cruelty.
Akram, 33, of Springdale Street, Huddersfield, denies five counts of rape, sexual assault, abducting a child and trafficking for sexual exploitation.
Khalid, 31, of Brook Street, Huddersfield, denies sexual assault and child abduction.
The trial is expected to last two weeks.
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2019, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Danny Lawson / PA Wire.
