Gang piled young girls with alcohol and drugs before sexually abusing them

LONDON: A gang of men who plied young girls with alcohol and drugs before sexually abusing them “like a piece of meat” have been jailed.

The victims, who were aged 13 and 14 and described as “ripe for exploitation”, were targeted by the “highly predatory, controlling and manipulative” behaviour between 2002 and 2006 in Rochdale.

The pair, known as Girls A and B, were passed around by the gang and treated as “mere objects” for them to “use, abuse, humiliate then discard”, Minshull Street Crown Court heard. The girls were plied with alcohol, cannabis and ecstasy pills before being sexually assaulted by various men, either together or on their own.

The crimes only came to light in 2015 after one victim, now aged in her 30s, told another how she had been “abused daily”. She claimed they would “feed me alcohol and drugs... and pass me on to their friends.”

The men, Ali Kasmi, 36 of Brotherod Hall Road, Insar Hussain, 38 of Bishop St, Jahn Ghani, 50 of Whitworth Rd, Mohammed Ghani, 39 of Bamford Way, all Rochdale, and Martin Rhodes, 39 of Dinmore Avenue, Blackpool were all arrested and convicted as part of a police crackdown into the non-recent sexual exploitation of children.

The court heard how the men exploited the “young, vulnerable and damaged children”.

“The men would provide the girls vodka, drugs and apparent affection in order to persuade them that they were genuinely liked by the men, and not just being used for sex,” prosecutor Neil Usher said.

He said not all of the men knew each other, but that the gang was ‘centred’ around 38-year-old Mohammed Ghani, known as ‘Gunny’.

Girl A, who was sexually abused over a period of years, believed she was in a “genuine relationship” with Ghani, who would “offer her out” to his friends for sex.

She was filmed blacked out from vodka, being assaulted with a bottle as men laughed and the video was then shared around Rochdale. Ghani would tell her that he’d “love her even more if she did that for him”.

But, during sentencing, Judge Landale told Ghani: “You did indeed treat her as a piece of meat, this was no relationship, you had no interest in her other than sex.

“You regularly engaged into sex with her, you made her feel like she had to have sex with your friends to please you.

“It is clear that everything you did and said was manipulating her. You groomed her into thinking she had to perform sexual acts. “The only thing she wanted from you was affection.”

Following the sentencing the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the men showed a “total disregard” for their victims.

Frances Killeen, Senior Crown Prosecutor for CPS North West’s Complex Casework Unit, said: “The men who committed these appalling offences, have finally been brought to justice.