February 2016

Ringleader of Rotherham child sex grooming gang jailed for 35 years – alongside two brothers

Six members of the gang led by Arshid Hussain were sentenced to a total of 103 years for an “appalling catalogue of offending” that saw them abuse and threaten vulnerable girls with impunity and pass them around as sex objects.

Arshid Hussain was sentenced to 35 years, while his brothers Basharat, 39, and Bannaras, 36, got 25 years and 19 years respectively.

Their uncle, Qurban Ali, 53, was jailed for 10 years.

Female accomplice Karen MacGregor, 58, was jailed for 13 years while Shelley Davis, 40, was given an 18 month suspended sentence.

Arshid and Basharat Hussain were found guilty at Sheffield Crown Court of 38 offences, including rape, indecent assault, abduction, false imprisonment and making threats to kill.

Bannaras Hussain pleaded guilty to 10 charges before the trial.

MacGregor and Davies were found guilty of false imprisonment and conspiracy to procure a woman under 21 to become a common prostitute. MacGregor was also convicted of two counts of conspiracy to rape.

The victims had each suffered “immense psychological harm”, Judge Sarah Wright told Sheffield Crown Court, while the effect on their families and community had been devastating.

She told the court no one who had heard the evidence “could fail to forget one of the victims describe how she hated her own body, how one mother used to cry herself to sleep at night, how a number of victims suffer from eating disorders and how some children changed from being happy, active normal teenagers to withdrawn and secretive young people out of parental control.”

“The harm you have caused is of unimaginable proportions.”

Jailing the gang, who were said to have ‘ruled’ the South Yorkshire town as they drove flashy cars, dealt drugs and handled weapons, Judge Wright paid tribute to the “immense courage” of the victims who came forward.

Passing sentence, Judge Wright went through each of the 15 victims’ stories one-by-one.

Concluding one account, she said: “The effect of the abuse of her has been devastating.

“Her childhood memories are of pain and abuse. She is unable to trust anyone.

“She has suffered from eating disorders and anxiety throughout her life. You took her childhood from her.”

In relation to another victim, the judge said: “She describes you, Basharat Hussain, as stealing the person she was and alienating her from her family.

“She describes contemplating taking her own life when she became pregnant and indeed on occasions since.

“She feels worthless and ashamed as a result of your treatment of her. She feels guilt. She should not have to feel like that. You are responsible, not her.”

Sheffield Crown Court had previously heard that Bannaras Hussain abused one of his child victims in a car park next to Rotherham Police Station and then joked with officers.

He told officers his victim was performing a sex act on him, but police drove off and left him alone, the court heard.

Michelle Colborne QC, proescuting said Bannaras met one victim when she was 12 or 13 and she performed sex acts on him.

“He was indifferent to whether she consented or not,” she said.

“When her brothers found out, they were furious with her and would physically assault her because she was involved sexually with an Asian man.”

Bannaras pleaded guilty to serious offences at the beginning of his trial.

Ms Colborne told the court how Bannaras abused one victim in a car park next to Rotherham Police Station.

The prosecutor said: “(The girl) performed oral sex on Bannaras Hussain.

When, shortly afterwards, a police car pulled up alongside them and asked what was going on, Bannaras Hussain shouted that she was performing oral sex on him.

“The police car drove off,” Ms Colborne said.

Ms Colborne said the sister of one victim described her sister as a “broken human being”.

She handed in a pile of victim personal statements, highlighting a comment from one girl who said the Hussain brothers acted “as a pack of animals” when she was urinated on.

The prosecutor said: “They describe from their teenage years a life in the main of feeling dirty, ashamed and guilty. Between them, a plethora of emotional conditions – eating disorders, self-harm, agoraphobia, self-loathing and terminations for many of them from the age of 14 – events they have never been able to put behind them.”

Ms Colborne said many of the victims have had relationship problems throughout their lives and have found themselves subjected to domestic violence.

Following his conviction it emerged Arshid Hussain had been planning fertility treatment with his wife, despite jurors hearing he had fathered children with girls he abused and forced some girls to have terminations.

The details came out as part of an unsuccessful application by his legal team asking the judge to rule he was unfit to stand trial because of his disability.

He was shot in the abdomen in 2005 and his defence counsel claimed he was paraplegic and confined to bed.

He only appeared in court once during the trial, having been allowed to follow proceedings via a video-link to his home.

The defendants

Arshid Hussain, 40, High Street, East Cowick, Goole, was convicted of 23 of the 28 charges he faced, including indecent assault and rape.

Basharat Hussain, 39, of no fixed abode, was convicted of all 15 charges he faced, including two counts of rape.

Bannaras Hussain, 36, of Bridge Close, Goole, pleaded guilty before the trial to 10 charges including rape, indecent assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Qurban Ali, 53, Clough Road, Rotherham, was convicted of conspiracy to rape, but cleared of three other charges including rape.

Karen MacGregor, 58, Barnsley Road, Wath, South Yorkshire, was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to rape, conspiracy to procure prostitutes and false imprisonment.

Shelley Davies, 40, Wainwright Road, Kimberworth Park, Rotherham, was found guilty of conspiracy to procure prostitutes and false imprisonment.

February 2016

Rotherham abuse trial: Six guilty of sex offences

Brothers Arshid, Basharat & Bannaras Hussain 

A gang of four men and two women, including three brothers, have been convicted of serious child sexual abuse crimes over more than 10 years in Rotherham in the first such trial since the Jay report into extensive child exploitation in the town.

They targeted 15 vulnerable girls, one as young as 11, and subjected them to brutal and degrading acts between 1987 and 2003.

Karen MacGregor and Shelley Davies

The abuse was orchestrated by Arshid Hussain, 40, who was found guilty of 23 counts including multiple counts of rape and indecent assault in addition to false imprisonment, abduction of a girl, and aiding and abetting rape.

Now in a wheelchair after he was shot in the stomach, he was not present in court to hear the verdicts. He was connected to the court from his home by video link but slept throughout the return of verdicts.

Hussain’s brother Basharat was found guilty of 15 counts including multiple counts of indecent assault, indecency with a child and threatening to kill a brother of one of his victims.

A third Hussain brother, Bannaras, pleaded guilty to 10 offences before the three-month trial started. His pleas can be reported for the first time.

Qurban Ali was found guilty of conspiracy to rape

Their uncle Qurban Ali was found guilty of one charge, conspiracy to rape.

Karen MacGregor, 58, lured two of the victims into her house, befriending them and behaving like a second mother but then forcing them into sexual relations with men who would hang around the house

She was convicted of conspiracy to rape, false imprisonment and procuring one of the women to become a common prostitute.

Shelley Davies, who had been portrayed by her barrister as a victim, lived with MacGregor for a time and was found guilty of procuring one of the victims to become a common prostitute, and false imprisonment.

One of the victims described MacGregor’s house as like something out of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, inviting to begin with but soon descending into terrifying sexual crime.

She told the jury how she felt MacGregor was like a second mother, listening to her problems, buying her food and clothes. But within days she was assaulted.

She was plied with vodka and after passing out awoke to find a man abusing her.

Hussain was a known criminal in the town with a string of convictions. He was described by the prosecution as “domineering and in some instances brutal” to his victims, sometimes using them as sex slaves to settle his debts.

He denied sexual activity with eight of his nine victims and said sexual relations with the ninth, which started when the girl was 14, were consensual.

But the jury heard he passed the lead victim around among his brother and friends and arranged for her to be abused in flats, garages and houses in the Rotherham area.

She was also bundled into the boot of a car and taken to Tottenham in north London where she was forced to have sex with five men to clear his debts. She was in the care of the local authority at the time.

The violence against her became regular and no one in her care home expressed concern when she returned bloodied or shaken from encounters. The jury heard that Hussain climbed up the drainpipe at a children’s home to get to one of his victims.

Five of the girls became pregnant as a result of the abuse, two at the age of 14. Two of them gave birth.

Basharat Hussain’s first victim was just 12 when he picked her up from a children’s home and forced her into oral sex.

She described the “awful conditions” she lived in and how she was lured to Blackpool by two of his friends, locked up in a room above a restaurant and made to “pay her way” with sex. Basharat groomed another victim by showering her with gifts including perfume and mobile phones.

The 12th victim endured horrific abuse at the hands of Basharat who would slap, punch, kick and spit at her. He called her a slag, threatened to harm her family if she did not go out with him and said he would burn her brother’s house down.

He told her he had shovels in the boot of his car and she could dig her own grave. He also threatened to kill her brother.

The defendants

Arshid Hussain, 40, High Street, East Cowick, Goole, was convicted of 23 of the 28 charges he faced, including indecent assault and rape.

Basharat Hussain, 39, of no fixed abode, was convicted of all 15 charges he faced, including two counts of rape.

Bannaras Hussain, 36, of Bridge Close, Goole, pleaded guilty before the trial to 10 charges including rape, indecent assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Qurban Ali, 53, Clough Road, Rotherham, was convicted of conspiracy to rape, but cleared of three other charges including rape.

Majid Bostan, 37, Ledsham Road, Rotherham, was acquitted of one charge of indecent assault.

Sajid Bostan, 38, Broom Avenue, Rotherham, was acquitted of seven charges, including four counts of rape.

Karen MacGregor, 58, Barnsley Road, Wath, South Yorkshire, was convicted of of conspiracy to procure prostitutes and false imprisonment.

Shelley Davies, 40, Wainwright Road, Kimberworth Park, Rotherham, was found guilty of conspiracy to procure prostitutes and false imprisonment.

The trial is the first of its kind since Prof Alexis Jay published her damning report into child sex exploitation in Rotherham, which said 1,400 children had been abused by gangs of mainly Asian males in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

The end of the trial is expected to have far-reaching consequences, with two follow-on police investigations and legal actions:

• The IPCC said it had launched 55 separate investigations into how South Yorkshire police dealt with victims, in one of the biggest inquiries into potential neglect of duty and corruption in recent policing history. The police watchdog said that 46 misconduct notices had already been served on 26 officers, and warned the figure could increase.

• The National Crime Agency (NCA) has launched what it has described as the “largest criminal investigation of its kind in the UK” into grooming in the South Yorkshire town, with 9,000 lines of inquiry. The NCA said it currently had a total of 23 designated suspects but added that it had “hundreds of potential suspects still to investigate”. So far it said it had identified and recorded 57 serious sexual offences.

• A Sheffield solicitor, David Greenwood, said he was acting for 65 women who were planning to sue Rotherham metropolitan borough council. He is also planning legal action against South Yorkshire police.