The jury is told the gang, from Oxford, targeted particularly vulnerable girls aged between 11 and 15 who were living in children's homes
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A British court has convicted seven men of grooming girls as young as 11 in order to sexually exploit them, plying them with drugs and selling them for sex with men around the country for up to eight years.
Local media reported that the men were found guilty on May 14 of crimes including rape, child prostitution, trafficking and procuring a backstreet abortion, committed between 2004 and 2012.
The jury at the Old Bailey court was told the gang, from Oxford, targeted particularly vulnerable girls aged between 11 and 15 who were living in children's homes or were known to play truant from school.
The Guardian newspaper said the girls were plied with alcohol, crack, heroin and cocaine and offered to men "whose twisted sexual interest involved not just abuse and force, but extreme sexual violence and torture involving meat cleavers and baseball bats."
The BBC reported that the victims would return to Oxford from being "hired out" to large groups of men bleeding, injured and carrying sexually transmitted diseases.
One of the girls met one man, Mohammed Karrar, at the age of 11. He bought her gifts and showed her the affection she had never had. He said he would take her to Saudi Arabia and marry her once she turned 15, according to the Independent newspaper.
"At the time, they make you think you are loved and, at the time, I enjoyed it," she was quoted as saying.
But within months of meeting her, he had raped her, she said. Karrar had regular sex with her when she was 12 and so did his younger brother. Before she reached her teens she became pregnant and Karrar forced her to have a dangerous abortion, the paper reported.
Karrar also forced her to have sex with groups of men for money and to make videos of some of the sex acts when she was only 13.
The case provoked criticism of the police and social services when it emerged that the adoptive mother of one girl repeatedly sought help from the authorities to prise her daughter from the clutches of the gang, with no success.
It was also reported that during the time of their abuse, all six victims came into contact with the local police and children's services. One girl alerted the police to the abuse in 2006 but no action was taken after she withdrew her complaint.
The End Violence Against Women coalition said it welcomed news of the convictions but found it disturbing to learn that a victim had reported the abuse to the police and nothing was done.
"The conviction of these men for rape, child trafficking, child prostitution and other offences follows similar convictions of groups of men for sexual violence against girls in communities up and down the country," the group said in a statement.
"In too many of these cases professionals should have intervened and protected girls but failed them. Perpetrators committed their crimes with impunity, confident that girls would not be believed."
The gang members were all British Asian or British North African men, and their victims were all white British girls.
The high-profile case was the latest of several involving child-grooming rings in Britain.
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