Child sex abuse trial: Alleged pimp's 'character witness' gave police evidence against her

MacGregor gave police the woman's name when they first interviewed her about another woman's claims she had been falsely imprisoned at MacGregor's address and forced to have sex with men between 1993 and 1995.

Giving evidence at Sheffield Crown Court on Wednesday, MacGregor said she gave police the woman's name because she had lived with her and her children.

Mother-of-three MacGregor (59) said: "I had been intending to use the woman as a character witness because she lived with me and knew nothing happened at my house, I thought she would be a good witness."

When police contacted the woman, now aged 43, she said she had lived at MacGregor's house in the late 80s along with co-defendant Shelley Davies who was three years younger than her.

The woman said she lived at two of MacGregor's houses from being aged around 16 or 17 at Rosehill Avenue and Highfield Road.

She told police one night at the Rosehill address she had drank vodka and six Asian men were there. 

She said she was taken upstairs to her room by MacGregor and an unknown male because she was drunk and passed out on her bed.

When she awoke, she said, the man was sexually assaulting her and she was naked from the waist down. She cried out twice loudly for help, which made the man run off, the court heard. 

Police charged MacGregor with conspiracy to rape in relation to this incident which is said to have taken place between 1987-1989.

The prosecution said MacGregor entered into an agreement with this unknown man, the woman was plied with vodka and the intention was the man would have sex with her

MacGregor told the court she did not know anything about the incident.

The former charity founder is also charged with three offences against another girl — conspiracy to procure a woman to become a common prostitute, false imprisonment and conspiracy to rape — but MacGregor claims she had never met the complainant and cannot remember her living at her home

The jury has previously been shown records from St Edmund's Children's home in Thurcroft from Jan 1995, when the same girl MacGregor claims she did not know, lived when she was 16.

The log said a petite, blonde, older woman called Kaz came to the home looking for the girl, said she was her auntie, and told the social worker she lived on Herries Road in Sheffield.

MacGregor admitted to living on Herries Road in the late 90s.

The social worker's note said she allowed Kaz to go into the girl's bedroom but when she went to check on them both she found an Asian male trying to climb through the window.

MacGregor said she could not remember the incident, but said if she had given her name and address then she was obviously not bothered about people knowing who she was and was "probably trying to help somebody".

She added the man climbing through the window could have been her Asian boyfriend at the time.