Child sex abuse trial: Victim "learned to cope" with abuse

Mr Tahir Khan QC questioned the 36-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, for just ten minutes this afternoon at Sheffield Crown Court today.

He asked why, if she really suffered sex abuse at the hands of the gang from 1990 to 1999, she had waited 15 years before telling police.

She replied: “I didn’t go to the police.

“I just learned how to cope and carry on with my life and the police eventually came and spoke to me.”

Mr Khan asked: “This went on over a long time. Did the realisation never dawn on you that you should put an end to this?”

The woman replied: “I didn’t realise that I was being used until I was about 20 years old.”

Mr Khan also asked the woman why she kept going back to her alleged groomers between until 1999 — even having relationships with two — knowing she might be abused again.

She answered: “Because I thought they cared. I didn’t have anyone caring for me at that time and I thought they cared about me. I was young.”

The woman said she regarded defendant Arshid Hussain as her “boyfriend” soon after they met, when she was 11 and had just been placed in care.

Mr Khan asked how Hussain had treated her.

“When I first met him he was nice,” she said. “He wanted to see me.”

Mr Khan said: “You say that soon the niceness was replaced by nastiness and cruelty. Did you really think he was still your boyfriend?”

She replied: “At that age, probably. It's going back a lot of years.”

Then Mr Khan asked the woman about an incident she described to police, alleged to have taken place when she was 14.

She told them that Hussain had then climbed a drainpipe to access her room in a children’s home.

She claims Hussain had persuaded her to come with him to a house in Masbrough, where he forced her to have sex with him and co-defendant Sajid Bostan.

Mr Khan asked whether this had happened just once or more than once, to which the complainant replied: “Just once.”

He then referred to care home records describing an incident in 1994 when three young men were found in the then-teenager's room.

The boys were told to leave and the complainant apologised for allowing them in, the records say.

But she told Mr Khan she had no recollection of three boys being in her room at once, adding that she may have forgotten about it.

Mr Khan is due to continue questioning the woman tomorrow morning.

All defendants deny all charges made against them. The trial continues.