Child sex abuse trial: Victim "ordered at gunpoint not to call police"

A 13-year-old girl was held at gunpoint and warned not to tell anyone about the sexual abuse she was being subjected to, a court heard.

The girl told police about the alleged incident ten years later in 2013 and said she had taken the threat as a “warning” and it had made her realise there was something “very wrong” about her friendships with older Asian males.

The woman, now 27, is the main complainant in a child sex abuse trial at Sheffield Crown Court where eight men are accused of number of sexual offences against her said to have taken place in 2003.

A video of a police interview carried out with the woman in September 2013 was played to the jury this morning.

In the interview, the woman told police that when she was 13 she had been raped by defendants Ishtiaq Khaliq, Waleed Ali, Asif Ali and Masoued Malik.

She also reported that she had been indecently assaulted by Waleed Ali and Basharat Hussain, who are also on trial.

The jury has previously been shown an interview she gave to police in 2003 when she was 13 where she reported that she had been repeatedly raped by Sageer Hussain.

In the 2013 interview, the woman said she and two of her friends had become friends with the large group of older Asian males, who would pick them up in cars, give them alcohol and cannabis.

She said: “As time went on, Sageer Hussain became the main person in my life, he seemed to single me out.

“He was the one who was very controlling and after a period of time he turned from being a nice to a nasty person.”

The complainant said between January to April 2003 her life had changed very quickly when she became involved with the group of men and they became her “whole world”.

She said that at one point an unnamed older man had picked her up and put a gun to her head.

“He said: ‘If you tell anybody what's happening I’ll shoot you’,” she said.

The man told her he was going to shoot her in three seconds, the woman said, and began counting down, before putting the gun down, laughing and saying: “There’s nothing in it anyway”.

The woman, who said she had been dropped off at Boot’s after the alleged incident, added: “I took that as my warning that I shouldn't tell anybody what was happening.”

She added: “I realised by this point there was something very wrong and things were just not right, at that time I didn't understand at all what was happening to me.”

The woman said she had not realised when she was 13-years-old that she was being sexually exploited by Sageer (30) because he would force her to sleep with his “friends and cousins”.

She told the police: “The first one I had to sleep with was Ali, who was also their (the Hussains) brother-in-law.”

The prosecution say Ali is Asif Ali (30) and is also Sageer's cousin.

The alleged victim said: “He was quite a lot older, quite large, not a very nice person.”

The woman said she had been driven to Clifton Park by Mohammed Whied and left alone with Asif Ali, who she had only met that night.

He then became “aggressive” and raped her, she claimed.

Over a short period of time, the woman said, the group of men knew everything about her and her family and she felt like she was in a “black hole with no way out”.

The woman said Ishtiaq Khaliq took her down an alleyway next to Boots in Rotherham town centre and said that because she had had sex with Asif Ali it was “only fair” she slept with him.

She said Ishy — as Khaliq was apparently known — was aggressive and would not take “No” for an answer.

On another occasion Massi, who the prosecution say is Masoued Malik, is said to have pressurised the teenage girl into having sex.

The witness added that Waleed Ali “used to play good cop, bad cop”, adding: “It was like he (Waleed Ali) didn’t get on with the Asians because he was Arab, but he would still hang around with them.”

The woman said Waleed had told her he was embarrassed of her for “being with Sageer” and had taken her down an alleyway, became aggressive and raped her.

She said that on another occasion, Waleed drove her to Clifton Park and forced her to perform a sex act on him against her will.

The woman said Sageer’s older brother Basharat Hussain (40) would often appear as though he was checking on everything and on one occasion she was forced to perform a sex act on him in his car.

The eight men deny all the charges.

The trial continues.

 

 

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