"Pimp" Karen MacGregor's home "like Hansel and Gretel house"

AN ALLEGED sex abuse victim who claims she was attacked on the way home from the cinema likened “pimp” Karen MacGregor's home to the witch’s house in fairytale Hansel and Gretel, saying it was “shiny and inviting but soon turned horrible”.

The woman, now aged 38, said she lived with MacGregor — who faces four sex crime charges — in Highfield Road in Greasbrough when she was 15.

Sheffield Crown Court heard records showed she told the authorities in 1992 that pressure had been put on her to prostitute herself with MacGregor’s Asian taxi driver friends — but the woman said she cannot remember if anything was done about it.

The witness, who gave evidence to the jury today and cannot be named for legal reasons, said she could access MacGregor’s house via a cut-through that ran behind the children’s home where she was living.

“She had two daughters there and another woman, who she used to call her Donkey — her proper name was Shelley,” the witness said.

She said MacGregor was like a mother figure who “was really nice at first and fed and clothed me”.

But the woman said in her police interview this year that “everything changed”.

She added: “She started telling us we needed to earn our keep — I took that to mean we would have to start sleeping with Asians.

“Karen wanted to pimp everybody out, that’s what Shelley was for, looking back on it.

“It was like Hansel and Gretel living at Karen’s — it was all nice and shiny and inviting and then it turned quite horrible.

“She always used to have Asian men coming back all the time.”

The woman said she remembered waking up at the address one night and finding a handful of Asian men in her bedroom.

“I remember one of them being over me instigating to have sex,” she said.

“I recall one went outside talking to Karen — they said I was being mardy and she said: ‘Don't worry I'll sort it’.

The woman said she had been “freaking out”, but nothing physical happened to her that night.

The witness said she had been picked up to go on a date with an Asian man, but could not remember who had instigated the date.

On the way back from their cinema trip, she said, the unknown man stopped the car and sexually assaulted her.

The witness said she also recalled an incident where she attacked MacGregor.

When MacGregor and her boyfriend “with the funny eye” dropped the girl back at her mother’s house, the court heard, she had “launched herself” at MacGregor through the car window and attacked her.

The woman said she remembered her mother had to drag her off MacGregor, but she cannot remember why she attacked her.

Ms Louise Sweet, for Shelley Davies, suggested this attack happened the day after she was sexually assaulted and she had been able to “escape to her mum's house”.

The woman said the man with the funny eye was not Blind Ash — who the prosecution say is fellow defendant Qurban Ali.

Ms Sweet said a record had been found that showed the witness told a probation officer in 1992, shortly after she moved out of MacGregor’s, that “pressure was put on you to prostitute yourself with Asian taxi driver friends of Karen’s”.

Mr Robert Wyn Jones, defending MacGregor, said: “When you were at Karen’s you had regular contact with social services.”

Mr Wyn Jones said the authority had been paying MacGregor for her keep and the police would often visit the address to look for one of the other female lodgers who regularly went missing.

He said his client said Asian men had not been allowed upstairs in her home and denied ever being attacked by the witness.

The woman replied: “I might not have a very good memory, but you can't forget feelings.”

MacGregor denies conspiracy to rape, false imprisonment and conspiracy to procure a woman under 21 to be a common prostitute.

The trial continues.