Victims believed 'sex was the price they had to pay for friendship'

FIVE vulnerable teenage girls were raped and sexually abused by the seven men convicted at Sheffield Crown Court today.

All of the girls had unsettled home lives and none had the maturity to understand they were being groomed and exploited, said a National Crime Agency spokeswoman.

They believed that sex was the price they had to pay for friendship and were plied with alcohol and drugs, she added

The NCA, who investigated the gang as part of Operation Stovewood, said the girls were often belittled and passed around other men for their sexual gratification.

All five girls, now women, are said to suffer the emotional effects of the abuse to this day.

Mohammed Imran Akhtar (37), of Godstone Road, Rotherham, Nabeel Kurshid (35), of Weetwood Road, Rotherham, Asif Ali (33), of Clough Road, Rotherham, Iqlak Yousaf (34), of Tooker Road, Rotherham, Salah El-Hakam (39), of Tudor Close, Sheffield, Tanweer Ali (37), of Godstone Road, Rotherham, and another man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were convicted of 24 child sexual exploitation offences.

Akhtar made one girl, who was 12 or 13 when they first met in the late 1990s, repeatedly perform sexual acts on him at a tip in Rawmarsh.

His friend, Tanweer Ali, repeatedly made the girl’s sister perform sexual acts on him and he would perform sexual acts on her.

Akhtar raped another girl, who was 14 or 15 at the time, forced her to perform sexual acts on him, and forced her to have sex with others.

El-Hakam met the same girl when she was 12 and raped her on multiple occasions, when she was aged between 13 and 15, when she was too drunk to consent.

The unnamed defendant raped the same girl on multiple occasions near the KP factory and Asda and by an old building near Clifton Park.

Kurshid and Yousaf also targeted the girl — raping her repeatedly and forcing her to perform sexual acts on them.

Tanweer Ali raped the same girl under a bridge in Sheffield, aided by Akhtar, and, on another occasion, kept the girl at his house in Wellgate against her will and raped her.

Asif Ali - who was jailed for 12 years in 2016 for rape - indecently assaulted the same girl on multiple occasions in an alleyway.

Akhtar sexually assaulted the girl between 2004 and 2005 after picking her up from a takeaway in Sheffield.

Yousaf indecently assaulted another girl , who would have been aged between 14 and 16, by making her perform sexual act on him on various occasions.

Yousaf, Kurshid and another man, who was not involved in the trial, raped a girl in Sherwood Forest and made her pregnant when she was 14 or 15.

The men bit her neck and she had to cover the marks with a top at school the following day.

The seven guilty men were remanded into custody at Monday’s hearing and are due to be sentenced on November 16.