Five men from Rochdale have been sentenced to between eight and 20 years in prison after being found guilty of grooming and abusing two girls between 2004 and 2006.
The longest sentence was given to the oldest defendant, Jahn Shahid Ghani, a 50-year-old care worker. He was at least 30 when he took advantage of the girls when they were 14 or 15. He would pick them up from school while they were still in uniform and ply them with drink and drugs before exploiting them.
He forced one of them, Girl A, to have group sex when she was 14 – once with a male colleague from work and also with his adult girlfriends, Minshull Street crown court in Manchester heard.
Girl A said she had thought she was “in love” with Ghani, and that he was “one of her best friends”. He in turn told the jury he believed she and her friend, the second complainant, Girl B, were 16. They were in separate consensual “friends with benefits”-type sexual relationships with him, he claimed.
It was at Ghani’s flat, above a butcher’s shop in Rochdale, that Girl A was passed around “like a piece of meat” between Ghani younger half-brother, Mohammed Faisal Ghani, and his friends. She said she was “trapped like a prisoner” in the flat and forced to have sex with numerous men on a stained single mattress with no sheets. The jury heard that Mohammed Ghani, a “sweet talker”, told her he would “love her even more” if she had sex with his friends.
The court heard that on one occasion he persuaded Girl A to have sex with his cousin, a man in his 30s, who was visiting from Pakistan. “He’s never had sex with a white girl before,” he told her, urging her to “do it for the team”. He then asked her to marry the cousin for £5,000 so that he could get a UK visa, but she refused.
On one occasion, another defendant, Insar Hussain, now 38, challenged her to a drinking contest at the flat above the butcher’s shop. She drank so much vodka that she passed out, the jury heard. The next day she was shown a video of one of the men sexually assaulting her with a brandy bottle as Hussain and others laughed. The bottle was on display in the bathroom “like a trophy”, the court heard, and the video was distributed around Rochdale.
Hussain was sentenced to 17 years for one count of rape and two counts of sexual activity with a child.
The court heard that Mohammed Ghani, now 39, was the first man to abuse Girl A, from the age of 14, having met her and invited her for a drink and drugs “sesh” when she was just 12.
Sentencing the men, Judge Landale described the girls as “immature, naive children who were loved by their mothers. They both wanted to be grown-up and they wanted to be loved. As children they believed they had street credibility. But in reality that was fake. Each girl was a child ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous older men.”
A fourth defendant, Ali Razza Hussain Kazmi, 36, was described by Girl A as an “intimidating and aggressive figure” when he sexually assaulted Girl B when she was just 13. He went on to rape Girl B when she was 14 and he was 16 or 17, in an underpass near Hopwood Hall college in Rochdale. The rape took place in full view of his friends, with him telling his victim: “I don’t give a fuck. I’ll shag you in front of all my mates.”
Kazmi was the youngest defendant, aged 15 or 16 when he first abused Girl B, who was reported missing from home by her mother at least 83 times as a teenager. He denied knowing both girls, only to be confronted with a video of himself attending the Islamic wedding of Girl A. He was given an eight-year sentence, partly on account of his age at the time of the abuse.
Martin Rhodes, 39, a long-term heroin addict, was the only defendant to plead guilty to any of the charges against him, and was sentenced to 12 years and six months for sexual activity with a child. The court heard that both complainants believed he was their boyfriend when they were 14 and he was 20 or 21. He initially denied knowing either girl, only for police to point out that he had a tattoo with one of their names on his arm.
Jahn Ghani was sentenced to 20 years for six counts of sexual activity with a child and one count of causing a child to engage in sexual activity.
Mohammed Ghani was sentenced to 14 years for five counts of sexual activity with a child.
