City men guilty of forcing schoolgirl into prostitution
THREE men from Coventry have been found guilty of holding a schoolgirl captive and forcing her in to prostitution.
Jake Cairns, Brandon Sharples and Jack McInally plied the 14-yearold with drugs and held her at an address in the city, before advertising her as an 18-year-old on an escort site.
During her terrifying five-day ordeal, it is believed she was made to have sex with around 20 people before West Midlands Police rescued her on June 13, 2015.
They found her trying to climb out of a first floor bathroom window, in only her underwear, in a bid to escape her abusers.
Cairns, 21, from Cheveral Avenue in Radford, Sharples, 20, from Wyley Road in Radford, and McInally, 21, of no fixed address, were found guilty of facilitating the sexual exploitation of a child at Warwick Crown Court on Tuesday.
Cairns was additionally found guilty of arranging child sexual These men were involved in the shocking exploitation of a young girl... they can expect long jail terms exploitation and taking and distributing indecent images of a child.
They were remanded into prison and are set to be sentenced in January.
The girl disappeared from a relative’s home in Coventry and information led police to an address in Somerset Road, Radford, where they found the teenager trying to make her escape. They forced open the front door to the property and arrested Cairns, McInally and Sharples. The police investigation showed that Cairns had taken explicit photos of the teenager and posted them on adult contact site Viva Street. Detec tives found an email address linking Cairns to the Viva Street advert. The girl’s face was not visible but one photo featured a distinctive necklace belonging to the girl which police recovered.
And DNA discovered on a duvet in a room, where she was forced to have sex, was shown to have come from five different sources, including Cairns.
Det Con Jon Barker said: “These three men were involved with the shocking exploitation of a young girl − they took advantage of her drug dependency and made money out of forcing her to have sex with strangers.
“Cairns initially denied knowing the girl but later changed his story after he was identified during an ID procedure − and our financial enquiries showed he’d paid for the Viva Street advert via his own bank account.
“Now that a jury has found them guilty they can expect to be handed long jail terms.”