Out of the shadows, girl groomed by Asian gang who had abuser’s baby – aged just 15
UNTIL now, she has been the anonymous voice of the victims of the Rotherham child sexual grooming scandal.
But yesterday Sammy Woodhouse, 31, stepped out of the shadows to call for professionals who failed the girls abused by Asian men in the South Yorkshire town to be ‘held accountable’.
She also launched a campaign for a ‘Sammy’s Law’, to give a pardon for crimes committed by sexual abuse victims while under the control of domineering criminal groomers.
The full extraordinary story can finally be told of how a schoolgirl from a loving family fell under the spell of evil abuser Arshid Hussain, before giving birth to his child when she was just 15.
Poignant childhood photos of Miss Woodhouse as a happy little girl are a reminder of the innocence stolen by the vile gang of groomers.
Despite being let down by both police and social services, she has found the strength to fight back, giving evidence in court to ensure Hussain was sent to jail, and she now campaigns on behalf of abuse victims.
Miss Woodhouse, a single mother-of-two who still lives in Rotherham, is suing police and the local authority for the shocking failures to protect her.
She told the Daily Mail: ‘Both police and social workers failed us and they should be held accountable. They deliberately turned a blind eye and covered this up.
‘There were people who did nothing and allowed girls to be abused and the abusers to get away with it. Some of the professionals I believe will be prosecuted, but a lot of people will get away with it.’
Speaking to the BBC’s Inside Out programme, Miss Woodhouse, who was previously known under the pseudonym Jessica, said waiving her anonymity was like a ‘weight lifted off my shoulders’.
She continues her fight for justice and yesterday met the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which announced earlier this month that 30 police officers are being investigated for their handling of child sex abuse complaints in Rotherham.
She fears there are many officers who made mistakes who will escape disciplinary action for misconduct as they have since retired.
One of three children, she recalled being a ‘bubbly and confident’ girl who wanted to be a dancer from the age of four.
She had a ‘ normal family upbringing’, with her father, who worked as a painter and decorator and owned a pool hall, and her mother, who died 11 years ago.
It was as a 14-year- old that her life fell apart, when she caught the eye of Hussain, who was ten years older than her and known as ‘Mad Ash’, at a party in a flat.
He habitually flashed his cash and drove around town in a sports car to impress the underage girls he targeted for his warped sexual desires.
She said: ‘I remember sitting in a car and he stroked my face and he said, “You’re not really 16 are you?” and I said, “No, 15,” and he said, “No you’re not,” and I said, “OK then, I’m 14.”
‘It was almost like he put a spell on me. Pretty much we were boyfriend and girlfriend from that moment on.’
He waited outside her school to see her at lunch times and he gave her a mobile phone so they could keep in touch.
Before long she started skipping school to meet him and they had sex within a month.
In one instance, she was even found by police semi- naked and hiding under a bed in a flat with Hussain.
His trial last year heard how he had sex with her on a daily basis and he would sometimes climb through her bedroom window to abuse her there.
When Miss Woodhouse’s father challenged him, the two men had a fight, and the girl then started going missing for weeks at a time.
Her worried family contacted police, but were told nothing could be done unless Miss Woodhouse made a complaint.
The schoolgirl, who had no idea she was just one of many underage victims, was ‘besotted’ with Hussain from the start and was ‘completely brainwashed’, her sister Rachel recalled.
Her parents put her in care in a desperate bid to separate her from the manipulative criminal, who is alleged to have fathered up to 18 children.
‘Nobody really wanted to do much apart from my parents,’ she said.
Miss Woodhouse recalled being groomed with ‘dates to the cinema and restaurant meals,’ before Hussain became ‘controlling, possessive and violent’. But she said he was ‘like a drug’ and she kept going back to him.
Hussain’s trial at Sheffield Crown Court heard how she became preg- nant by him at 14 and had a termination as he told her she couldn’t keep the baby because he would be sent to prison.
She was put under the protection of social services and police, who considered her to be in ‘moral and physical danger’.
Yet while in foster care she continued to see Hussain and gave birth to his son aged just 15. However, he got away with his horrific crimes until 2013, when newspaper revelations about her ordeal led to a fresh police inquiry and Hussain, 41, along with his two brothers, were successfully prosecuted.
He was jailed for 35 years in February last year after being con- victed of 23 offences of indecent assault and rape. He has a long criminal record and became a paraplegic in 2005 after being shot in the stomach.
One victim said Hussain ‘thought he was invincible. He thought he was ten men.
‘He thought he was God’s gift to everything, everybody and anything that walks the planet.’
After Hussain was found guilty, Miss Woodhouse said: ‘Finally I have the closure I need. Now I can be free of him.
‘The things he did turn my stomach. I can’t express how much these guilty verdicts are deserved.’
Commenting on the police failure to take action, she said: ‘He was extremely well known to the authorities, he was involved in just about every crime you could imagine. I wasn’t the first or the last child that he was abusing.’ Miss Woodhouse said standards were now much higher and victims are given better support, but stressed that police ‘need to do more work to understand what grooming is and the grooming process’.
However, she believes ‘hundreds of offenders’ are still walking the streets and will never be prosecuted.
Now, for Miss Woodhouse, waiving her anonymity is the latest step on the campaigning road. She is writing to the Prime Minister and the Duchess of Cornwall to win support for her Sammy’s Law campaign.
She said she had convictions for possession of an offensive weapon, common assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm from her teenage years with Hussain, and believes she should be given a pardon for these offences.
‘It can stop people like me from
‘Deliberately turned a blind eye’ ‘What he did turns my stomach’
having a decent future. We have the right to move forward. I deserve to be cleared so I can move on,’ she said.
Miss Woodhouse added that ‘ individual circumstances’ should be taken into account, as abuse victims with criminal records not of their doing are often unable to get jobs because of their history.
Her feelings towards her abuser remain complex. Asked how she felt about Hussain now, she said: ‘There’s times when I still feel angry at him, there’s times when I want to cry and then there’s times when I think a part of me will always love him because he gave me my son.’