Seven convicted of sexual exploitation of vulnerable girls Court: First major prosecution from Operation Stovewood

A gang of seven men has been convicted of sexually exploiting vulnerable teenage girls in Rotherham.

One of the complainants told a trial at Sheffield Crown Court how she had sex with “at least 100 Asian men” by the time she was 16 and another described how she was gang-raped in a forest and threatened with being abandoned there.

The case is the first major prosecution arising out of Operation Stovewood, the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation in the English town which has identified more than 1,500 victims.

This investigation was set up in the wake of the 2014 Jay Report which laid bare the shocking scale of exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 and failure of police and social services to intervene.

The jury in the trial which finished yesterday heard how girls, who are now in their 30s, were “lured by the excitement of friendship with older Asian youths” but then sexually assaulted and passed between men.

Prosecutors said the five complainants in the trial were easy to target because they needed to be loved.

Michelle Colborne QC, prosecuting, said: “When they were in their teens, they were targeted, sexualised and, in some instances, subjected to acts of a degrading and violent nature at the hands of these men who sit in the dock.”

She said: “None of them had the maturity to understand that they were being groomed and exploited.”

The jury was told how girls were given alcohol and drugs before they were passed between men in the town. The seven men who were convicted yesterday were told by Judge Sarah Wright they will be sentenced on November 16.

They were all remanded in custody.