Everybody knew what was going on, Rochdale grooming gang trial hears

Independent

12-02-2025

A woman allegedly turned into a teenage 'sex slave' by a Rochdale grooming gang of Asian men told a jury 'everybody knew what was going on'.
And the witness said she was regarded as a 'prostitute' rather than a 13-year-old child when the alleged sexual abuse began, Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester heard.
'It always happened, it was nothing new to me,' she told the jury in her second day in the witness box.
'I assumed they all knew. The police had picked me up. It all just seemed to me everybody knew what was going on.'
The woman, identified only as girl B and another teenager, girl A, became 'sex slaves' to the gang of Asian men who preyed upon the vulnerable youngsters, the jury was told.
Neither complainant can be identified for legal reasons to protect their anonymity.
Girl B said when the abuse began she was living in a children's home and started to hang around Rochdale market, where Mohammed Zahid, then in his 40s, owned a stall.
Each week she was taken to the basement of a shop in Rochdale, Maria Fashions, owned by another man – Mushtaq Ahmed.
In the basement room below the shop, there was a bare mattress where she would have sex with market-stall holder Zahid, the shop owner Ahmed and a third man, Kasir Bashir.
Lisa Wilding KC, defending Zahid, asked girl B about social workers at the time raising concerns that she may have been having sex with Asian men.
Girl B said: 'They said I was a prostitute. I was prostituting myself.'
Ms Wilding said: 'Which must have been very upsetting. And a language that was used, then.'
'Vile,' replied the witness. 'I don't remember them being concerned enough to do anything about it.
'I remember knowing that they knew what was going on.
'It always happened, it was nothing new to me.
I assumed they all knew. The police had picked me up. It all just seemed to me everybody knew what was going on.
Girl B
'I assumed they all knew. The police had picked me up. It all just seemed to me everybody knew what was going on.'
Earlier, prosecutor Rossano Scamardella KC told jurors both girls were sexually abused because their troubled backgrounds made them susceptible.
'They were children passed around for sex, abused, degraded and then discarded,' Mr Scamardella said,
'They became sex slaves.'
Girl B was also asked why she had not reported the sexual abuse before she first contacted police in May, 2021.
She said: 'I felt like that was my purpose. I think it had happened that much.
'I never saw it as anything unnatural. I just felt like that was what I was there for.
'I normalised it so much in my own head.
'From the way I see things as a child to now, are two different things.
'There was no reason for me to think it was wrong when nobody did anything about it as a child.'
Eight men, either taxis drivers or connected to Rochdale market, are on trial and all deny multiple sexual offences including rape, indecent assault and indecency with a child between 2001 and 2006.
They are: Mohammed Zahid, 64, of Station Road, Crumpsall, Manchester; Naheem Akram, 48, of Manley Road, Rochdale; Mohammed Shazad, 43, of Beswicke Royds Street, Rochdale; Nisar Hussain, 43, of Newfield Close, Rochdale; Roheez Khan, 39, of Athole Street, Rochdale; Arfan Khan, 40, of Grouse Street, Rochdale; Mushtaq Ahmed, 66, of Corona Avenue, Oldham; and Kasir Bashir, 50, of Napier Street East, Oldham.
The trial continues.