Rotherham rape gang branded schoolgirls ‘fresh meat'

Telegraph

05-03-2025

A Rotherham grooming gang raped two girls several times a week for multiple months and referred to them as 'fresh meat'.
Romulad Stefan Houphouet, 37, was jailed for 20 years and Absolom Sigiyo, 41, was jailed for 18 years and six months after both were found guilty of a number of offences including rape.
Sheffield Crown Court was told during a five-week trial how two teenage girls were sexually assaulted in the South Yorkshire town more than a decade ago by a gang of men.
Judge Sarah Wright told Ivorian national Houphouet, from Sheffield, and Sigiyo, a Zimbabwean national, from Rotherham, they inflicted 'severe psychological harm' to the girls who were suffering to this day.
'Bravery beyond measure'
The judge explained how both the girls were living in a children's home at the time of the offending, that they distrusted authority and were frequently reported missing.
She said they 'did not come from a stable or protective background and so were extremely vulnerable to those who set out to exploit them'.
The judge said that Houphoet and Sigiyo used 'cynical and manipulative behaviour', including supplying alcohol and cigarettes, to groom the two victims in order to 'achieve a particular sexual objective'.
Judge Wright told the victims, who watched the sentencing hearing on a video link, they had shown 'bravery beyond measure in speaking about such intimate and traumatic experiences and exposing themselves to intrusion and questioning'.
She said the men referring to the girls as 'fresh meat' was 'particularly degrading'.
The judge told Houphouet: 'On one occasion you forcibly and very violently raped (one of the teenagers) after she had had a sexual encounter with another man.
'You clearly regarded her as your property to do with as you liked.'
Prosecutors told the trial that Houphouet that befriended the two girls in Rotherham town centre one evening more than 10 years ago and raped one of them in an alleyway that night.
Houphouet took both girls a short distance to a house in the town and introduced them to Sigiyo 'and other males who were undoubtedly present'.
Long-term damage
Both the victims described their continuing mental health problems in impact statements read to the court.
Each said they have had to leave the Rotherham area because of the trauma.
One woman said: 'I was frightened, scared and alone. I carried these horrible memories alone through my childhood and teenage years.
'Looking back, I recall feeling very sad all the time and overwhelmed with guilt. I did not think anyone would believe me.'
The woman said she was still 'petrified' that those who abused her would harm her and described how she had to give up a job because of anxiety.
She said she still has not been able to tell her mother what happened as it would be 'too much for her to take'.
The other woman said in her statement: 'For years I went through blaming myself for what happened, thinking it was my fault for being exploited, abused and being treated by them as 'just pieces of meat'.'
She said: 'I will never be able to forget what happened to me and I worry for the future.'
The convictions are the latest following the National Crime Agency's (NCA) investigation into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, which is called Operation Stovewood.
It was set up in the wake of the landmark Jay Report which found in 2014 that at least 1,400 girls were abused by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani heritage in Rotherham.
The NCA says Stovewood is the single largest law enforcement operation of its kind undertaken in the UK, and has identified more than 1,100 children involved in the exploitation between 1997 and 2013 – almost all girls.
A third man, Jacek Brzozowski, 35, was cleared of the one charge he was facing in the trial, of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, but had admitted a charge of penetrative sexual activity with a child earlier this year.
Brzozowski, from Rotherham, will be sentenced on April 14.