‘Girl B’ tells Rochdale trial she has been abused by ‘close to a hundred’ people ‘over the years’

This trial at Crown Court Manchester Minshull Street continues. From the Manchester Evening News

A woman who alleges she was raped and sexually abused by three Rochdale men when she was a child told a trial she has tried to ‘pretend it has not happened’.

On her third day on the witness stand, the woman told jurors she had tried to ‘block out’ the sex attacks she is alleged to have suffered from the age of 13. She said of one of her alleged abusers: “That man is a rapist and a paedophile.”

When a barrister representing the defendant suggested she had changed her story, the woman told the jury: “Do you know how many people I have been abused by over the years? It’s probably close to a hundred.”

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons is referred to as Girl B in press reports. She made the comments as she was being cross-examined by Shahnawaz Khan, who is defending Kasir Bashir.

Pressed further, the woman admitted she had struggled to express her thoughts and that she had tried to ‘pretend it has not happened’. She added “I don’t like being vulnerable so I pretend to say I’m not.”

The woman alleged she was raped by Mr Bashir after being driven to a house in Chadderton. Mr Khan pressed the woman on why police notes of her initial account to officers said she had reported three Asian males had driven her from Rochdale to the house in Chadderton, but in her later police video interview she had said it was two Asian males.

The woman said: “When you have something in your brain that’s happened it comes out in a pattern…. it’s not fair to look at tiny little mistakes. My mind is boggled.”

When Mr Khan put to the woman that she had been ‘unable to locate’ the house, the woman said: “I didn’t walk to the house. It wasn’t like I was looking around at the surroundings to see where I was.”

Pressed further by Mr Khan on her recollection, the woman said: “He raped me in that bedroom.” The woman said Mr Bashir sold ‘cheap’ Clark’s shoes from a stall at Rochdale’s indoor market. When Mr Khan suggested his client actually sold fabrics, the woman insisted he sold shoes because he was ‘always stood next to the shoe stall’.

Mr Khan pressed the woman on whether she was saying the man she saw at the stall was the man who raped her. She replied: “You are trying to say I’m confused. I know exactly what I’m saying. I remember that man’s face.”

When the barrister suggested she had made an ‘assumption’ about Mr Bashir being a shoe stall holder in her police interview, the woman said it was ‘based on the fact he was always stood on that stall’.

The woman alleged Mr Bashir had gone to the house to ‘take it in turns with men who look half dead’. The woman was then cross-examined by Trevor Parry-Jones on behalf of another defendant, Mushtaq Ahmed who ran a shop called Maria Fashion where she is also alleged to have been abused.

The jurors were told that the woman identified Mr Ahmed to police as ‘Mr Maria Fashions’.

Mr Parry-Jones suggested to the woman she had been able to provide distinctive descriptions of her other alleged abusers, including their bodies, but had only described ‘Mr Maria Fashions’ as having ‘weird eyes’.

“I don’t know why I pick up certain features and not others,” she said, adding later: “That man is a rapist and a paedophile.”

The barrister put to the woman that she she had not noticed his client has a deformed finger. She said: “Because I didn’t notice something on him that means he didn’t abuse me?”

The barrister suggested she had ‘changed your account’ over time. The woman said: “More things are going to come to me as time goes on. That’s how it was. I can’t help it.”

She added later: “It’s called trauma, it’s broken memory.”