Seven guilty of sexual abuse of girls in Rotherham

And still they kept a-coming…

From the Sheffield Express and Star  and ITVX

The National Crime Agency said the evidence in this case was ‘some of the most harrowing we have come across’ in their Rotherham investigation.

Seven men have been found guilty of a string of sex offences against two teenage girls in Rotherham, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has confirmed.

The girls were aged between 11 and 16 at the time of the offences in the early 2000s when they were groomed and often plied with alcohol or cannabis before being raped or sexually assaulted, the agency said.  …the offences involved “some of the most serious yet investigated” by officers working on Operation Stovewood – the agency’s huge investigation into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

It said the girls would often be collected by their abusers from the children’s homes where they lived at the time. The attacks took place at locations around Rotherham, including in a park, in a car in a supermarket car park, in a cemetery, and even behind a children’s nursery.

The NCA said the jury was told how one of the girls was taken to a hotel where she was raped by two men.

The men were found guilty of a series of offences on Wednesday following a nine week trial at Sheffield Crown Court, the agency said. They are:

Mohammed Amar, 42, of Elizabeth Way, Rotherham, who was found guilty of two counts of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old girl.

Yasser Ajaibe, 39, of Walter Street, Rotherham, who was found guilty of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old girl.

Mohammed Zameer Sadiq, 49, of Richard Road, Rotherham, who was found guilty of rape and sexual intercourse with a girl under 13 years old.

Mohammed Siyab, 44, of Stevenson Drive, Rotherham, was found guilty of two counts of rape, sexual intercourse with a girl under 13 years and trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation.

Abid Saddiq, 43, formerly of Rotherham, was found guilty of three counts of rape, including one of girl under 13, and indecently assaulting of a 12-year-old girl.

Tahir Yasin, 38, of Burngreave Street, Sheffield, was found guilty of eight counts of rape.

Ramin Bari, 37, of Derby Street, Sheffield, was found guilty of four counts of rape.

They will be sentenced on September 12 and 13 at the same court. Abid Saddiq is already serving a 20-year prison sentence having been convicted in 2019 of sexual offences.

Last Autumn, the NCA insisted “this does not mean we are walking away” as it announced that, from January, new allegations would be handled by South Yorkshire Police rather than Operation Stovewood.

More than 1,150 victims have now been identified and more than 300 designated suspects identified.

The NCA said Operation Stovewood has seen more than 200 arrests and Wednesday’s verdicts mean 33 convictions have been secured.

NCA senior investigating officer Stuart Cobb said: ” . . . Their attackers were cruel, manipulative men, who thought it was fine to take advantage of vulnerable young girls and dehumanise their victims in the worst possible ways.”