Kirklees grooming trial: Girl, 12, repeatedly raped by three men – seen as ‘fresh meat’.
UPDATE TUESDAY
Also from the BBC
The jury was discharged at Leeds Crown Court on Tuesday for legal reasons. The trial is due to restart later this week with a fresh jury.
Update Friday – I can see from the court list that the trial restarted yesterday but no news outlets are reporting this. The reporting restriction maybe a direction of the court; it may be self-imposed.
I was checking whether there is anything reported that can be repeated here on 2 or 3 trials that I believe are underway, or about to be so. When this report from the BBC about a completely different trial today popped up in my search engine.
Three men plied a young girl with drink and drugs before repeatedly raping her, a court has heard.
Khurum Raziq, Nasar Hussain and a third man are accused of grooming and attacking the girl in West Yorkshire on numerous occasions from 2003 to 2006.
Leeds Crown Court heard the girl, who was just 12 when the alleged offences started, said the abuse had been “the end of her childhood”. Mr Raziq, 40, Mr Hussain, 44, and the third defendant deny the charges.
Prosecutor David Brooke QC said the alleged victim met Mr Raziq in September 2003 when he was working as a pizza delivery driver in Batley. Over the next five months Mr Raziq was said to have raped her multiple times with her mother stating she went from a “mummy’s girl” to skipping school and going missing. Mr Brooke said on one occasion after the girl disappeared she later told police she was in a relationship with a 21-year-old man called Khurum.
Mr Raziq denied the claims when interviewed by police and was released on bail before a decision was made to take no further action, said Mr Brooke. As was common then, until public outrage eventually prompted a change of attitude. When he was arrested in 2018 he again denied having sex with the girl.
He (Mr Brooke) said the girl was raped repeatedly by Mr Hussain when she was aged 13 or 14.
“In her view she was seen as ‘fresh meat’ by the defendant,” he said.
In interview, Mr Hussain told police he believed the girl was over 16 at the time and that any sexual contact had been consensual.
The third defendant, who cannot be named, faces two charges of rape. At the outset of the hearing, Judge Geoffrey Marson QC said the man, who was not in court, was not “medically or mentally” fit to stand trial. If I named him they would have to kill me. Or at least make life unpleasant. So I won’t.
Khurum Raziq, 40, of Hill Top Estate, Heckmondwike, denies eight counts of rape between September 2003 and January 2004
Nasar Hussain, 44 of Brunswick Street, Dewsbury denies three counts of rape between January 2005 and January 2006
The third defendant faces two counts of rape said to have taken place between April 2004 and January 2006.
The trial continues.
These three men are amongst the 32 men mostly from Dewsbury and Batley, who in 2020 were charged with a number of offences as part of Operation Tourway. With reporting restrictions on many of these trials (and sometimes for good reason) and an enormous court backlog it is hard to follow the eventual result of every arrest. One does one’s best.