Predator cousins guilty of grooming and raping five girls in ‘appalling’ abuse

From the Manchester Evening News. 

This isn’t the same trial, currently still ongoing at Crown Court Minsuhll Street that I posted about last week.  This is another one that I missed from the beginning of the month. 

Two cousins have been found guilty of grooming and raping five teenage girls as part of ‘appalling’ historic abuse.

Manzorr Hussain, 54, and his cousin Imtiaz Ali, 53, faced justice for crimes committed against the girls in Bury in the late 1990s. Their victims were given drink and drugs before being abused by the men, Minshull Street Crown Court heard.

They came from troubled backgrounds and were manipulated by the rapists for their own sexual gratification. The abuse occurred mainly in Bury, but also in other locations across Greater Manchester as well as in Wales.

The pair were found guilty following a four week trial.

A third man, Hussain’s older brother Ghulam Hussain, 64, was charged with a ‘number of sexual offences’ in connection with the case but has ‘left the country’, jurors heard during the trial. They were told it was not their task to decide whether Ghulam Hussain was guilty or not guilty.

Opening the case on behalf of the prosecution, Anna Pope said: “It is a case about five teenage girls, who we say were groomed and sexually abused by three men. We say this took place in the late 1990s. We say that these sexual offences took place in houses, a hotel, sometimes in a car or a van. A number of the girls, we say, were particularly vulnerable. . .  When sexual activity began and took place between these young teenage girls and much older men, we say that they weren’t truly consenting to any of this.”

Ms Pope claimed Ghulam Hussain was the ‘main man’, who allegedly abused teenage girls then ‘passed them around to others’ including his brother Manzorr Hussain and cousin Ali. The trio all ran market stalls, it was said.

Ghulam Hussain, formerly of Manchester Road, Bury, lived in a large home with his wife and children, jurors heard. His younger brother Manzoor Hussain raped and abused girls and ‘arranged for other girls to be available’ for other men, prosecutors said.

Ms Pope said ‘parties’ would be held at an address said to be linked to Ali, where girls would be given drugs and alcohol and be ‘expected to provide sexual services to those there’. One girl raped by both Manzoor Hussain and Imtiaz Ali said she was told that if she didn’t do what they told her she would be taken to the moors, have her clothes taken and left there.

Hussain took one of his victims to a flat, where she was told to enter a bedroom where there was nothing but a dirty mattress. There, she was abused by strangers who entered one by one,

Hussain, of Manchester Road, Bury, was convicted of seven counts of rape and seven counts of indecent assault. Ali, of Ainsworth Road, Radcliffe, Bury, was found guilty of five counts of rape, five counts of indecent assault and one count of attempted indecent assault.

They will be sentenced in December.