- Saturday, April 20, 2024
By: Keerthi Mohan
A vulnerable Huddersfield girl was raped and abused by multiple men throughout her childhood, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Mohammed Akram, 33, and Usman Khalid, 31, took the girl out of the children’s home she was living in to abuse her.
Both men have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.
Richard Wright QC, prosecuting, told the jury: “We say that both of the men in the dock had sexual contact with her when she was just 12 and they knew how old she was.
“They each, on separate occasions, took her out of the children’s home where she was living without permission and with a sinister, ultimately sexually motivated, purpose.’
“This case concerns the cynical sexual exploitation of an extremely vulnerable young girl. Throughout her childhood she was deliberately targeted by men who wanted to use her for their own sexual purposes,” he added.
According to Wright, the girl was groomed in the Huddersfield area of West Yorkshire.
He told the jury that the girl “found herself drawn into a world in which she had little or no control of her life and was utterly unable to make truly free or informed choices about anything where sex was concerned.”
The court heard that the girl’s mother was an addict who was “utterly unable or unwilling to care for her” and she had to “fend for herself”.
The girl befriended the men in the hope that they might feed her, or care for her, but that was the last thing they did.
Two women – Shahnaz Malik, 57, of St Anne’s Avenue, and Naveeda Habeeb, 40, of Prince Wood Lane, are also on trial, charged with child cruelty.
The trial is expected to last two weeks.
