Seven men have been found guilty of child sex abuse in the largest trial so far following the Rotherham abuse inquiry.

One underage victim was "passed around" and raped by 100 men by the time she was 16 years old, Sheffield Crown Court heard.

Another young victim became pregnant and had to have an abortion.

The case is the first major prosecution arising out of Operation Stovewood - the National Crime Agency's massive inquiry into historical child sexual exploitation in the South Yorkshire town.

The defendants were found guilty following a trial lasting eight weeks.


The charges against them included rape, indecent assault and false imprisonment.

Those convicted of rape were Mohammed Imran Akhtar, 37, Tanweer Ali 37, Salah Ahmed El-Hakam, Nabeel Kurshid, 34, and Iqlak Yousaf, 34.

Another man found guilty of rape cannot be named for legal reasons.

Another defendant who was charged with offences of indecent assault and false imprisonment was acquitted.

So far, more than 1,500 victims of the Rotherham abuse scandal have been identified.

Image: More than 1,500 have been identified as victims of child sex exploitation in Rotherham

The girls, who are now women in their 30s, were "lured by the excitement of friendship with older Asian youths" but then sexually assaulted and passed between men, the jury in the trial was told.

One of the victims told police she felt as though her childhood had been "snatched away."

Another said she had been plied with drugs and alcohol, taken to a location miles away from home and threatened with being abandoned alone if she did not have sex.

The court heard that after becoming pregnant the girl had an abortion because her parents were unsupportive.

Prosecuting barrister Michelle Colborne said: "She suffered a great deal of psychological trauma as a result."

Ms Colborne also said that the five complainants in the trial were easy to target because they needed to be loved.

She said: "When they were in their teens, they were targeted, sexualised and, in some instances, subjected to acts of a degrading and violent nature at the hands of these men who sit in the dock.

"None of them had the maturity to understand that they were being groomed and exploited."

Ms Colborne added that the girls "believed sex of some kind or other was a necessary price for friendship".

This investigation was set up in the wake of the 2014 Jay Report which revealed the shocking scale of exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 and failure of police and social services to intervene.

Researcher Angie Heal previously described it as the "biggest child protection scandal in UK history".

Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s and the first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12-16.

Sentencing of the seven men who were convicted on Monday will take place on 16 November.