Sixteen men have been jailed for more than 200 years over the grooming and sexual abuse of Huddersfield children, it can now be reported.

The abuse of the vulnerable, isolated and underage girls - the youngest of whom was 11 or 12 - was described by a judge as 'top of the scale'.

A total of 20 men, ranging in age from 27 to 54, were convicted as part of Operation Tendersea during three trials at Leeds Crown Court throughout 2018 making it the worst scandal to ever hit Huddersfield.

They were found guilty of child sex offences including rape, inciting child prostitution and abduction of a child.

A court order had been in place temporarily banning any reporting of the trials until today.

Speaking exclusively to ExaminerLive , one of the victims said: "I think the sentences were brilliant, although I thought one of the men deserved just that bit longer.

"I’m so happy with the verdicts and can’t thank everyone involved in Operation Tendersea enough."

The four remaining defendants will be sentenced on November 1.

ExaminerLive has followed the case from the very beginning and here are the horrific details of a case that will send shockwaves through West Yorkshire.

'Manipulated and scared'

The abuse of the 15 schoolgirls - some of whom were in care and some of whom had mild learning disabilities - took place in the Huddersfield area from 2004 to 2011.

Judge Geoffrey Marson QC, who presided over the first two trials, described the grooming as 'insidious and persistent' and the abuse as 'vile and wicked'.

He also described the evidence as 'harrowing' and 'chilling'.

The girls were lured in with gifts as basic as food, cigarettes or lifts and then plied with drink and drugs.

One of the ringleaders, Amere Singh Dhaliwal , groomed at least 11 of them. Once they were 'broken in', he would pass the girls about to other men – sometimes to drug dealers in exchange for the drugs he was spiking them with.

They were sexually abused in isolated areas such as cars, car parks, houses, a snooker centre, a takeaway and in a park and sometimes plastic bags were used as condoms.

Driving them to remote places and threatening them with abandonment if they did not comply with sexual requests was a regular tactic used.

They would be forced to leave their secondary schools to meet the men and one girl even returned with semen on her school jumper, having just performed oral sex on Mohammed Kammer.

Sentencing the 16 defendants, Judge Marson told them:

The way these girls were treated defies understanding; this abuse was vile and wicked

As cases of sexual abuse with which the courts have to deal, this case comes at the top of the scale.

None of you have expressed any remorse for what you did.

He added: "It is likely that many, if not all, of these girls will never recover from the abuse they suffered."

One victim had a baby with one of the men, which was proved by DNA tests. Another victim fell pregnant without even knowing the baby's father's name and her mum made her have an abortion , and later gave birth to a child who she also believes to be one of the men's.

Several were forced to commit crimes and served custodial sentences for it and at least one tried to kill herself. Prosecutor Richard Wright QC said that the men saw the girls as 'commodities' 'to be used and abused at will'.

Opening the first trial in January, he said: "Some [of the girls] felt that they were in genuine, loving relationships such was the extent to which they had been groomed by these men.

"Others were plied with drink and drugs to the point of being utterly unable to resist the sexual advances that were made against them."

And after one victim went to the police in 2014, she was tracked down and racially assaulted by members of the gang.

Mr Wright added that the abuse was so regular that it was not even possible 'to come close to charging many of these defendants with each and every offence that the girls allege were committed against them'.

One of the victims told police:

It was just like a continual lifestyle. I didn’t know how to get out of it.

You feel manipulated and scared in a way that if you don’t meet these guys then something is going to happen and it just went on continuously for like years really, just the same thing day in, day out.

A young girl who was in the care system was repeatedly moved around West Yorkshire but the men would still find her.

She was abducted from a care home and made to perform oral sex.

But the terrified girl still refused to give up her mobile phone, which the men were contacting her on, and even threatened to swallow her sim card to stop her foster carer handing it over to the police.

A brazen man called her foster parents on their landline and said: "Tell her I want to f**k her."

When the foster parent told him it was illegal, he replied: "That’s nothing to do with you.

"We want her back, just let her go or else."

Background of Asian grooming gangs in England

This case is the latest of its kind in Yorkshire. Huddersfield joins nearby towns and cities such as Keighley, Bradford and Rotherham, as well as towns and cities across England such as Rochdale, Peterborough, Newcastle, Oxford, Bristol and Telford where hundreds – if not, thousands – of girls have been exploited over the last few decades.