For Lily, the nightmare started at 11-years-old.

A foster child — her mother an alcoholic, dad nowhere to be found — the men began their sick seduction by giving her reefer and booze.

But they wanted something in return: sex.

At first, she came to crave what she believed in her heart was love. It wasn’t, though, was it?

It was rape.

The young woman — now in her 20s — was a victim of one of the worst cases of pedophilia in British history.

More than 50 vulnerable girls paid with their bodies and souls when political correctness trumped justice.

At 15, afters years of abuse, Lily finally went to the cops, mustering the courage to tell her harrowing tale.

“It was a male police officer. And he was kind of like, sighing — and had his head in his hands — and just looked really disinterested,” she told Crime & Investigation.

In the so-called Rochdale Sex Grooming case, the victims were all white. Their abusers and pimps were all Pakistani.

And some believe it was the fear of being labelled racist that stopped cops and social workers in their tracks when dealing with the gang, which was operated out of a rundown kebab shop.

“This is an absolute scandal. They were so petrified of being called racists they reverted to political correctness,” former Labour MP Ann Cryer told the BBC. “They had a greater fear of being perceived in that light than in dealing with the issues in front of them.”

Added Jon Brown of the National Centre for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children: “It’s very clear that abusers in Rochdale were laughing.”

Last week, four members of the notorious Rochdale child sex ring came one step closer to deportation to Pakistan after an immigration panel rejected their appeals.

Their British citizenship will almost certainly be revoked.

Rochdale is a dreary former industrial city now part of Greater Manchester. About 20% of its population is south Asian.

And for years, the gang of pedophiles was essentially untouchable because cops and prosecutors feared becoming the target of the modern day version of the scarlet letter: racist.

The girls — the very, very young victims — would be the pimp’s cannon fodder, sacrificed on the PC alter.

The ringleader was Shabir “Daddy” Ahmed, 63, the owner of the kebab shop.

In turn his henchmen would drive the drunk and drugged up girls around northern England to be used as sex toys by the sick, evil and perverted.

“Maybe 20 men queing up to have their turn,” writer Nigel Bunyon noted in horror.

Finally, when the whispers became screams, detectives began investigating the gang, mortified by what they discovered.

Initially, a politically obsequious Crown Prosecution Service refused to prosecute.

And when they did act, leading the charge was Nazir Afzal, who as a young boy had been bullied by British racists.

His thirst for justice ran deep and he immediately overturned the earlier decision.

Afzal wanted these monsters behind bars.

“My Pakistani heritage helped cut through barriers within the black and minority ethnic communities,” he said. “White professionals’ oversensitivity to political correctness and fear of appearing racist may well have contributed to justice being stalled.”

Ahmed, described as an “incredibly arrogant” thug, did what sex monsters do the world over: they blamed the victims, they blamed society, anything but their own twisted desire to have sex with children.

The way Ahmed saw it, the victims deserved it.

“The fact that these young girls were allowed to go out in the evenings and not have stable families around them was the reason why he could abuse them,” Afzal said. “A stupid defence but nonetheless that’s what his defence amounted to.”

Six of the men would go down for just abusing Lily alone. They shared Ahmed’s perverted view of Lily and the other girls.

“They tried to say...I couldn’t decipher from what was real and what wasn’t real,” Lily later said. “That I would go with anyone and everyone...That it was my fault...I just felt like scum, like I was nothing.”

At the trial, the defence also tried to pin their clients’ woes on racism. Judge Gerald Clifton was not buying into their politically correct worldview.

He told them: “Some of you, when arrested, said it was triggered by race...What triggered this...was your lust and greed.”

Ahmed was sentenced to 19 years in prison in 2012 for the reign of terror that lasted from 2004 to 2009.

Lily? She still has nightmares.

*********************

COLD CASE

NAME: Helen Gillings

AGE: 19

CIRCUMSTANCES: Hamilton sex worker Helen Gillings, a young mother of two, was found murdered on Feb. 17, 1995. She was asphyxiated, her body dumped in an alley in the city’s rough and tumble East End. It’s believed she was last seen alive at the now defunct Straw Hat Tavern around 1 a.m. the night before. She went into a nearby alley with a man who cops have now identified. There’s a $10,000 reward.

CONTACT: Hamilton Police Service homicide unit at (905) 546-3801.