Central witness in trial says Arshid Hussain, who denies 29 charges of child sex exploitation, repeatedly abused her with others over eight or nine years

A man said to be at the centre of a Rotherham grooming ring broke into a children’s home to take away a 14-year-old girl he was repeatedly abusing, a jury has heard.

Arshid Hussain climbed a drainpipe to reach her bedroom to take her away for sex with him and another man.

Sheffield crown court heard Hussain, who denies 29 charges of child sex exploitation, had taken the girl, who he had been abusing from the age of 11, out of the home to have sex with him and fellow defendant Sajid Bostan at the home of a Rotherham drug user.

Hussain and Bostan are among five men and two women on trial in Sheffield in relation to 16 years of alleged abuse including rape, indecent assault, abduction, false imprisonment and conspiracy to rape.

The woman, Girl B, who is a central witness in the trial and linked to 20 of the 51 counts, said Hussain forced her to have sex with him more than 100 times over eight or nine years.



She recalled how one night she went to her room in the children’s home to find him standing in the corner. “He was asking me to come out with him. I was begging and pleading for him to leave my room because I would have got in trouble. He said he would only leave if I would go with him.”

The girl told police in an interview played to the jury that she had been in and out of care from the age of 11, but each time she moved Hussain and his associates would find her and continue the threats and abuse.

Among the properties she says she was taken to was the home of Hussain’s co-defendant, Karen MacGregor. She has already been accused of pimping out girls by another complainant, but has denied all charges against her.

Girl B, who is now 36, said “Mad Ash”, as Hussain was known locally, abused her over nine years and forced her to have sex with “10 or 11” others. “It has gone on from the age of 11 right up to me being 19 to 20. It was near enough three to four times a week, sometimes two to three times a night,” she said.

In her second day of evidence, she told how Arshid passed her around his associates and his brother.

She told how she was tricked into taking heroin and had on occasions been locked in MacGregor’s house. At one time she managed to climb out of a window but Shelley Davies, who stayed at the house, found her and beat her up, as did MacGregor, she alleged.

The woman previously told the court she had a child after being raped at the age of 20 by Hussain and Bostan.

She said it was the second time an abuser made her pregnant – she had a termination after being made pregnant by Hussain but could not remember precisely how old she was.

When cross-examined in court by Tahir Khan QC, representing Hussain, the woman was asked why she had waited 15 years before first speaking to police in September 2014. She said the police had approached her.

The seven defendants deny all charges against them.

The trial continues.