Karen MacGregor allegedly locked the teenage girls away at her home in Rotherham and forced them to clean her home before plying them with alcohol and offering them up to Pakistani men

Girls were kept like slaves and forced to do the cleaning by a white women who allegedly pimped them out to five Asian men when they were as young as 11, a court has heard.

Karen MacGregor allegedly locked the teenage girls away at her home in Rotherham and forced them to clean her home before plying them with alcohol and offering them up to Pakistani men.

Today, the first of 12 girls who were allegedly abused by the gang during the 1980s told how she thought MacGregor was like her 'second mother' but that she was 'totally wrong'.

During a recorded interview, which was played to the court, the woman said: 'All she wanted us to do was cleaning, on our knees scrubbing, cleaning carpets and curtains all the time - we were always cleaning.

'We were like slaves if you like. Karen was never in. She used to lock the door and we couldn't get out because we didn't have a key.

'She said she wasn't going to give us a key because she had debt collectors coming round and she didn't want us to let them in.'

The woman, who is in her 40s, but was a teenager at the time, said MacGregor would look after them by buying takeaways, clothes, underwear, bedding and spirits.

'We always had everything: we didn't need anything; we didn't have to work if we didn't want to as she provided it all,' she said.

But the woman told how she soon began being abused by the scores of Pakistani men who would turn up at MacGregor's home.

The alleged victim told how, on the first time she was abused, she screamed for help but no-one helped her.

It is alleged that the incident was the start of a campaign of violence and sexual abuse directed at teenage girls in the town over a period of more than ten years.

The girl said she had been plied with vodka and woke up half-naked on a bed in Macgregor's house with a man touching her.

She told a jury: 'I must have passed out and when I woke up I had no trousers on and the male was touching me.

'I shouted "help" twice really loud but nobody came upstairs. It must have scared him because he ran downstairs and shut the door behind him.

MacGregor depicted in a court sketch yesterday with her fellow six defendants, who deny a total of 51 charges between them

Five men and two women are on trial accused of roles in the sexual exploitation of children in Rotherham over a period of more than 10 years. One of the accused if Majid Bostan (pictured arriving at court)

'I was just laid on my back and he was sat on the edge of the bed. I can remember his face. The bedroom door was open that's why I was shouting. I shouted so loud somebody in the house would have heard.

'As soon as I knew what was happening I shouted. It made me feel sick. She must have heard me shouting.'

The prosecution claim McGregor was not a 'kind and generous member of society' and 'deliberately set out' to make girls available for sexual encounters with older men.

The woman said of MacGregor: 'I thought she was my second mother but it turned out totally wrong. She must have known when I was shouting out. Why didn't she come upstairs if she cared for me that much?'

The charges involve 12 alleged victims. Pictured: Sajid Bostan (left), 38, and Qurban Ali (right), 53 - both of whom face a string of charges - arriving at court

Robert Wyn Jones, representing MacGregor, asked the woman: 'If you'd had concerns about Karen you'd have left, wouldn't you?' She agreed that this was true.

Asking about the incident involving the alleged sexual assault, Mr Wyn Jones said: 'Given how much you had to drink, can you be sure that Karen was involved in taking you upstairs?'

Again, the witnesses said 'yes'.

Pressed by the barrister, she agreed that she may have been as old as 17 when she went to live with MacGregor.

MacGregor denies one count of conspiracy to procure a woman under 21 to become a common prostitute, false imprisonment and two counts of conspiracy to rape.

Arshid Hussain, 40, Basharat Hussain, 39, Qurban Ali, 53, Majid Bostan, 37, Sajid Bostan, 38 and Shelley Davies, 40, all deny a further 47 offences.