The people convicted were: Top, left to right, Mohammed Hassan Ali; Yassar Hussain, both for sex and drug offences; Saiful Islam, sex offences; Redwan Siddquee, drug offences; Eisa Mousavi; Prabhat Nelli, sex and drug offences. Middle, left to right, Mohibur Rahman, drug offences; Nashir Uddin; Jahanger Zaman; Taherul Alam, sex and drug offences; Nadeem Aslam, drug offences; Mohammed Azram, sex and drug offences. Bottom, left to right, Monjur Choudhury; Abdulhamid Minoyee, sex and drug offences; Carolann Gallon, trafficking; Badrul Hussain, drug offences; Habibur Rahim; Abdul Sabe, sex and drug offences.

Sometimes, she felt like a baton in a relay race, passed from man to man for her drugged body to be used as each saw fit. The girl described being collected from a children’s home and taken to parties at flats and houses where men, up to seven at a time, awaited their sport. They fed her cocaine and mephedrone, she said, then queued to take their turn. She was 13.

Her story was one among many bleak accounts of lost lives in the back streets of Newcastle upon Tyne that were shared with juries in trials that formed part of the northeast’s largest criminal inquiry into sexual exploitation.

Operation Shelter focused on crimes committed in the west end of the city by groups of