The girls became the victims of cynical, manipulative paedophiles who couldn’t care less about them
They didn’t realise it at the time, but their life experiences and vulnerabilities made them the perfect targets for a depraved, ruthless group of men.
It is a horrifying story which rings true across many English towns, none more so than Rochdale.
Young girls from broken homes, craving care and affection from their elders, which they weren’t receiving at home.
Tricked into believing this was what was on offer, the girls were instead used and abused like pieces of meat, treated as ‘sex slaves’. The men’s sole purpose, sexual gratification.
They became the victims of cynical, manipulative paedophiles who couldn’t care less about them. Girl A and Girl B, as they have been identified in this trial, were no different.
They did not know each other, but rape and sexual abuse became an everyday part of their young lives.
Handed around by Asian men, they came to accept the grim reality of what they were being subjected to, while disinterested authorities failed them.
Over the past few months, the horrendous ordeals which they endured in the mid 2000s have finally been aired publicly, after a police operation sought delayed justice. Now mothers in their 30s, they were transported back to a traumatic period where abuse was rife, and care was low in supply.
Their brave testimony was the bedrock of more convictions as part of Greater Manchester Police’s Operation Lytton.
The abuse both began when they were just 13. Girl A lived with her mother, but had ‘no real home life to speak of’. Their relationship was strained. She would rarely attend school and would go missing from home, often meeting up with older people and not returning for days at a time.
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She would come back smelling of alcohol or cannabis. Girl A was regularly reported as missing to social services. Little, if anything was done. If she was persuaded to stay at home, she would often sneak out of the house.
Aged 13 or 14, her mother had little control over her daughter. She became concerned about the company she was keeping. She was right to be concerned.
Girl A met some of her abusers at Rochdale market, hanging around with friends. Others she met through her use of taxis around the town.
Given alcohol, cigarettes and cannabis, she was quickly catapulted into a very adult world, where such gifts didn’t come for free.
She would later recall that she thought it was ‘normal’ to have had sex with 30 men by the time she’d turned 13. She met Mohammed Zahid, a stall holder then aged in his mid 40s.
Zahid was the abuser who linked Girl A and B, the only groomer to target both girls. ‘Bossman’, as he was known, took every opportunity he could to rape and abuse them. His attacks on Girl A took place in his car or in a store room.
He and other men also travelled to a flat in Rochdale, where she was raped and abused by multiple men. She was abused in cars, or in secluded locations such as the moors or country parks after being driven there. Taxi drivers Mohammed Shazad, Nisar Hussain and Naheem Akram were all in their 20s when they abused Girl A, as was another man, Roheez Khan.
Her phone number was passed around her abusers. Girl A recalled how she’d be with one man while another was calling her on the phone.
On one occasion she was filmed in a particularly degrading way while being abused. She was promised it would not materialise if she had sex with them. She complied, but the video surfaced nonetheless.
READ MORE: ‘The cracks were starting to appear’: The moment Rochdale groomer assaulted another abuser in police station
Years later, Girl A said she was still being stopped in the street and verbally abused in Rochdale over it.
The rape and abuse went on for years. Little if anything was done at the time to protect her or stop the perpetrators. Police eventually launched an investigation into the grooming of young girls in Rochdale in 2010.
Girl A was approached by police, but she did not want to get involved at that stage. By five years later, she was ready.
Her mindset had changed. Having previously blamed herself, she now realised it wasn’t her fault. She had been ‘just a kid who knew no different’.
Her disclosures were made as she attended a parenting class. Asked to complete a creative writing project, those running the class brought in the police after it was clear that she had serious allegations to report.
“I was abused daily for six years,” she wrote. “I was 12 when they began to abuse me, feeding me alcohol and drugs, abuse me and pass me on to their friends. I had no choice but do what they say or I would be beaten and raped. They did as they pleased, they made videos of me to use as blackmail. If I told anyone they would share the videos. They sent the video around Rochdale anyway and I was branded a slag for it.”
She was no longer willing to quietly accept her victimhood.
She detailed her allegations in a huge number of video interviews recorded by police, and picked out her abusers in video identity parades. Now she has given evidence in two Crown Court trials.
Her testimony, and that of another victim, helped secure convictions against five men jailed following the first Operation Lytton trial in 2023. Jahn Shahid Ghani, Mohammed Ghani, Insar Hussain, Ali Razza Hussain Kasmi and Martin Rhodes received combined jail sentences of more than 70 years.
She returned to court for a second time this year and once again bravely told her truth.
Girl B’s start in life was even more traumatic than Girl A’s. Unable to cope with the responsibilities of parenthood, her mother had put her up for adoption twice by the time she had even started primary school.
READ MORE: Everything heard in court as Rochdale sex abuse trial jurors find seven men guilty of string of offences against two teenage girls
She ultimately remained at home but a few years later was placed into a children’s home. Girl B was taken in by foster parents but the placements never lasted long. Her life was ‘beset with disruption and chaos’.
She was moved around the country, from children’s home to children’s home. Her behaviour became challenging.
Ultimately she was placed in a secure children’s home after absconding from a previous home on more than 60 occasions over the space of just under three months.
Children’s home staff described her as ‘confused and vulnerable’, ‘uncertain of her future and of the commitment of her family members’.
She was living in a children’s home by the time the years of abuse she endured had begun. Girl A ultimately found a loving foster parent, but it was too late. Her foster mum fought for her and tried to get help.
She was not listened to. More than once, she recalled, she was told when reporting Girl B missing that she was ‘out prostituting herself’. Like Girl A, Girl B met Mohammed Zahid through the market. He would give them money, and cheap underwear.
Zahid spoke ‘dead soft’, Girl A recalled. It felt like he ‘gave a s***’, she said. She was too young and naive to know that she was being manipulated.
Through Zahid she was introduced to Mushtaq Ahmed and Kasir Bashir, also stall holders on Rochdale market. Ahmed had a shop in the town centre, which provided a secluded, secure location for their depravity. There she was brought to be raped by Zahid and Ahmed, on a dirty mattress in a bare, windowless cellar.
She was also brought to a house in Oldham, where she would be raped by Zahid, Ahmed and Bashir. She was plied with alcohol, as the men spoke in their native tongue. She would then be expected to go upstairs and wait on a mattress.
“To me it was just normal, as stupid as it sounds,” she would later say, with the benefit of hindsight. “I had no questioning about it. I didn’t know what to do about it.”
As an adult, Girl B told police what she was thinking when she was being abused. “I would just close my eyes and pray for it to be over,” she said. I just wanted to close my eyes and let it be done with.
“I just lay there. I literally just lay there and they would do what they did. They would have sex with me. I just lay there, I wouldn’t move, I wouldn’t say no. I just lay there.”
The abuse continued with grim regularity until Girl B had the presence and strength to break off contact with her abusers. She too later decided to seek justice in later life, when none had been forthcoming at the time.
Like Girl A, she gave video recorded interviews and picked out her abusers years later. In court, she physically shook in the witness box as she recounted harrowing details of the terrible abuse she endured.
The courage displayed by both women to stand up and fight for justice after all these years is remarkable. Accused of telling lies to gain compensation, they stood strong and refused to be silenced.
Now with the wisdom and experience which comes with age, they can reflect on how their persistence and determination has finally helped justice to be done, after an appalling chapter in Rochdale’s history.
After a five month trial which ended on Friday, the men were convicted.
- Mohammed Zahid, 64, of Station Road, Crumpsall, Manchester, was found guilty of ten counts of rape, four counts of indecency with a child, five counts of procuring a girl to have unlawful sexual intercourse and one count of attempting to procure a girl to have unlawful sexual intercourse
- Mushtaq Ahmed, of Corona Avenue, Oldham, found guilty of four counts of rape, four counts of indecency with a child and one count of procuring a girl to have unlawful sexual intercourse
- Kasir Bashir, of Napier Street East, Oldham, found guilty of two counts of rape and two counts of indecency with a child
- Roheez Khan, of Athole Street, Rochdale, found guilty of one count of rape
- Mohammed Shahzad, of Beswicke Royds Street, Rochdale, found guilty of five counts of rape and one count of assault by penetration
- Nisar Hussain, of Newfield Close, Rochdale, found guilty of two counts of rape and one count of assault by penetration
- Naheem Akram, of Manley Road, Rochdale, found guilty of six counts of rape and one count of assault by penetration
The men are due to be sentenced in September.