Islam versus Europe

Three men who used a teenage girl to lure two younger girls to a dark and empty house were facing jail last night after a jury found them guilty of subjecting the pair to a terrifying series of sex attacks.

Brothers Shahid and Amjad Hussain and their cousin, Tanveer Butt, aged in their 30s, were all convicted of rape. Their victims, 16-year-old white girls, had thought that they were going out clubbing.

Stephanie Knight, a 17-year-old who befriended the girls before delivering them into the hands of the men she called “my boys”, sobbed at Burnley Crown Court as she was found guilty of conspiracy to rape and aiding and abetting rape.

After arranging to meet the two teenagers, from Blackburn, Lancashire, on a December evening in 2009, Knight was heard to say “Got them” in a mobile phone conversation before she introduced them to her boyfriend, Amjad Hussain, 34.

He drove the three teenagers to a car park in nearby Accrington, where they climbed into a 4x4 vehicle, driven by Butt, 39, a married father of four. The 16-year-olds were fed large quantities of vodka and given drugs to smoke.

They were then taken to a house with no furniture and no electricity, where Shahid Hussain, 37, was waiting upstairs.

The jury heard that the three men took it in turns to commit numerous sexual offences against one of the girls in various rooms of the house.

It was said that when she left one room after being forced to perform a sex act on Butt, the brothers tried to pull her in different directions before she was dragged into a bedroom by Shahid Hussain, who pushed a wardrobe against the door and raped her.

Her friend heard the girl sobbing and screaming, but Knight prevented her from going to help. Knight also threatened the frightened girl when she refused to perform sex acts on the three men, telling her that her friend was merely “chillin’ with my boys”.

In the early hours of the morning, the two girls were driven home by Amjad Hussain, who was said to have locked the car doors and pulled out a knife before raping both of them.

The girls contacted the police on the same day. When she was medically examined, one was found to be cut and bruised.

The four defendants were arrested and denied all the charges against them. Amjad Hussain, from Accrington, accepted that he had sex with the girls but said it was consensual.
Knight, now aged 19, from Blackburn, was said to have first met Amjad Hussain when he pulled up in his car and asked for her mobile phone number six months before the sex attacks.

She fell in love with him and in the months that followed he persuaded her to perform sex acts on his brother and cousin. The court heard that she is being supported by an agency working with victims of child sexual exploitation.

The other two defendants, both from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, said they had never met either of the girls and had not been in the house that night.

One of the victims told police that they first met Knight, who had been in local authority care since the age of 11, a week before the offences took place. She knew only that the older girl “hangs around with a load of Asian lads”.

Speaking after the verdicts, Detective Sergeant Paul Langley, of Lancashire Police, said the girls had been “subjected to an horrific sexual ordeal at the hands of three much older men”.

“Regardless of offenders’ social or ethnic background, they are abusing young people and we will continue to target, warn and prosecute them. This behaviour is not just unacceptable, it is criminal,” he said.

“We will continue to work to identify youngsters at risk of exploitation and to prevent them getting caught in a cycle of abuse.”

The Hussain brothers were each convicted of three rapes. Butt was found guilty of one rape and aiding and abetting rape but acquitted of a further two rape charges. Shahid Hussain was the only defendant to be found not guilty of conspiracy to rape.

The four defendants, warned by Judge Beverley Lunt that they were “looking at long prison sentences”, will be sentenced at Preston Crown Court on September 2.