Guilty: Stephanie Knight sobbed as she was found guilty of conspiracy to rape
A young woman lured two white teenage girls to be raped by three Asian men
with the promise of a night out.
Stephanie Knight, then 17, told the pair they were going clubbing but instead
plied them with vodka and drugs before forcing them to have sex with ‘her boys’.
After persuading them into her car she was heard to say ‘got them’ over her
mobile phone as they travelled to a derelict house.
The two 16-year-old victims were then subjected to an appalling ordeal in
which both were threatened and subjected to vile sex attacks.
The case is the latest featuring Asian sex attackers who preyed on vulnerable
young white girls. A damning report published recently revealed one in four men
accused of street grooming young girls for sex is Asian.
Politicians and police have repeatedly clashed over how best to tackle what
some suspect is a potentially incendiary hidden crime wave.
Jack Straw, former home secretary, has accused some Pakistani men in Britain
of seeing white girls as ‘easy meat’ for sexual abuse.
Knight, now aged 19, sobbed as she was convicted of conspiracy to rape at
Burnley Crown Court yesterday.
At the time she was in council care and had taken the victims to a
supermarket car park where they drank vodka and coke and smoked drugs in
December 2009.
One girl later said she was ‘feeling smashed’ and the other said that on a
scale of one to ten of drunkenness she rated a ten.
They were then taken to a dark and empty terraced house in Accrington,
Lancashire, with no electricity where one of the attackers once lived.
Knight threatened one girl and ordered her to perform a sex act on one man
before holding her back as the other girl screamed for help as she was raped
nearby.
As the screaming continued, she told the girl her friend would suffer even
more if she did not comply and said ‘she is chilling with my boys’.
The second girl was pulled into a number of rooms by the men who took turns
to rape her throughout the night. One man used a wardrobe to barricade her
inside.
Both girls were then raped again as one of the men, whose partner was due to
give birth at the time, drove them home to Blackburn. He threatened them with a
knife.
Guilty: From left, all pictured at a previous court appearance, Tanveer Butt,
Amjad Hussain and Shahid Hussain
Three men, brothers Amjad Hussain, 34, and Shahid Hussain, 37, and their
cousin father-of-four Tanveer Butt, 39, were all convicted of rape.
The victims had only known Knight for a week and had not met any of their
attackers before, the court heard.
Knight, who has been in care since the age of 11, first met Amjad Hussain
when he pulled up in his car beside her six months earlier and asked for her
number.
They went on to have a sexual relationship and Knight, who said she fell in
love with him, also performed sex acts on his brother and cousin.
Stephanie Knight lured the youngsters out to go clubbing, before the
teenagers were subjected to a horrific rape
Following the arrest of the defendants, one of the victims was asked by
police what she knew of Knight. She replied: ‘She hangs around with a load of
Asian lads.’
Knight had been left traumatised after witnessing a man being kicked to death
three months earlier.
Friends said Asian men would lavish her with attention, pay for her meals and
take her for rides in their cars.
One source said she was ‘plasticine in their hands’ and had been living on
the streets and sofas for six months before the rapes.
The Hussain brothers, who argued the sex was consensual, shouted that they
were innocent as they were led from the dock on their conviction.
Judge Beverley Lunt warned the men they will receive ‘long prison sentences’.
The report into street grooming was ordered after the ring-leaders of a Derby
gang, which subjected a string of vulnerable girls to sex attacks, were jailed
earlier this year.
Several police forces have investigations currently going on into gangs
suspected of abusing young girls.
It found 2,379 offenders are suspected of attempting to lure vulnerable
victims, often using drugs and alcohol, over the past three years.
A disproportionate 28 per cent of them were found to be Asian, in those cases
where ethnicity was recorded. The ethnic group makes up just 6 per cent of the
UK population.
Convicted: The trio protested their innocence but were found guilty of their
parts in the girls' horrific ordeal
In the Derby case, a gang of nine men cruised the streets of the town,
picking victims who they plied with vodka and cocaine before attacking them.
Children’s Minister Tim Loughton has suggested that closed Asian communities
have turned a blind eye to child sex grooming by gangs of men.
He said criminals had escaped detection because of attitudes within their
communities as well as political correctness and racial sensitivities of the
authorities.
Trapped: The girls were dragged into the rooms and raped
In January, Mr Straw urged the Pakistani community to think about the problem
of young men targeting vulnerable young white girls.
He said: ‘These young men are fizzing and popping with testosterone, they
want some outlet for that, but Pakistani-heritage girls are off limits and they
are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically.
‘So they seek other avenues and see these young women, white girls who are
vulnerable, some of them in care, who they think are easy meat.’
The Government will publish an action plan in the autumn, detailing how it
will respond to concerns about child sexual exploitation.
Amjad Hussain, of Accrington, Shahid Hussain, of Rochdale, and Butt, of
Rochdale, were all convicted of rape and other sexual offences. They and Knight
will all be sentenced at Preston Crown Court on September 2.
