Two men guilty of rape & other sex offences against teeange girls in Rotherham grooming trial

Sheffield Crown Court was told during a five-week trial how the girls were sexually assaulted several times a week over a period of six months in the South Yorkshire town by a gang of men who referred to them as "fresh meat".

Prosecutors said the teenagers were "powerless to prevent the actions of older and more mature individuals determined to exploit them for sexual purposes".

On Monday, Romulad Stefan Houphouet, who is now 37, and Absolom Sigiyo, now 41, were found guilty of a number of offences including rape.

A third defendant, Jacek Brzozowski, now 35, was cleared of the one charge he was facing in the trial, of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, but he admitted a charge of penetrative sexual activity with a child earlier this year.

Houphouet, of Burngreave in Sheffield, and Sigiyo, of Catcliffe, in Rotherham, will be sentenced on Wednesday, Judge Sarah Wright said as she remanded both in custody.

Brzozowski, of Rawmarsh, Rotherham, was bailed and will be sentenced on April 14 .

When the trial opened last month, prosecutor Gordon Stables told a jury both the complainants were living in a children's home when they were befriended by the defendants "and also other associates".

Mr Stables said these were "all older men in their twenties, or thereabouts, whose sole intention was to engage in penetrative sexual activity with them, knowing they were under the age of consent".

The prosecutor said: "The defendants gained the girls' trust and confidence by plying them with alcohol and giving them cigarettes at house parties, and offering them flirtatious attention."

He said: "Both girls became conditioned to having regular sexual intercourse with the same male."

Mr Stables said: "The clear pre-meditated intention was to ensure that the girls entered into and remained in a state of compliance so that they would surrender easily and offer no resistance to the sexual advances and activity that would inevitably follow.

"Psychologically, the girls were made to feel that sexual activity was how they repaid the debt they owed the defendants for the provision of alcohol and tobacco.

"Once the males were sexually satisfied, however, the girls were treated as having served their purpose - at least temporarily - and they were often then ignored and expected to make their own way home.

"In this way, (the girls) were sexually groomed within an environment of dependency."

He said the men referred to them as "fresh meat".

Mr Stables explained how Houphouet befriended the two girls in Rotherham town centre one evening more than 10 years ago and raped one of them in an alleyway that night.

He said Houphouet took both girls the short distance to a house in the town and introduced them to Sigiyo "and other males who were undoubtedly present".

It became clear from the outset that Houphouet had picked one of the girls "as his victim" and Sigiyo had chosen the other, Mr Stables told the jury.

The convictions are the latest following the National Crime Agency's investigation into child sexual sexploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, which is called Operation Stovewood.

It was set up in the wake of the landmark Jay Report which found in 2014 that at least 1,400 girls were abused by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani heritage in Rotherham between those dates.

The NCA says Stovewood is the single largest law enforcement operation of its kind undertaken in the UK and has identified more than 1,100 children involved in the exploitation between 1997 and 2013 - almost all girls.

Previous estimates have put the cost of Operation Stovewood at about £90 million.