Rotherham abuse trial: Arshid Hussain accepts having child with girl, 15

The key defendant in the Rotherham child abuse trial has accepted he had a child with a 15-year-old girl.
Arshid HussainArshid Hussain
Arshid Hussain

Arshid Hussain’s barrister Stephen Uttley said there is ‘no issue’ that he had a sexual relationship with one of the 12 complainants in the trial, known as Girl J.

As he cross-examined the now 30-year-old woman at Sheffield Crown Court, Mr Uttley said his client accepts that a child born when the woman was 15 is his.

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The jury had previously been told Hussain, who is 40, had made child maintenance payments.

The woman alleges Hussain started a sexual relationship with her when she was 14 and got her pregnant twice - encouraging her to have an abortion on the first occasion when she was 14.

Cross-examining, Mr Uttley said Hussain says he first met the teenage girl in a nightclub when she told him she was 18.

The woman said this was not the case and she had told him she was 14 years old shortly after meeting him on playing fields where she was spending time with friends.

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She said she had initially told Hussain she was 16 on the advice of a friend but told him she was 14 before any sexual activity took place between them.

“I were 14 and didn’t even look 14, I looked 12,” she said.

She said Hussain ‘knew exactly how I old were’ and used to pick her up from school.

The woman said she believed she loved Hussain.

“At first he were really nice,” she said.

“He spent hours talking to me, always paying me compliments and made me feel good about myself.

“When I met Ash, I had never met anyone like that before. But then it did get violent.”

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She said Hussain had made a number of threats to kill her during the relationship.

Under questioning from Mr Uttley, the woman accepted she had lied to her family and the police about her relationship with Hussain at the time.

She said she had done it to ‘protect’ him as he had told her he could be spent to prison because of their relationship.

The woman said she frequently went missing from home to be with Hussain and said he got her involved in criminal activity, including drug dealing and burglaries.

She said Hussain had took her on ‘armed robberies’.

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Under questioning, the woman accepted she had a ‘fiery temper’ at the time.

“I did, especially when Ash started beating me and stuff. The more bad things he did to me, the more I would respond to it,” she said.

“I would always try to hit him back, I would never win but I tried.”

Mr Uttley asked if the woman accepted she was an ‘equal’ in the relationship.

She said this was not the case.

“He was an adult and I was a child,” she said.

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The woman said her contact with Hussain came to an end when he was sent to prison after ‘he stabbed someone 12 times with a screwdriver’.

The court heard the woman had been involved in an incident where she had sprayed CS gas in another teenage girl’s face.

She told the court Hussain had given her the CS spray, suggested she used it and thought ‘it were right funny’ when he watched the attack happen.

The woman accepted she had been given a caution for possessing an offensive weapon in 2000 when she was caught with a truncheon which she said Hussain had given to her.

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She also accepted going to court for a fight with another girl which Mr Uttley said records showed had involved her punching the other person in the face ‘six to seven times’.

The woman said her actions were a result of her relationship with Hussain.

She said: “When Ash was being violent towards me, I know it were wrong but that was my way of releasing that.

“I had fights with my family, my friends, girls I had never even met or known before.

“My behaviour were completely out of control.”

The trial of Hussain and six other defendants accused of historic child sexual exploitation crimes continues.

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