Rotherham abuse trial: Children's charity boss denies pimping vulnerable girls for sex

Karen MacGregor was asked by her barrister Robert Wyn-Jones to her response to ‘the suggestion in this case that you have been pimping girls from children’s homes over the years’.

She said: “There is no truth in that whatsoever. There is no truth that I have pimped girls.

“Never ever have I pimped girls in my life. I have daughters of my own.”

MacGregor, 58, of Barnsley Road, Wath, denies offences in relation to two complainants.

She is charged with one count of conspiracy to procure a woman under 21 to become a common prostitute, false imprisonment and two counts of conspiracy to rape.

MacGregor, who founded the KinKids charity which campaigns for the rights of relatives raising children who can no longer live with their parents, accepted that one of complainants against her had lived with her.

The now 43-year-old woman, known as Girl A, has given evidence that MacGregor had helped carry her upstairs while she was drunk and when she woke up she was being sexually assaulted by an Asian man.

MacGregor, who worked for a number of taxi firms in Rotherham, said the incident had never happened.

She told the jury she could not remember ever meeting Girl B, who has alleged she also lived with MacGregor as a teenager and said she was made to have sex with men in exchange for heroin.

Mr Wyn-Jones said one children’s home record from 1995 suggested she had visited Girl B and staff had found her in the girl’s room with ‘an Asian man at the window’.

MacGregor said she had ‘no memory’ of the incident but sometimes used to ‘help’ people.

“Perhaps somebody needed help,” she said.

She said if she had been present and there had been an Asian man at the window, it may have been her boyfriend at the time as he was ‘very controlling’ of her movements.

Louise Sweet, representing co-defendant 40-year-old Shelley Davies, asked if MacGregor felt the girls she looked after from children’s homes and homeless hostels ‘were particularly vulnerable’.

MacGregor said: “I would think anybody who doesn’t live with their parents is particularly vulnerable.

“I felt they needed looking after. We are talking about basic things like having a Sunday dinner, having family time.”

She added she was unhappy to have been accused by people she considers to have helped.

“You have helped someone and someone has turned it around in a nasty little way and made it horrible,” she said.

Ms Sweet suggested Shelley Davies, who also lived with MacGregor when she was a teenager and is accused of participating in the abuse of Girl B, was also encouraged to have sex with men.

MacGregor said: “No, there is no way.”

The trial continues.