Rotherham abuse trial: Dad had fight with Arshid Hussain over contact with 14-year-old daughter

The man told Sheffield Crown Court he had gone to the family home of defendant Arshid Hussain to confront him.

He told a jury that Hussain’s family initially claimed he was not home before the defendant rushed out of the house and attacked him.

The man, the father of Girl J - one of 12 complainants involved in a trial of five men and two women accused of historic child sexual exploitation crimes, said he had made a number of attempts to stop his daughter’s contact with Hussain.

He said problems had first started when his daughter was 14 and didn’t return home in time for her normal curfew.

The man said he went out with police to find her and she eventually discovered by other officers with Arshid Hussain.

He said his daughter started running away from home.

“It got to the stage where we couldn’t do anything with her,” he said.

He said he started going to work late to drop her off at school - not realising she would ‘go straight through school’ to another location where Hussain would be waiting to pick her up.

The man said he once heard a ringing mobile phone under her bed.

“I answered it and it were him, it were Ash. I told him to meet me somewhere because I wanted to sort it out,” he said.

“He said ‘I’m not going anywhere because you will just turn up with all your mates’.”

Asked why he wanted to meet Hussain, the man said: “He were a 27-year-old married man seeing a 14-year-old lass. I just wanted to see him in a car park and he wouldn’t come.”

He said they later had a face-to-face confrontation after he decided to go the home of Hussain in Masbrough.

“When I got there, his father, his brothers, quite a few others were all there waiting,” he said.

“I said I have come to speak to Ash. His car was on the drive. I knocked on the door but there were no answer,” he said.

“His dad said ‘Why didn’t you come and see me, we could have sorted it out’. I said ‘What’s the point, what you going to do, ground him?’

“Ash came charging out the house and we ended up fighting on the front garden.”

The man said his lip was split, his shirt ripped and he lost a gold chain in the confrontation before others stepped in to stop the fight.

He said on another occasion he had chased Hussain in his car after hearing his daughter was in the vehicle with him.

The man said when he eventually caught up with Hussain, he had already dropped his daughter off elsewhere.

“I said keep away from her. It didn’t get to blows but I warned him again to keep away.”

He said Hussain used to climb into his daughter’s room by getting on to the roof of their house.

Evidence was also given to the court by the alleged victim’s sister, who said Hussain had ‘ripped apart’ their family.

She said: “My dad used to drive round every night, go to hotels giving her picture out, saying ‘Had they seen her?’

“He used to do it until the early hours while my mum were in bed crying. It was every night for two years.”

She said on one occasion she spoke on the phone to Hussain’s brother Basharat about her sister going missing.

“I said if she weren’t home in the next hour I was ringing the police and reporting Ash for kidnapping and rape. He said I was a little white slag.

“I said if she is not home in 10 minutes he is going to be done for rape. She was home in 10 minutes.”

The woman said Hussain controlled her sister’s actions at the time.

“It were like a spell. I have never seen anything like it before.”

She said her sister had fallen pregnant when she was 14 and initially wanted to keep the baby but had been persuaded to have an abortion.

The woman said: “She went out with Ash and came back and said she had to get an abortion.”

The alleged victim fell pregnant again when she was 15 and had a child, which Hussain accepts is his.

The woman said threats were made towards her and her mother via her sister.

“They had told her we would get tortured, kidnapped and raped or burn down the house,” she said.

Hussain denies six offences in relation to Girl J - one count of rape, three indecent assaults and two counts of abduction.

The trial continues.