Rotherham trial: Police officer ‘failed to act on report of girl’s abuse’

A girl allegedly repeatedly sexually abused and violently beaten from the age of 11 tried to report what was happening to her to police and children’s home staff - but nothing was ever done, a court heard.
Majid Bostan arrives at Sheffield Crown Court on December 9.Majid Bostan arrives at Sheffield Crown Court on December 9.
Majid Bostan arrives at Sheffield Crown Court on December 9.

The now 36-year-old woman told Sheffield Crown Court a complaint has been made about the officer she passed allegations to but who apparently failed to act upon them.

When asked under cross-examination if she had mentioned to the police what was happening to her at the hands of an alleged child grooming ring, the woman known as Girl B for the purposes of the trial said: “I tried on one occasion and he said he would come back and get in touch with me.”

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She said the officer had never got back to her and she had not pursued the allegations with anyone else.

“There is a complaint going in about him at the moment,” she said.

“If he didn’t want to come back to me and didn’t want to take it any further, who else would?”

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She named the officer in question as a man called Kenneth Dawes.

She also said staff at a children’s home where she lived had been told what was going on, but said she was to blame.

Tahir Khan QC, representing Arshid Hussain, said: “You are now saying this man [Hussain] was repeatedly abusing you, raping you and being violent to you. Did you tell the staff anything like that?”

The woman told a jury: “When I tried telling them, they just thought I was making an excuse for running away at the time.”

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She said when she was first made to have sex with Hussain at the age of 11, she tried to tell her mother about what had happened.

The woman said: “I was just trying to tell her I were having to do things that I didn’t want to do.”

But she said her and her mother did not have a good relationship.

Elaine Stapleton, representing Majid Bostan, asked why the woman had not mentioned any other allegations against her client and others he was said to have been involved with when she made a separate allegation of a sexual nature against someone else in 1995.

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The complainant said: “I had no faith after Ken Dawes. After that I just didn’t go back.

“All I can say is once I told that officer, I told him - nothing happened. I told my mum - nothing happened. I told the care home - nothing happened. Why would I tell anybody else if all I’m going to be called is a promiscuous girl?”

Miss Stapleton said her client denies that the complainant was forced to perform a sex act on him at the tennis courts at Clifton Park.

The woman said the incident had happened as she remembered it.

Five men and two women deny more than 50 charges related to child sexual exploitation offences.

The trial continues.