Alleged ringleader of grooming gang gave girl vodka and raped her, trial hears

A schoolgirl said she was drunk and “probably falling all over the place” when she had sex with the alleged ringleader of a Rochdale grooming gang, a court heard.

Prosecutors say Tahir Rashid, 54, plied his victim with vodka and then raped her in the upstairs bedroom of his house on a number of occasions.

A recording of a police interview with Girl C was played on Tuesday to jurors at Manchester Crown Court, in which she said she was aged 14 at the time and Rashid would have been in his 30s.

Asked about her then lifestyle, Girl C said: “I was drinking a lot, taking loads of drugs and meeting different guys and having sex with them, and just staying out for days.”

She said she began running away from home when she was aged 13 and would go missing for several nights after she met “lads on the street” and then would be taken to their houses.

Girl C told detectives she also met “loads of Asian lads”, aged in their early 20s, at a snooker hall in the town.

She said Rashid would pick her up in his BMW 7 Series car and had seen her in her school uniform.

She said: “He knew how old I was. I never said I was older. I didn’t lie to these people.

“I got drunk quite easily. I probably would have been falling all over the place.”

Another man, Sucklane Shah, had sex with her “10/15 times”, also knew her age and had met up in her school uniform, she told the police.

Girl C said: “I was seeing him for a few months. He knew my age and my name, and stuff like that. I would have told him.

“A lot of times I used to meet lads when I still had my school uniform on.”

She said she “stupidly” thought at the time she was in a relationship with Shah, who was married with children.

The Crown say Girl C and her friend, Girl A, were vulnerable teenage schoolgirls who were “easy prey” for the gang, who allegedly passed them around for sex and abused them “in the most humiliating and degrading way imaginable”.

Rashid, of Rochdale, denies raping Girl A and Girl C in 2005, and also denies the rape of another young girl, Girl B, in the late 1980s.

His co-defendants are charged with various sexual offences against Girl A and/or Girl C, said to have taken place on various dates between 2003 and 2006.

Mohammed Saleem, 46, of Rochdale; Shah, 46, of no fixed abode, and Itfaq Hussain, 45, of Shawforth, all deny rape.

Arshad Mohammed, 55, of Rochdale, has entered not guilty pleas to rape and assault by penetration, while Amjad Mahmood, 53, of Rochdale has pleaded not guilty to offences of rape, indecent assault, indecency with a child and assault by penetration.

The trial continues.