Child sex abuse trial: Police 'ignored' book detailing daughter's abuse

Crying in the witness box, the mother said she discovered in her daughter’s exercise book disturbing explicit details about what Asian men were forcing her to do. She said she took the book to a police station but it was just handed back to her.

The mother was a witness in the Rotherham child sexual exploitation trial which has resumed today after the Christmas break at Sheffield Crown Court.

The woman’s daughter is a complainant in the case and gave evidence in December when she told the jury she had been sexually and physically abused by Arshid Hussain, Qurban Ali and brothers Sajid and Majid Bostan, Shelley Davies and Karen MacGregor between 1990 and 2001.

The alleged offences, which include rape, buggery, false imprisonment and procuring a woman to become a common prostitute, were said to have begun in 1990 when the complainant was 11 and ended when she was around 20-years-old.

The alleged victim also said in her evidence she became pregnant and gave birth to a son after being raped by Hussain and Sajid Bostan at a pub.

Giving evidence today the mother said she noticed a change in her “happy” daughter when she began secondary school at age 11.

She said she started hanging out with older girls aged around 19, staying out late and going missing.

Ms Michelle Colborne QC, prosecuting, said: “When were you aware of her spending time with men?”

The mother answered: “I had an idea, this person used to come up the path and take her a few streets away.

“I never saw where she went.

I told police where she was.”

The mother said her daughter started to go missing a lot and she would ring social services and the police and ask for help.

She said: “I used to roam the streets looking for her, she was only about 11 or 12-years-old.”

The witness said she would ground her daughter but she would say: “I have to go out.”

The daughter had spells in three children’s homes and when she was 12-years-old took an overdose.

The mother said she asked her what had made her do this and added: “That’s when she told me about the Asian men.

“She said they were her friends these Asian men and that they were taking her out.

“They used to come and knock on the door and I used to tell them to ‘keep away' because she was only a child.

”

The problems escalated, the woman said, and she continued to go missing.

“I phoned the police, but to tell you the truth they were not interested. I know I was phoning on a weekly basis but I was concerned about her safety and I was worried about her.

“I used to phone social services because when she came out of social services they told me if I had any problems, any concerns, that I would only have to get in touch and they would help me.

“I used to phone them up and ask for help, and I never ever got any help whatsoever.”

She added the police and social services were taking no notice and she might as well have been ‘talking to the wall’.

The mother said Asian men would wait at the end of her street for her daughter and she would beg her not to leave the house.

When she would return home from being missing she looked scruffy and in need of a wash, the mother said.

“I didn’t know what she was doing, all she told me was she kept going to these different rooms.”

The mother said an older girl called Shelley used to come to the end of their path to collect her daughter and she would tell her to leave her daughter alone.

“As soon as she saw her come she would be on edge and say ‘I have got to go out’, and I would say ‘no you have not’.

”

The mother said she found an exercise book hidden in her daughter’s bedroom that detailed sexually explicit things older Asian men were doing to her.

“I could not believe it when I read it, I could not believe what she had written, it took a long time for it to sink in.

“I was that shocked I took it to the police and I told them to look at it, but they just gave it me back.

“I took it to social services, to the home (children’s home where she was staying) and I said ‘read this, this is what’s happening to her’, and they looked at it and never documented it, it should have been put into her care plan.

“They never documented it, never did nothing, just gave it me back.

“I kept it for a couple of years, might have been longer, and I thought ‘it’s not going to go nowhere this’.”

The mother said she eventually burnt the book.

When the complainant was 20 she became pregnant but the mother told the court she did not discover at the time who the father was.

Her daughter then began living in the house opposite her with the child and one evening she noticed a “big Asian man” in the living room standing over her daughter and pointing at her.

Concerned, the mother went to the house and asked who the man was, told him to leave and received a “mouthful (of abuse) back”.

“I told him I would phone police, then he just barged out of the way and left, I asked who he was and she said his name was Saj.”

The woman said she eventually became her grandson’s full time guardian as she was unable to look after the child properly.

The trial continues.

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