Eight men have been on trial since Wednesday in Manchester, in the north of England, for having raped and transformed two teenage girls into “sex slaves”, in a trial with increased impact by recent controversies over the management of similar cases by the authorities. British.
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At the opening of the trial, the prosecutor accused the eight men, aged 39 to 66, of having between 2001 and 2006 in Rochdale, in the north of England, “exploited the vulnerabilities (of the two victims) to their own perverse sexual gratification, in the most humiliating and degrading way possible.
Revealed over the past fifteen years, several scandals of rape and sexual exploitation of young girls by groups of men, often from Pakistan as in this case, have shaken the United Kingdom, and more particularly the towns of Rotherham, Oldham and Rochdale.
On Wednesday, prosecutor Rossano Scamardella described how the two girls, aged 13 when their ordeal began, were forced to have sex “with several men on the same day”, “in dilapidated apartments, on mattresses moldy” or even “in cars, parking lots or disused warehouses”.
“They became sex slaves,” insisted the prosecutor at Minshull Street Crown Court.
In these cases of rape and sexual exploitation in England, some of which date back to the 1990s, the victims were largely from a disadvantaged social background and sometimes placed by social services.
The British authorities have been criticized for not having taken stock of this criminality.
-These criticisms have increased in intensity in recent weeks after billionaire Elon Musk took up the subject, criticizing the refusal of Keir Starmer’s Labor government to open a vast independent national investigation.
The executive finally announced the launch of local investigations into these old cases and a “rapid audit” of the current situation in the country.
These cases fuel the anti-migrant and anti-Muslim discourse of far-right personalities and movements.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the prosecutor indicated that the accused offered the victims alcohol, drugs, money and even food, in exchange for sexual relations with them “and other men of Rochdale.
The two teenagers were “well identified by social services” but “no report was sent to the police and nothing was done”, he lamented.
It was not until 2010 that one of the two victims was approached by the police. She initially refused to testify, before contacting the police again in 2015, soon followed by the second young girl.
All eight defendants have denied the charges against them.
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