Four men guilty of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in Telford

Four men have been found guilty of sexually assaulting a young girl in Telford after shocking details of her abuse emerged.

The victim told a jury she was forced into sexual acts in a cemetery, raped on a dirty mattress above a store and violently abused when she tried to refuse her advances.

Opening the case at the start of the trial, Michelle Heeley QC said the victim had been “passed around like a piece of meat for the sexual gratification of several young men, some of whom were in the dock”.

A total of five men stood trial at Birmingham Crown Court.

The offenses are all said to have taken place between 2000 and 2003 in the Telford area of ​​the West Midlands in Shropshire and began when the now adult girl was just 12 years old.

Mohammed Ali Sultan, 33, formerly of Telford, was convicted of rape and three counts of assault.

The victim’s mother told the court how the abuse began when her husband died.

She said her daughter had confided in her that she had been raped – but later withdrew her complaint and said she had made it all up.

However, years later she contacted police after seeing two of the defendants in media reports about a sex ring in Telford.

The jury heard at the trial that Sultan had previously been convicted of “similar offenses against young girls” in 2012 and 2015.

Co-accused Mohammad Rizwan, 37, of Mafeking Road, Telford, was found guilty of two counts of assault.

Rizwan claimed there was a consensual sexual relationship with the victim when she was 17 years old.

Amjad Hussain, 38, of Acacia Drive, Leegomery, Telford, was convicted of a single count of indecent assault on Tuesday and acquitted of a similar, separate offense on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, the jury found 35-year-old Shafiq Younas, of Regent Street, Wellington, guilty of indecently assaulting the victim in a cemetery.

The jury acquitted a fifth man, Nazam Akhtar, 35, of Victoria Avenue, Wellington, of raping the girl in the back of a car.