Girl of 17 plied white teenagers with vodka then forced them into sex with gangs of Asian men

Stephanie Knight, then 17, told the pair they were going clubbing but instead plied them with vodka and drugs before forcing them to have sex with ‘her boys’.

After persuading them into her car she was heard to say ‘got them’ over her mobile phone as they travelled to a derelict house.

The two 16-year-old victims were then subjected to an appalling ordeal in which both were threatened and subjected to vile sex attacks.

The case is the latest featuring Asian sex attackers who preyed on vulnerable young white girls. A damning report published recently revealed one in four men accused of street grooming young girls for sex is Asian.

Politicians and police have repeatedly clashed over how best to tackle what some suspect is a potentially incendiary hidden crime wave.

Jack Straw, former home secretary, has accused some Pakistani men in Britain of seeing white girls as ‘easy meat’ for sexual abuse.

Knight, now aged 19, sobbed as she was convicted of conspiracy to rape at Burnley Crown Court yesterday.

At the time she was in council care and had taken the victims to a supermarket car park where they drank vodka and coke and smoked drugs in December 2009.

One girl later said she was ‘feeling smashed’ and the other said that on a scale of one to ten of drunkenness she rated a ten.

They were then taken to a dark and empty terraced house in Accrington, Lancashire, with no electricity where one of the attackers once lived.

Knight threatened one girl and ordered her to perform a sex act on one man before holding her back as the other girl screamed for help as she was raped nearby.

As the screaming continued, she told the girl her friend would suffer even more if she did not comply and said ‘she is chilling with my boys’.

The second girl was pulled into a number of rooms by the men who took turns to rape her throughout the night. One man used a wardrobe to barricade her inside.

Both girls were then raped again as one of the men, whose partner was due to give birth at the time, drove them home to Blackburn. He threatened them with a knife.

Three men, brothers Amjad Hussain, 34, and Shahid Hussain, 37, and their cousin father-of-four Tanveer Butt, 39, were all convicted of rape.

The victims had only known Knight for a week and had not met any of their attackers before, the court heard.

Knight, who has been in care since the age of 11, first met Amjad Hussain when he pulled up in his car beside her six months earlier and asked for her number.

They went on to have a sexual relationship and Knight, who said she fell in love with him, also performed sex acts on his brother and cousin.

Following the arrest of the defendants, one of  the victims was asked by police what she knew of Knight. She replied: ‘She hangs around with a load of Asian lads.’

Knight had been left traumatised after witnessing a man being kicked to death three months earlier. 

Friends said Asian men would lavish her with attention, pay for her meals and take her for rides in their cars.

One source said she was ‘plasticine in their hands’ and had been living on the streets and sofas for six months before the rapes.

The Hussain brothers, who argued the sex was consensual, shouted that they were innocent as they were led from the dock on their conviction.

Judge Beverley Lunt warned the men they will receive ‘long prison sentences’.

The report into street grooming was ordered after the ring-leaders of a Derby gang, which subjected a string of vulnerable girls to sex attacks, were jailed earlier this year. 

Several police forces have investigations currently going on into gangs suspected of abusing young girls.

It found 2,379 offenders are suspected of attempting to lure vulnerable victims, often using drugs and alcohol, over the past three years.

A disproportionate 28 per cent of them were found to be Asian, in those cases where ethnicity was recorded.


 The ethnic group makes up just 6 per cent of the UK population.

Convicted: The trio protested their innocence but were found guilty of their parts in the girls' horrific ordeal

In the Derby case, a gang of nine men cruised the streets of the town, picking victims who they plied with vodka and cocaine before attacking them.

Children’s Minister Tim Loughton has suggested that closed Asian communities have turned a blind eye to child sex grooming by gangs of men. 

He said criminals had escaped detection because of attitudes within their communities as well as political correctness and racial sensitivities of the authorities.

In January, Mr Straw urged the Pakistani community to think about the problem of young men targeting vulnerable young white girls.

He said: ‘These young men are fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani-heritage girls are off limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically.

‘So they seek other avenues and see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care, who they think are easy meat.’

The Government will publish an action plan in the autumn, detailing how it will respond to concerns about child sexual exploitation.

Amjad Hussain, of Accrington, Shahid Hussain, of Rochdale, and Butt, of Rochdale, were all convicted of rape and other sexual offences. They and Knight will all be sentenced at Preston Crown Court on September 2.


Teenager who lured girls into house to be raped by Asian gang is jailed for seven years