Three teenage girls were exploited and used as ‘sexual commodities’ by a gang of Asian men, a court was told on Monday.
They were pressured by the four men in a seaside town into providing sexual services in exchange for cannabis and cocaine, it is alleged.
Mustafa Iqbal, 43, Ziaullah Badsha, 25, Mohamed Arshad, 36, and Jaswinder Singh, 65, face 28 charges between them, including accusations of trafficking for sexual exploitation, rape, supplying drugs and sexual assaults. They deny the charges.
Owen Edwards KC, prosecuting, told the jury that two girls, aged 14 and 15, were out walking late one night in Rhyl, north Wales, having smoked drugs. He said that both of them were ‘obvious targets for predatory older men’.
They were spotted by Iqbal, a drug dealer and takeaway driver who was riding an e-scooter, and he decided that they were ‘ripe for sexual exploitation’, Mr Edwards said. The girls began talking to Iqbal and went to his home, where he called friends Badsha and Arshad. The teenagers were plied with drink and cannabis before being sexually assaulted, the court heard.
‘They took the girls as sexual commodities,’ Mr Edwards said.
Singh arranged to take one of the girls to London, Caernarfon Crown Court heard.
He told the girl that she should pretend to his sister that she was his 22-year-old carer to avoid her concluding that he was part of an ‘Asian grooming gang’, the jury was told.
The police were contacted after a friend of the girl became concerned and the four men were arrested, the jury was told. Mr Edwards said they made ‘various denials’ and no charges were brought at that stage.
Mr Edwards said: ‘[Iqbal] routinely got his way by exploiting girls.’ Iqbal also treated a third girl, aged 16, who was a crack cocaine addict, as a ‘sex slave’, the court was told.
He had ‘easy access’ to drugs and ‘each of these girls were vulnerable, each treated by older men as a sexual object, each provided with drugs,’ Mr Edwards said. ‘In every case, the person gaining from the relationship was the man.’
He added: ‘They [the defendants] seemed proud of their exploits.’
A woman, Sarah Gray, 53, from Gronant, faces charges of conspiracy to supply cocaine and cannabis.
Gray is accused of allowing her house to be used by Iqbal for sexual exploitation and perverting justice by washing bedding following a rape, which involved handcuffs, of the 16-year-old girl.
Iqbal is also alleged to have breached a slavery trafficking risk order.
The trial continues.
