Seven members of a grooming gang in northern England were jailed Wednesday for between 12 and 35 years, the latest sentences stemming from a decades-spanning scandal across several cities.
The men, all of South Asian descent, groomed at least two vulnerable white teenage girls in Rochdale, a town near Manchester, and then treated them as "sex slaves", over a five-year period starting in 2001, the court heard.
A jury hearing their four-month trial in Manchester found all seven guilty in June of rape and dozens of other offences, after both victims gave evidence in court.
Jurors heard the victims were forced to have sex "with multiple men on the same day, in filthy flats and on rancid mattresses".
"They were passed around for sex -- abused, humiliated, degraded and then discarded," judge Jonathan Seely said on passing sentence.
It is the latest in a string of so-called grooming gang cases that prompted the government in June to order a public inquiry, after years of calls for a wider probe.
Numerous official reports, including a landmark review by parliamentarian Louise Casey, have found men of mostly South Asian origin were suspected of having sexually abused thousands of mostly white, working-class girls over several decades.
Far-right British figures, including far-right activist Tommy Robinson, are among those to have seized upon the issue as a rallying cry against multiculturalism and immigration.
It received international attention earlier this year when US tech billionaire Elon Musk launched incendiary attacks on his X platform against the UK government after it resisted calls for a national inquiry.
The men sentenced Wednesday were prosecuted as part of Operation Lytton, an investigation launched in 2015 into historical child sexual exploitation in Rochdale.
Handing down the jail terms, judge Seely said the two victims "were highly vulnerable, both had deeply troubled backgrounds and were known to the authorities".
"They were highly susceptible to the advances of these men and others, and both were sexually abused by numerous other men," he said.
"Both were seriously let down by those whose job it was to protect them."
Police probes into child sexual exploitation in Rochdale have so far led to the conviction of 32 offenders, including the seven sentenced Wednesday, who have collectively been jailed for more than 450 years, according to police.
