Two Middle Eastern immigrants have appeared in court accused of being among a gang of six who subjected an 18-year-old girl to a three hour gang rape in a “dosshouse” in Kent, England. The girl told police that she only managed to escape by head-butting one of her captors and punching another.
The two defendants, a 17-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons, and 18-year-old Ahmed Ali Naeem, both of no fixed address, were accompanied in court by an Arabic translator as they speak no English. Naeem has admitted to having sex with the girl, but denies rape, the Daily Mail has reported.
Maidstone Crown Court heard that the girl had been out in Gillingham, Kent, on Halloween with family to celebrate her grandmother’s birthday, and had then decided to stay in town to play snooker with friends.
She bumped into an old primary school friend and the two met a group of around eight migrant men who offered them drinks at their local bedsit-style house.
The jury listened to a recording of the alleged victim’s police interview, in which she said: “I thought [my friend] knew them but when I got inside it was just full of foreign men.
“One of them forced me upstairs and had sex with me… he forced me to have sex. All of them were at the door. I was naked.
“I was being gang-raped. I was telling them that I did not want it… I wanted it to stop but they were getting more forceful.
“In the downstairs bedroom I thought there was a man who would help me but he raped me as well.
“I was trying to get out, but as I got to the front door there were ten of them standing by it. I tried to fight my way through them but another man grabbed my hand and pulled me to an upstairs bedroom.
“He raped me. I kept saying stop and he started to get more aggressive. I ran out of the bedroom. I head-butted one of them and punched one.
“I lost it as I went downstairs, I went mad and they still would not let me out. [My friend] got a man from over the road and he was talking to them to try to get me out.
“Even when I was walking up the road the boys were walking with me, begging me to come back in.”
She described the men’s lodgings as “like a foreigners’ dosshouse” split into bedsits. She said it had a distinctive smell of “men’s BO [body odour]”.
The two defendants were arrested the following day.
In an interview, Naeem has admitted to having sex with the girl for 25 minutes, but claimed that she begged him, saying “have sex with me, have sex with me.” Prosecutor Amanda Hamilton told the court “He said he did not want sex as he said it was against his religion to have sex outside of marriage.”
The 17-year-old has denied sex with the girl, saying the only contact he had with her was to ask her how she was in Arabic. He alleges that other men at the property told him the girl had agreed that they “could make love to her for payment.”
Two phones were confiscated from the boy, including an iPhone which was found to contain a number of short videos of the alleged victim.
Hamilton has told the jury that the girl was drinking, but they must decide whether the two defendants had sex with her, and if so, whether they could reasonably believe that she had consented. The trial is expected to last for five days.
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