Man who raped 13-year-old schoolgirl and woman in her 20s is jailed

Man who raped 13-year-old schoolgirl and woman in her 20s is jailed

A man who r@ped a 13-year-old girl and another woman in Rotherham has been jailed for 20 years.

Father-of-three Riyasth Hussain, 45, r@ped the girl, who had been abused since the age of 11, between 2004 and 2008.

Now in her 30s, the woman told Hussain from the witness box at Sheffield Crown Court: ‘You didn’t just steal my childhood, you stole the rest of my life.’

She first met the r@pist when she was being verbally abused by a different man on a Rotherham street, and Hussain offered to help.

This took place between 2004 and 2006 when Hussain was around 24, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA).

On a separate occasion Hussain stopped his car next to the girl on the street and she got in. He drove her to an industrial estate, pulled her out of the car, and r@ped her.

Hussain r@ped the girl a second time in his car after driving her to a field.

He was also sentenced on Thursday for the r@pe of another woman in 2008, who was then in her 20s.

She had been staying in a friend’s home one night when a man she did not know entered her room and r@ped her.

The woman was able to remember what the man looked like and details of his car, from which officers identified Hussain.

He was sentenced to eight years in prison for this offence, to run concurrently with the consecutive eight- and 12-year jail sentences he received for raping the younger woman.

This means he will be in prison for a total of 20 years.

The younger woman said in court Hussain would r@pe her ‘at any opportunity’ and then ‘chuck me away like I was nothing’.

Looking at him as he sat in the dock, she said: ‘When you met me I was just a fragile, vulnerable little girl who you could easily abuse.

‘Today I’m a woman, and my only goal is justice. Today I got justice. I’m happy to take you down at last.’

The other woman said: ‘I cannot ever forgive this monster for what he’s done to me.’

In a statement read to the court she added: ‘I will hate him to the day I die. He has completely ruined my life.’

The woman said her ‘thoughts freeze whenever I think of his name’ in her victim impact statement, adding she tried ‘not to think of him at all but that never happens, he comes into my mind every day, this is out of my control’.

‘I can’t concentrate on my day or my thoughts and I am constantly distracted with the living nightmare of what he did to me,’ she said.

‘My mind takes me back to when he was controlling me and the horrible things he did to me. I feel so scared, even now.’

Judge Sarah Wright, sentencing, said she wanted to pay tribute to the women’s courage.

She told Hussain the younger woman was ‘passed on from one man to another’ to the extent that ‘she believed this sort of behaviour was normal and you exploited that’.

‘Their lives are ruined forever,’ the judge said.

‘The harm you have caused cannot and never will be repaired.’

For many years the judge said the women had ‘no voice’ but had ‘shown incalculable courage’ making sure their voices were now heard.

Hussain became the 50th person convicted under Operation Stovewood, the National Crime Agency’s largest-ever sexual abuse investigation.

The operation examined child sexual abuse in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

Officers contacted the younger woman after finding she may have been a victim, and she reported being r@ped by a man she knew as ‘Riaz’ but whose real name was Riyasth.

Police were able to identify the man as Hussain.

He was arrested by Operation Stovewood officers in 2019 and was found guilty of r@ping both victims on Tuesday.

NCA Senior Investigating Officer Alan Hastings said the survivors had ‘described with humbling eloquence and dignity the great suffering that they have experienced every day since Riyasth Hussain raped them’.

He continued: ‘Despite the profoundly traumatic impact of Hussain’s crimes, both women remained determined to support the investigation.

‘I want all victims of child sexual abuse to know that, when they are ready, there are support services and specially trained officers ready and waiting to help them.’

Liz Fell, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said Hussain had ‘preyed on two extremely vulnerable victims’ and had ‘exploited them for his own s£xual gratification’.

‘One of his victims was only 13 to 14-years-old during this offending,’ Ms Fell said.

‘She was living in the care system and had been gro0med and s£xually exploited by many other men when Hussain targeted her.’