Romulad Stefan Houphouet and Absolom Sigiyo groomed and raped girls in Rotherham "who were vulnerable in the extreme" and have been jailed for 20 years and 18-and-a-half years respectively
Two men have been jailed for grooming and raping girls in Rotherham "who were vulnerable in the extreme".
Romulad Stefan Houphouet, 37, and Absolom Sigiyo, now 41, have been given sentences of 20 years and 18-and-a-half years respectively today. The pair were found guilty of multiple sexual offences on Monday after a court heard how two teenagers were regularly raped over months in Rotherham.
Sheffield Crown Court was told during a five-week trial how the girls were sexually assaulted several times a week over a period of six months in the South Yorkshire town by a gang of men who referred to them as “fresh meat”.
Judge Sarah Wright told Ivorian national Houphouet, of Burngreave in Sheffield, and Sigiyo, a Zimbabwean national, of Catcliffe in Rotherham, they inflicted “severe psychological harm” to the girls who are suffering to this day.
She also told the complainants, who watched the sentencing hearing on a video link, they had shown “bravery beyond measure” by reporting the abuse and telling the jury what happened to them when they were vulnerable girls living in a children’s home. She said they were “vulnerable in the extreme”.
The judge explained how both the girls were living in a children’s home at the time of the offending, were frequently reported missing and distrusted authority. She said they “did not come from a stable or protective background and so were extremely vulnerable to those who set out to exploit them”.
The teenagers were groomed by the defendants who plied them with alcohol and the judge said: “They had no sense of protecting themselves and I am quite sure you, Houphouet and in due course, Sigiyo targeted them because of it.” The judge said: “They were given alcohol and cigarettes and each of them was given attention and lured into a way of life that was highly damaging for them.
“Each of them was groomed. Each of you groomed. Grooming is not a term of art, but it suggests cynical and manipulative behaviour designed to achieve a particular sexual objective.” The judge continued: “The childhood and adolescence of each of these complainants can never be reclaimed.”
She said the defendants referring to the girls as “fresh meat” was “particularly degrading”. The judge told Houphouet: “On one occasion you forcibly and very violently raped (one of the teenagers) after she had had a sexual encounter with another man. You clearly regarded her as your property to do with as you liked.”
When the trial opened last month, prosecutor Gordon Stables told a jury that the complainants were befriended by the defendants “and also other associates” while living in a children’s home.
Mr Stables said these were “all older men in their twenties, or thereabouts, whose sole intention was to engage in penetrative sexual activity with them, knowing they were under the age of consent”. The prosecutor said: “The defendants gained the girls’ trust and confidence by plying them with alcohol and giving them cigarettes at house parties, and offering them flirtatious attention.”
He said: “Both girls became conditioned to having regular sexual intercourse with the same male.” Mr Stables said: “The clear pre-meditated intention was to ensure that the girls entered into and remained in a state of compliance so that they would surrender easily and offer no resistance to the sexual advances and activity that would inevitably follow.
“Psychologically, the girls were made to feel that sexual activity was how they repaid the debt they owed the defendants for the provision of alcohol and tobacco. Once the males were sexually satisfied, however, the girls were treated as having served their purpose – at least temporarily – and they were often then ignored and expected to make their own way home.
“In this way, (the girls) were sexually groomed within an environment of dependency.” He said the men referred to them as “fresh meat”. Mr Stables explained how Houphouet befriended the two girls in Rotherham town centre one evening more than 10 years ago and raped one of them in an alleyway that night.
He said Houphouet took both girls the short distance to a house in the town and introduced them to Sigiyo “and other males who were undoubtedly present”. It became clear from the outset that Houphouet had picked one of the girls “as his victim” and Sigiyo had chosen the other, Mr Stables told the jury.
The convictions are the latest following the National Crime Agency’s investigation into child sexual sexploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, which is called Operation Stovewood. It was set up in the wake of the landmark Jay Report which found in 2014 that at least 1,400 girls were abused by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani heritage in Rotherham between those dates.
