Suffolk rapists who groomed teenage girls, branding them ‘fresh meat’ jailed for total of nearly 40 years
Two rapists who groomed and abused young girls in Rotherham, branding them “fresh meat” have been jailed for a combined 40 years.
Ivorian national Romulad Stefan Houphouet, 37, and Zimbabwean Absolom Sigiyo, 41 targeted girls who were “vulnerable in the extreme” in a campaign of abuse that lasted six months.
Following a five-week trial at Sheffield Crown Court, both men were found guilty of assaulting the young girls several times over the six-month period, inflicting “severe psychological harm” to the girls who are suffering to this day.
Houphouet was jailed for 20 years and Sigiyo for 18 years and six months.
A third defendant, Polish national Jacek Brzozowski, 35, was cleared of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity but admitted to penetrative sexual activity with a child.
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Judge Sarah Wright told the defendants their victims continue to suffer to this day.
Judge Wright 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 added they were “vulnerable in the extreme”.
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 then took both girls a 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, the court was told last month.
When the trial opened last month, prosecutor Gordon Stables told a jury both the complainants were living in a children’s home when they were befriended by the defendants “and also other associates”.
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.
Sigiyo has been jailed for 18 years and six months.
“In this way, (the girls) were sexually groomed within an environment of dependency.”
He said the men referred to them as “fresh meat”.
Senior investigating officer Kath Blain said: “This is one of the most harrowing cases I have investigated. Sigiyo and Houphouet lured two vulnerable girls to parties where they kept the children intoxicated so they could abuse them in the worst ways.
“Brzozwski contributed to their suffering, including by having sex with one of the girls who he knew was a child and vulnerable.
“The victims have shown extraordinary bravery in reporting their abuse.
“What happened to them can never be undone, but I hope the verdicts today will at least give them a sense that their abusers have been held to account and justice has been done.
“The National Crime Agency continues to pursue justice for numerous other people who we have identified were abused as children. I really encourage anyone who was abused as a child to report it to the police.”
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