"It was abuse, plain and simple.”
A court has heard that former Labour peer Nazir Ahmed repeatedly sexually abused two children when he was a teenager.
It was alleged that he had carried out serious sexual acts on others before he was 14.
Ahmed, previously known as Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, is on trial at Sheffield Crown Court where he has denied two counts of attempting to rape a girl under 16, indecent assault of a boy under 14 and raping a boy under 16.
The alleged incidents are said to have occurred in the early 1970s.
Ahmed is on trial alongside his brothers, Mohammed Farouq and Mohammed Tariq, who have both been charged with indecent assault of a boy under 14.
However, they were not fit to stand trial.
Tom Little QC, prosecuting, said that repeated sexual abuse took place over a number of years but the alleged victims “did not complain at the time”.
He said: “Those who were abused were too young to stop it and too young to do anything about it.
“Those that it happened to kept it buried away for many years – as is so often the case.
“This was not isolated or innocent sexual experimentation by children. It was abuse, plain and simple.”
The complainants went to the police in 2016.
The man used the internet to track down the woman. They spoke on the phone and the woman recorded the call.
He told her:
“All three of them abused me. I didn’t know about you. I’m sorry.”
Mr Little explained that the recording was evidence that the man went to the police independently of the woman.
He added: “If it was concocted in this way then it was a highly sophisticated ploy for which there is no evidence.”
When first interviewed by police in May 2016, Ahmed answered “no comment” to every question.
At a second interview in September 2016, he denied the allegations.
It was heard that Nazir Ahmed was also accused of abusing a young primary school-aged child when he was under 14. He has not been charged with doing so because the law at the time presumed that under-14s were not capable of sexual intercourse.
The law was changed in 1993 but Ahmed can only be prosecuted according to the law at the time.
On February 17, 2021, Ahmed dismissed the allegations as “malicious fiction”.
The Guardian reported that the trial continues and is expected to last three weeks.
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