A SPECIAL place in the depths of hell ought to be reserved for adults who target vulnerable youngsters and prey on them for their own sexual gratification.

They’re calculating, manipulative abusers and their appalling behaviour is harrowing for journalists to hear, so it doesn’t bear thinking about what it must be like for the victims and their families.

If the acts they’ve endured weren’t enough, they’re then left with no choice but to re-live their experiences for hours in interviews and days and weeks at trials, given the abusers hardly ever admit their crimes and subsequently force a trial.

Journalists are often tasked with covering harrowing court cases but you do slip into a degree of desensitisation when you’ve done it for a long time.

Murder trials and serious assaults – which would make most people squirm – pass reporters by simply because it’s our job to just get the facts and turn that into an article for the Friday’s newspaper.

However, cases involving kids are a different kettle of fish; since becoming a parent, everything – and I mean everything – makes you simply think of your own little ones and how you’d do anything to protect them from being hurt.

The Chronicle’s been at Sheffield Crown Court this week for the culmination of a trial involving two men, Bawan Hawre and Sharam Muhamadi.

They were both found guilty by a jury on Tuesday of a number of offences against seven Barnsley girls, who were aged between 12 and 16 at the time, and sentenced yesterday.

The investigation began in August 2024 after one of the victims bravely made a disclosure during routine safeguarding after being reported missing from home.

The girl disclosed she had been abused by a man she knew as being called ‘Karo’, and in contact with another man she knew as ‘Jack’.

After building a rapport with the victims, the multi-agency investigation team was able to establish that there were six additional victims, and through careful and dedicated work over a period of time, identified ‘Karo’ as 28-year-old Hawre and ‘Jack’ as 21-year-old Muhamadi.

During the trial, the jury heard the offenders – who used the fake names in every encounter with the girls – initially made contact via social media platform Snapchat, offering free e-cigarettes.

Arrangements were then made to meet in person, where the girls were transported between Barnsley and Doncaster where the pair lived and worked.

Six of the girls were given alcohol and drugs – a cocktail of cocaine and marijuana – before being raped by Hawre, with the prosecution saying the victims ‘were intimidated in various ways’ if they did not do what the defendants wanted.

In a closing speech, prosecutor Claire Holmes said Harwe had ‘a keen interest in sex with underage girls’ and described it as ‘an obsession’.

The jury was told that both men deliberately plied the girls with drink and drugs to allow them to commit these offences and it affected the girls by ‘numbing their senses so they had lower defences’. The girls would be trapped in a flat with no means to leave and Ms Holmes added, chillingly, that no-one was coming to help them if they screamed.

Hawre was found guilty of six counts of arranging or facilitating travel of another person with a view of exploitation, one count of rape of a girl under 13, four counts of rape of a girl aged 13, 14 and 15, two counts of an adult meeting a girl under 16 years of age following grooming, and two counts of false imprisonment.

Muhamadi was found guilty of two counts of arranging or facilitating travel of another person with a view of exploitation.

However Muhamadi – who was on bail while his mate was on remand – has failed to attend court since May 18 and an arrest warrant was finally issued.

You could sense South Yorkshire Police’s frustration with the court’s decision to implement now-lifted reporting restrictions in the case, which prohibited publications from printing the fact that Muhamadi had absconded and effectively gone missing for more than three weeks.

Last seen in Birmingham on May 18, his whereabouts remain unknown – horrendous for his victims and utterly astonishing from the judge who opted to grant his defence’s request.

All that that’s done is give Muhamadi more time to go to ground – baffling, idiotic and an affront to the victims, quite frankly.

Cases like this show just how vulnerable some youngsters are and how despicable men – who quite clearly identify their victims’ weaknesses for their own gain – deserve nothing but years upon years of jail time for their heinous actions.