Group of men who raped underage girls are jailed

ATTACKERS CONVICTED OF SERIES OF SEXUAL OFFENCES ON 6 GIRLS

- By ROB KENNEDY Court reporter

A GROUP of men who raped and sexually exploited underage teenage girls have been jailed for a total of 39 years.

The attackers, four from Romania and one from Albania, were convicted of a series of offences involving the sexual exploitation of six girls.

Codrin Dura, 27; Leonard Paun, 24; Bogdan Gugiuman, 44; Klaudio Aleksiu, 28 and Stefan Ciuraru, 23, many of whom were youths themselves at the time, carried out the offences between 2015 and 2019 against girls aged between 13 and 16, some of the offending happening in a Tyneside park.

During the trial earlier this year at Newcastle Crown Court, prosecutor Anne Richardson told the jury that the six girls involved were vulnerable, with one being reported missing at one stage.

She said some had "unhappy home lives" and were "dependant" on some of the defendants.

She said: "These are allegations of sexual exploitation of girls in the Gateshead area.

"Some of the girls were immature, vulnerable, and seeking to please as a way of gaining attention to themselves.

"These personality traits were exploited by some of the defendants to greater or lesser extents.

"Many of the complainants were given alcohol or cigarettes in exchange for sexual favours.

"It is easy to make assumptions based on their relative youth, but in due course, you may consider it's not always apparent to someone that what they are engaged in is in fact abusive."

Miss Richardson said that one girl was allegedly taken to a house, where she took drugs with one of the defendants.

During his offending, Dura was said to have had a sexually transmitted infection and had sex with one of the girls. He also blackmailed one girl by threatening to show her parents an intimate picture of her.