‘I was raped by 40 men after my best friend pimped me out when I was 13’

A mum-of-two was passed around a group of paedophiles and raped by more than 40 men after her ‘best friend’ forced her into a Sheffield sex ring, she has revealed. Samantha Owens, now 25, has waived her right to anonymity to speak out about the horrendous sexual abuse she suffered from the age of 13 in her book Pimped. She was one of a number of underage victims who were groomed and plied with alcohol, drugs, make-up and attention, then forced into sex.

Samantha was 13 when she met Amanda Spencer, then 16, in Sheffield and described her as her ‘best friend’, with Spencer buying her trainers, clothes and food and plying her with legal highs. She did not know that Spencer was actually acting as part of a gang that forced young girls into a child sex ring.

In her book, Samantha reveals how Spencer told her she could make her own money by letting men have sex with her. She was a virgin at the time. In her first sexual encounter, Samantha said she was brought to a house where five men were waiting and she was raped three times before being collected by Spencer in the morning. She told The Sun UK last year: ‘My heart was hammering in my chest, tears streaming down my cheeks as he raped me.’ The abuse continued up until Samantha turned 18, when she was sent to a Youth Detention Centre for stealing and told another girl what had happened.

‘It was in that moment that I realised Amanda was no friend of mine,’ Samantha said. ‘I was just a kid, and what she did was sick, twisted and wrong. Eventually I opened up to a youth worker and then the police.’

After a two year investigation, Spencer was jailed for 12 years in 2014, after being found guilty of 14 counts of arranging or facilitating child prostitution and two counts of inciting child prostitution. In 2017, three more years were added to her sentence when she was found guilty of arranging or facilitating child prostitution between 2005 and 2012.

A total of five other men were found guilty of multiple sex offences including rape, sexual assault against a child under 13 and conspiracy to arrange child prostitution and theft in relation to Spencer’s case. Brothers Christopher, 23, Matthew, 25 and Shane Whiteley, 30, were all jailed. Taleb Bapir, 39, was also found guilty of four counts of arranging child prostitution and rape. Ian Foster, 68, was jailed for 14 years in 2014 after he was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault. He had previously been found guilty of 12 child sex offences, at a separate trial.

Peter Mann, from the CPS, said: ‘These defendants cynically targeted and sexually exploited young and vulnerable girls. ‘The suffering the victims must have endured is hard to comprehend.’ With her abusers in jail, Samantha decided to speak out about her abuse as a ‘stark warning to those who believe child sexual abuse follows any set pattern’. Her book Pimped is available to buy on Amazon.