THREE Coventry men are facing jail after forcing a 14-year-old girl into prostitution.
Jake Cairns, Brandon Sharples and Jack McInally were found guilty at Warwick Crown Court of facilitating the sexual exploitation of a child.
The jury heard they plied the teenager with drugs and held her at an address in Somerset Road, Coventry, for five days, while advertising her as an 18-year-old on an escort site.
Cairns, of Cheveral Avenue, was also found guilty of arranging child sexual exploitation and taking and distributing indecent images of a child.
The 21 year-old also took explicit photos of her and posted them on adult contact site Viva Street.
The court was told she was made to have sex with around 20 ‘clients’ before West Midlands Police rescued her in June 2015.
Police launched a missing person inquiry after the girl disappeared from a relative’s home in Coventry five days earlier.
Information led them to a property in Somerset Road where they found the teenager, dressed only in her underwear, trying to climb out of a first floor bathroom window to escape her captors.
Officers forced open the front door and arrested Cairns, 20-year-old Sharples, and 21-year-old McInally on suspicion of child abduction.
Detectives found an email address linked to Cairns had been used to create the Viva Street advert.
The girl’s face was not visible but one photo featured a distinctive necklace belonging to the victim which police recovered.
And DNA discovered on a duvet in a room, where she was forced to entertain clients, was shown to have come from five different sources, including Cairns.
Cairns, Sharples of Wyley Road in Radford, McInally of no fixed address, were remanded in custody ahead of being sentenced in January.
Det Con Jon Barker, who led the investigation, said: “These three men were involved with the shocking exploitation of a young girl – they took advantage of her drug dependency and made money out of forcing her to have sex with strangers.
“Cairns initially denied knowing the girl but later changed his story after he was identified during an ID procedure – and our financial enquiries showed he’d paid for the Viva Street advert via his own bank account.
“Now that a jury has found them guilty they can expect to be handed long jail terms.”
