Brothers jailed for raping teenagers in Rotherham
Robert Evans, 40, who received the longer sentence, and his brother Mark Evans, 37, were about 21 and 18 years old respectively when they sexually abused teenagers as young as 13 in the South Yorkshire town over a two-year period, raping two of them, Sheffield Crown Court heard.
The pair were both found guilty of raping two girls and Mark Evans was convicted of a sexual offence against a third teenager.
Referring to one of Robert Evans's attacks on a 13-year-old girl, Judge David Dixon said he 'forcibly and viciously raped her' before laughing at her when she was clearly in pain.
The judge said this was 'difficult to comprehend'.
One of the girls who was attacked by Mark Evans when she was 13 said in a statement read to the court on Friday: 'They were predators. They didn't care about me.
'I was a commodity in their eyes, a sexual possession.'
One of the girls who was raped said in her statement read to the court that she still suffers from severe panic attacks and collapsed when she saw one of the brothers in Rotherham years after, never returning to the town centre.
Another of the women said in her statement that she had hoped to go to university but her life chances were taken away 'by these people who did these horrid things to me'.
The Evans brothers, who appeared for sentencing by videolink from prison, denied the offences but a jury convicted them of two counts of rape each after a two-week trial last year, with Mark Evans also found guilty of sexual activity with a child and assault by penetration.
The jury heard the brothers, who had a reputation for violence in Rotherham, intimidated the girls and plied them with drugs and alcohol before luring them to locations where they attacked them.
One of the girls, who was 13 at the time, was given alcohol by Mark Evans before she and some friends went with him to a disused barn. He separated her from the rest of the group and raped her.
The same victim was attacked by Robert Evans months later when he lured her to a house in Rotherham by lying that one of her friends would be there, plying her with alcohol en route, and raping her when they got there.
Judge Dixon said he accepted Mark Evans had a learning difficulty which meant he still had a 'mental age said to be that of an older child heading towards their teenage years'.
The pair were arrested by the National Crime Agency (NCA) as part of Operation Stovewood, which was set up in the wake of the landmark Jay Report which found in 2014 that at least 1,400 girls were abused by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani heritage in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
The NCA says Stovewood is the single largest law enforcement operation of its kind undertaken in the UK and has identified more than 1,100 children involved in the exploitation between 1997 and 2013 – almost all girls.
While the brothers were awaiting trial, NCA officers arrested and charged their sister, Ann Marie Evans, 29, of Barnsley, under the Sexual Offences Act, after she published social media posts identifying two of their victims.
She was convicted and sentenced last year.
Samantha Thompson, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'The Evans brothers targeted and groomed young girls including with alcohol and drugs, for child sexual abuse and rape.
'The lifelong physical and emotional trauma caused to victims by men like the Evans brothers cannot be understated. This type of conduct has equally damaged the community confidence of Rotherham.
'We would like to thank the victims in this case for coming forward and reporting this devastating crime. I hope this conviction sends a clear message that the CPS will continue to relentlessly pursue justice and prosecute those who sexually exploit children, whenever that abuse took place.'
NCA senior investigator Kim Boreham said: 'I would like to recognise the courage and strength of the three victims in this case.
'For almost 20 years these women have suffered the profound consequences of Mark and Robert Evans's crimes, while the two men continued their lives as normal.
'These brave women have been determined to receive justice and the National Crime Agency has matched their resolve, ensuring the Evans brothers have been held to account.'
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