THE troubled and desperate child who fell prey to "terrible and heartless" sexual exploitation by all 12 men in Keighley was deeply unhappy at home and friendless at school.

The men were all jailed at Bradford Crown Court today.

Brought up in the town, the girl was doing well at her studies and hoping to become a nurse until her parents divorced and her mother remarried.

Aged 12, her life spiralled into unhappiness and confusion. Her mother and stepfather went on holiday abroad without her and she became disengaged from her extended family.

She suffered from enuresis, a medical condition that meant she wet herself. She often smelt of stale urine at school and it was difficult for her to make friends. Her teachers asked her mother to provide her with spare clean clothes but that never happened.

When she was 13, the girl began truanting and staying out all night. She went missing from home 71 times and was referred to the Social Services Department.

She was constantly on her phone and she climbed out of her bedroom window to escape.

Her teachers became concerned that she was being groomed and abused but she could not see the danger she was putting herself in, and was unable to take the help and guidance available.

The police spoke to her when she came in one night after midnight. They asked her if she was spending time with Asian males, but she denied it. Officers warned her about accepting presents for sexual favours.

By then, the girl had fallen into the clutches of Arif Choudhury, an older schoolboy who was already dealing in drugs. In her lonely and disturbed state, she might have found him attractive and exciting. She began selling drugs for him, not for money but to curry favour and because she was lonely and desperate to liked and accepted.

When she told him she wanted to stop peddling drugs for him, Choudhury raped her in the grounds of a local church, taking her virginity and bending her even more to his will. He called her "a little white slag" and began actively providing her to others for sex, often collectively, and nearly always under actual or threatened violence if she did not submit. He would force her to her knees and hold her head while she was orally raped.

The girl said Choudhury would "go into flip mode," beating and slapping her, breaking her rib, and dragging her by the hair to be abused. He threatened to kick her head in and to burn down her home using petrol.

Responsible adults dealing with her at the time, described her as emotionless and unable to open up. She made some reference to being been assaulted and forced to do things she did not want to do. Her self esteem was very low and she lied to cover up the desperate plight she was in.

Her abusers labelled her a slut and a slag, shouting at her in the street, and laughing and pointing.

She was called smelly and mucky on Facebook and one defendant, Sufyan Ziarab, told the police: "She's prostitute you don't pay for. She groomed herself."

Ziarab, now 23, Yasser Kabir, now 25, Bilal Ziarab, now 21, and Tauqueer Hussain, now 23, all raped the girl in the underground car park of the former police station in Keighley.

The girl told the police it was horrible being raped but: "I had got used to it by then."

In June, 2012, she was taken into care and moved out of the area.

Choudhury left the country after serving a custodial sentence for supplying Class A drugs.

He is still at large and believed to be in Bangladesh.

Judge Thomas said: "But for him being abroad, he would have been prosecuted in these proceedings and he was the principal link between (the girl) and virtually all the defendants in this case."