Christopher Oates denies seven charges relating to two alleged victims
An alleged victim of a man accused of being a ‘pimp’ told police he held a gun to her head and said ‘you do as I say… you’re mine’, jurors have heard.
Christopher Oates, 44, from Stockport, is on trial at Manchester Crown Court, charged with seven counts – including sexual activity with a child; and inciting child prostitution.
The allegations, jurors have heard, relate to two ‘vulnerable’ then teenage girls. The court previously heard Mr Oates ‘used drugs, coercion and violence to sexually exploit and pimp’ them.
“Neither child would have had the inclination, the wherewithal, would have known where to start, selling themselves, without his introduction to the sordid underbelly of the city, his encouragement and direction disguising his cruel and predatory ulterior motives,” prosecutor Gwen Henshaw has told jurors.
“In short, he was their ‘pimp’. No doubt their youth made them a profitable commodity for him, one that he was keen to maintain. Jurors have heard one of them was homeless before living in care.
She was ‘besotted’ with the defendant as she thought he was her ‘boyfriend’, the court was told. The second girl was doing bar work and hanging at in bars despite being underage, jurors were told.
The two alleged victims are now adults. They cannot be named for legal reasons. Both, jurors have been told, had ‘difficult childhoods’.
Ms Henshaw previously told the court: “Christopher Oates identified their vulnerability. He took the opportunity to use them for his own purposes. He wooed them, charmed them, gave them cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine and introduced them to Manchester’s red-light district where they joined the desperate women selling themselves on street corners.”
On day two of the trial, jurors were shown a video interview with the first alleged victim. In the footage, recorded in 2021, she said she began truanting from school, drinking and smoking from a young age.
She said she ended up ‘sleeping with older lads’ and going to clubs in Stockport before going into Manchester with a friend from school. She she met the defendant in a bar.
Speaking of the ‘relationship’, she said during the interview: “He would pick me up and we would go to bars. He would give me money and a phone and then force me to prostitute.
“I very quickly realised he was doing it with other girls and he was their pimp too. I saw them on drugs like heroin and crack and I thought ‘the second I’m on that, I’m done’.”
Jurors heard her speaking of a day they went into Manchester, heading towards a red light district. She said she started to cry, jurors heard, and said she ‘didn’t want to’.
“He dragged me down the side of Spar, punched me, slapped me and pulled a gun from his coat pocket and held it to my head and said ‘you do as I say… you’re mine’.
“He then told me to ‘go to my spot’ and walked off.” In the video, she then said she called her mum.
She said she had watched the TV series Three Girls, depicting the stories of victims of grooming and sex trafficking in Rochdale, the court heard. It was the ‘first time she had seen a similar story to her’, the jury heard her say.
“For years I thought I was a prostitute, a tearaway, but I watched that and I looked at it as a mum, not a child,” she said in the video. “I looked at it through a mother’s eyes and it just turned my entire world upside down.”
The alleged victim was asked ‘who was Chris’ in the footage. The jury heard her say she thought he was her boyfriend. She said he was a lot older than her and said he told her she was pretty, bought her a drink and was ‘flash’ with money.
She also said, the jury heard, that when she was with another man, he told her he would ‘stand there and take [notes] of the registration plates because ‘I’m a good boss’.
“Now I see he was checking how many people were giving money,” she said in the video. “He would then take the money and he would give me £20 or £30 and said I could go and get a drink or something.”
She said sex workers were ‘really nice to her’, adding: “They’d ask ‘how old are you? You’re tiny. You’re just a kid’. A few said to ‘get away’ from him [Oates] and that ‘he’s not your boyfriend’. They said he gave them money too and said ‘you will end up on heroin like us’. I didn’t want to go down that path, I was scared.”
The woman, jurors heard, said she told the authorities, but ‘nothing happened’, adding: “I was a f*****g kid screaming for help. I was made to believe I was naughty, [because] I kept running away and absconding. I never felt like anyone took it seriously. I was made to feel like a terrible person.
“I told the police and they said it was a problem for the social services. I told the social services and they said it was a problem for my mum, and there was me stuck in the middle saying ‘this is what’s going on, do something’.”
Mr Oates, of no fixed address, denies seven charges. In relation to the first alleged victim, he is accused of three counts of sexual activity with a child under 16; causing or inciting child prostitution or pornography; and possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, all alleged to have been committed in connection with one child.
In relation to the second alleged victim, he is charged with causing or inciting child prostitution or pornography; and an alternative count of causing or inciting prostitution for gain. All the alleged offences are said to have been committed between 2004 and 2005.
Proceeding
