Sordid details of a sex spree that included the rape of a mentally disabled girl emerged in court for the first time yesterday as the 14 teenagers responsible were sentenced.

What went on during the summer of 2003 in Marsascala was exposed in the judgment handed down by Magistrate Doreen Clarke, who tabled evidence given by the 16 victims.

The list of charges against the group included everything from theft to rape and extortion.

The case that started eight years ago was heard entirely behind closed doors following a magisterial order in 2004 to “protect the interest of justice and ensure that the accused did not suffer any prejudice”.

The case only reached the police when one victim told her parents what had happened and her father filed a police report.

Seven of the now-adult defendants, including the group’s only female member, were jailed for a total of 10 years and six months.

An additional seven suspended jail terms were given to the rest of the group, who were all aged between 15 and 20 when the crimes were committed.

Except for the 20-year-old, they were all minors at the time.

They were all convicted of defiling the 16 girls, violent indecent assault, holding them against their will, offending public morals, exposing themselves in public and extortion.

The woman defendant, who was 15 at the time, was charged with threatening two of the minors over the phone, but acquitted of showing them pornographic films, possession of pornographic material and circulating it.

The charges listed 16 episodes of rape, on eight separate occasions, on five girl victims. Some of the crimes involved two or three of the defendants.

Three of the boys were found guilty of raping the mentally disabled girl while three others were convicted of raping two other girls.

During proceedings, the girls said they were sometimes taken to abandoned blocks of flats in an area behind the local parish church known as Ta’ Monita, where they had sexual intercourse. Some of the girls said it was consensual, while others testified they only gave in to the aggressors’ demands because they were threatened.

One girl said that her aggressor threatened to put a lit cigarette in her eye while the only girl defendant said she would run over her victim with a car.

One victim recounted how the same boy had raped her on three occasions: the first happening in the Ta’ Monita complex where he pushed her into a room, locked the door using an old sink and forced himself on to her.

“He threw me on to a mattress, held my arms and tried to take my top off when I managed to get him off me.

“He grabbed one of my arms, opened my jeans’ button and undid the zip, but I could not get away because he was on top of me.

She lost her virginity to him, she told the magistrate.

The second time was when she was on her way home and he raped her in a small side road near the school, pushing her up against a wall and keeping her from moving.

The last episode happened in the sea when she went swimming. At one point, she felt tired and decided to rest next to a boat when he swam up behind her suddenly, grabbed her and had sex with her as she could not get away.

When the police became involved and everything came out in the open, the girl said she tried to commit suicide twice, first by trying to jump off the roof of her house and secondly by swallowing a handful of pain-relief pills with wine, but nothing worked.

Six defendants had told one of the girls that if she did not pay money to them so they could top up their mobile phones they were going to tell her parents that she slept with three or four of them.

Ten of the accused received between €12 and €400 for phone credit.