As India struggles to come to terms with the gang rape, torture and death of a physiotherapist in New Delhi last month and other cases, Britain is facing its own terrible tale of sex, torture and violence involving six young English girls from Oxford.

Details of what happened to the girls, some as young as 11, are starting to emerge at the London court trial of nine men, seven Pakistanis and two North Africans, who are accused of "little or no human decency" in targeting, corrupting and exploiting the girls.

The men who face 19 charges of rape, including facilitating child prostitution, have been named as Kamar Jamil (27), Akhtar Dogar (32), Anjum Dogar (30), Assad Hussain (32), Mohammed Karrar (38), Bassam Karrar (33), Mohammed Hussain (24), Zeeshan Ahmed (27) and Bilal Ahmed (26). They have all denied the charges against them.

But the opening day of the trial against the men, aged between 24 and 38, reads like a horror story with the chief prosecutor, Noel Lucas, QC, warning about forthcoming details of "horrific abuse" against girls aged between 11 and 15 at that time.

The British public has heard horrifying details of how the nine-man gang deliberately targeted young girls living in government care homes. One young girl was only 12 years old when she was allegedly abused, changing from a "sweet and innocent" child into an angry and aggressive 14-year-old prone to self-harm because "it takes away the pain".

Unlike the Delhi girl, who tried to fight back against her attackers, the English girls had no opportunity to put up resistance because they were allegedly first groomed with alcohol and drugs to make them compliant, the jury at the Old Bailey court in London have been told.

Some of the girls were tied up, urinated upon, suffocated, scratched and bitten. Multiple rapes are said to have been carried out at hotels, guest houses and private homes to which the girls were taken between 2004 and 2012.

Testimony by one of the victims shows she was given alcohol and drugs and "lifts home" by three men who then started to pester her. They also allegedly threatened to burn her younger brother alive unless she did what they demanded. Prosecuting lawyers have referred to police evidence that this particular girl spent upto eight days at various properties where she was introduced to men described as friends, brothers or cousins of some of the gang members. "She saw other drugged and emaciated girls in the houses, sometimes just lying on a bed with their legs drawn up and completely out of it, waiting for the next round of drink and drugs", Mr Lucas told the court.

The Oxford rape cases are not the first of their kind. They echo the activities of other street grooming gangs elsewhere in the UK, many also made up predominantly of Pakistanis, who preyed on young white English girls in areas of Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.