Three men convicted of the gang rape of a teenage girl treated their young victim like a ‘slab of meat’.

The three were found guilty by a jury on Friday at the end of a 10-day trial at the Court of General Gaol Delivery and will be sentenced on December 5.

Steven John Cannon, aged 45, James Marcus Doherty, aged 41, and Graham Peter Skillicorn, aged 65, were all jointly charged with the offence.

Their victim was only 18.

Prosecutor Roger Kane told the jury at the opening of the trial: ‘These men took advantage of a vulnerable, young, heavily intoxicated female for their own sexual gratification.

‘She was preyed on by three mature and predatory men who took it in turns in raping her. In doing so, they have treated this young girl like a slab of meat they could do what they wanted with.’

The jury found a fourth man not guilty of a charge of indecent assault. He cannot be named under rules brought in earlier this year that mean defendants charged with sexual offences remain anonymous unless or until they are convicted.

After returning their verdicts, the jury was told that Doherty had earlier this year been convicted of unlawful wounding. He had commanded a dog to bite a female police officer as he resisted arrest - an offence committed while on bail for the rape.

He will be sentenced for both offences at the same time.

Mr Kane told the court that not only was the girl is no position to exercise her choice whether to freely consent or not, but the three men knew that she was not in any state to do so.

He said: ‘These men took advantage of that fact. They knew how drunk she was. They knew she had taken drugs. The could see she was flopped on the armchair, not moving, not saying anything. The prosecution say these men should have been protecting her, not abusing her.’

The court heard that the offences took place at Skillicorn’s flat on Cushag Road, Anagh Coar, in the early hours of June 25, 2022.

Earlier, the complainant and her friend had been drinking with the fourth defendant at a flat in the Spectrum Apartments in Douglas where they were introduced to two men called Dingle (Doherty) and Ste (Cannon) who they had never met before.

The group then left and Doherty, despite being banned from driving, took them in his truck to Onchan where they sat drinking for around three hours.

Attempts were made to find somewhere they could continue drinking. Doherty tried to ring the Palace Hotel to book a room but couldn’t get through. He then drove them to Skillicorn’s flat in Anagh Coar where they arrived around midnight.

They continued to drink and at some point the complainant took the other girl into a spare bedroom with a mattress on the floor before returning to a couch in the living room where she described blacking out before coming to, with Doherty on top of her.

The victim said she could not move while the three men took turns raping her.

She said the fourth defendant who she had considered a friend had then walked into the room. She whispered to him to help her but instead he ignored her and even videoed her being raped.

After the multiple assaults, the girl jumped off the armchair, grabbed her underwear and ran into the spare room where her friend was sleeping on the mattress. She was in a highly distressed state, visibly crying.

The three men denied rape.

Doherty and Cannon, who both previously lived at Murray’s Road, Douglas but whose addresses were given in court as care of the prison, accepted they’d had sex with the girl but claimed it was consensual. Skillicorn denied having sex with the complainant.

But the jury saw through their lies and took less than two hours to deliver their unanimous verdicts on the three charged with rape.