TWO men have been warned to expect significant prison sentences after they were convicted of the sexual trafficking - effectively arranging sex for other men - and the rape of two under-aged girls who were in care.

John Anthony Delaney and John James Purcell were both remanded in custody at the end of a four-week trial at Mold Crown Court.

A third man - Todd James Wickens - was found not guilty of the three charges he faced.

Judge Rhys Rowlands told Delaney and Purcell they had been convicted by a jury of “very serious matters”. “I am afraid there will be lengthy custodial sentences here,” he said.

He ordered them to register with the police as sex offenders.

The jury of four men and eight women had retired to consider their verdicts on Monday afternoon.

John Anthony Delaney, 33, of Ruthin Road Caravan Site in Wrexham, was found guilty of three charges of human trafficking, two charge of rape and one charge of sexual assault.

But he was cleared of two rape charges, a further trafficking offence and a charge of arranging a sex offence.

John James Purcell, 31, of Crescent Road in Ellesmere Port, was convicted of four human trafficking charges and two charges of rape.

He was cleared of one charge of rape and one charge of arranging a sex offence.

One of the trafficking offences related to allegations that both defendants took a girl to the Dene Hotel in Hoole, Chester where she was later raped by several unknown men.

A further trafficking charge against Purcell was a sample charge where he took the girl to the hotel where she was raped by others.

Todd James Wickens, 28, of Homestead Lane in Wrexham, who denied two charges of rape and one trafficking charge ,and was cleared of all charges.

A fourth man John McGrath, 27, of Bryn Hedd, Southsea, Wrexham, was cleared of raping a girl aged under 16 on the direction of the judge at the end of the prosecution case.

His barrister said it was a case of mistaken identity and the identification procedure had not been fair.

The jury heard claims that two girls aged 15 in care were taken advantage of sexually by men who gave them alcohol in hotel rooms back in 2011 and 2012.

They were taken to the Dene Hotel and a Travel Lodge at Halkyn.

Other men were called when they were drunk so they could have sex with them, it was claimed.

The girls had been groomed and were used for the sexual gratification of the defendants and others, said barrister John Philpotts.

Victims were two girls at a home for cared-for children in the Wrexham area but they were taken advantage of sexually.

“The defendants well knew how old those girls were and, indeed, seemed to be excited by their extreme youth,” the prosecutor alleged.

“They also knew that, though they submitted, those girls did not truly or genuinely consent to what was done to them,” he said.

Mr Philpotts told the jury: “These men used the girls as a sexual resource for their own gratification and that of their associates."

The judge said the two defendants would be sentenced on the basis that no physical force was used.

He commended both the police investigation and the presentation of the case by the Crown Prosecution Service which had been "excellent".

The judge thanked the barristers in the case for the way they had conducted the trial.