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UK
“After my parents died I was left totally alone. Someone I trusted offered to help by getting me a job in the UK, but within days of leaving West Africa I was forced to work in a brothel on the South Coast. I was just fifteen.
After a month I managed to escape. I ran down the beach for miles, terrified to stop in case they came after me. Eventually I found a police station and told an officer my story. They took care of me and gave me somewhere safe to live. Although I am free, I still fear they will come back for me.”
*name withheld to protect identity
This story is repeated many times in cities across the nation. Many girls come from Eastern European countries such as Albania, Romania, and Latvia lured to the UK with the promise of a job. They end up working long hours for little pay in agricultural or domestic work or are sold to criminal gangs and forced into the sex trade. Others are groomed for prostitution by men posing as their boyfriends and trafficked internally.
Children as young as three years old have been trafficked into the UK from China, Bangladesh and Nigeria for sex, drugs and domestic slavery. The situation is getting worse with a massive 50 per cent increase in child trafficking in the UK in just two years.
* Official figures estimate there are 4 000 trafficked people in the UK. The real number may be far greater.
* The rate of recorded child trafficking in Britain has increased by almost 50% in two years, according to figures released in April 2009 by the Home Office's child exploitation and online protection centre (Ceop). |
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A young woman was sold as a sex slave in broad daylight on one of Britian’s busiest high streets.
Police surveillance footage (above) shows the deal take place on London’s Oxford Street. The Lithuanian victim in her twenties was sold to a brothel owner for just £3000 by an Albanian gangster outside Selfridges department store.
The young woman watched helplessly as a minder guarded her to block any escape attempt. Meanwhile shoppers passed by, unaware of the horrific crime taking place in front of them.
The police swooped to free her and the traffickers were jailed for a total of 63 years. If she had been sold, the victim would have been expected to earn her new ‘owner’ £100,000 a year by having sex up to 25 times a day in a brothel.
She was one of the lucky ones, statistics show that 99 per cent of trafficked victims are never rescued.
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