The Issue of Human Trafficking
Introduction
A summary of human trafficking in our country featuring UK statistics and the stories of rescued victims.
What is Human Trafficking?
Human trafficking is modern day slavery. It’s serious organised crime and it’s big business. Criminals can only profit from the sale of drugs and guns once but they can sell a victim’s services again and again. The easiest way to understand human trafficking is to break it down into three simple parts.
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The Act
WHAT is done e.g. recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons.
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The Means
HOW it is done e.g. threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or position of vulnerability, giving or receiving of payments and benefits used to control a person.
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The Purpose
WHY it is done – to exploit victims e.g. in prostitution, other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery, servitude or removal of organs from a person.
(Where a victim is a child, only ‘act’ and ‘purpose’ need to occur for human trafficking to exist.)This information is correct as of September 2012. No responsibility can be taken for any errors or omissions; you should always ensure that this information is up to date before acting.
Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation
Sexual Exploitation
Sexual exploitation can involve being coerced physically, threatened verbally or groomed psychologically for sexual acts. This may be prostitution, the creation of pornography or involvement in Ritual Abuse. Trafficking for sexual exploitation does not just involve migrants brought into the UK but also UK citizens who are moved from location to location here in Britain.
Children as young as 3 years have been trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation.
Child trafficking and grooming can involve the ‘loverboy’ phenomenon, in which vulnerable girls are approached by a man who acts like their boyfriend and gains their trust by giving them gifts and attention. The ‘loverboy’ then persuades the girl to go with his ‘friend’, the ‘friend’ is a trafficker who controls the ‘loverboy’ by threatening him or paying him to bring girls. The girl is subsequently sexually exploited by the trafficker and his clients.
Sexual Exploitation
Sexual exploitation can involve being coerced physically, threatened verbally or groomed psychologically for sexual acts. This may be prostitution, the creation of pornography or involvement in Ritual Abuse. Trafficking for sexual exploitation does not just involve migrants brought into the UK but also UK citizens who are moved from location to location here in Britain.
Children as young as 3 years have been trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation.
Child trafficking and grooming can involve the ‘loverboy’ phenomenon, in which vulnerable girls are approached by a man who acts like their boyfriend and gains their trust by giving them gifts and attention. The ‘loverboy’ then persuades the girl to go with his ‘friend’, the ‘friend’ is a trafficker who controls the ‘loverboy’ by threatening him or paying him to bring girls. The girl is subsequently sexually exploited by the trafficker and his clients.
Trafficking for forced labour
For the purposes of Forced Labour
Forced labour is work or service done involuntarily under the threat of a penalty. This can include debt bondage where a person is forced to work to pay off a debt or a loan. Often the loan can never be repaid because of false charges or deductions from wages or simply because the victim is paid so little. The penalty may be violence or the threat of violence. The traffickers may withhold a victim’s passport, denying them the freedom to take work elsewhere or leave the country.
Forced labour can occur in any industry but hospitality, agriculture, food packaging and construction are particularly vulnerable.
Domestic servitude is a type of forced labour characterised by the victim’s confinement at a person’s home with no personal space of their own and often no bed. These victims will work excessive hours and be expected to be on call 24 hours a day without pay. Forced begging and other criminal activities, such as exploitation for benefit fraud using a victim’s stolen identity, fall into the category of forced labour too. Young boys, commonly from China and Vietnam, are trafficked into the UK for cannabis cultivation in commercial-scale operations based in industrial buildings and residential homes.
For the purposes of Forced Labour
Forced labour is work or service done involuntarily under the threat of a penalty. This can include debt bondage where a person is forced to work to pay off a debt or a loan. Often the loan can never be repaid because of false charges or deductions from wages or simply because the victim is paid so little. The penalty may be violence or the threat of violence. The traffickers may withhold a victim’s passport, denying them the freedom to take work elsewhere or leave the country.
Forced labour can occur in any industry but hospitality, agriculture, food packaging and construction are particularly vulnerable.
Domestic servitude is a type of forced labour characterised by the victim’s confinement at a person’s home with no personal space of their own and often no bed. These victims will work excessive hours and be expected to be on call 24 hours a day without pay. Forced begging and other criminal activities, such as exploitation for benefit fraud using a victim’s stolen identity, fall into the category of forced labour too. Young boys, commonly from China and Vietnam, are trafficked into the UK for cannabis cultivation in commercial-scale operations based in industrial buildings and residential homes.
Statistics
Children as young as three have been trafficked into the UK for sexual exploitation.(ECPAT 2009 [Download 1])
During 2003 there were an estimated 4,000 victims of trafficking for prostitution in the UK at any given time.(Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights [Download 2])
Hope for Justice assisted 78 victims of human trafficking in the UK in 2011-2012.(Hope for Justice annual report – p.3)
Download PDFECPAT UK report, 'Bordering on Concern: Child Trafficking in Wales' 2007Statistic reference p9.
Download PDFParliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights report, 'Human Trafficking'Twenty–sixth Report of Session 2005–06, p28.
Stories of Rescued Victims
Trafficked into the UK for sex.
Zoe was asked to come to the UK from Eastern Europe by a friend who said she could arrange a job for her in a hotel. Zoe was excited about the opportunity to come to the UK and on her arrival she was picked up by a man and a woman and taken to a hotel. Then she was handed some underwear and told to put it on. Zoe was confused and said she hadn’t come to the UK for this kind of job but she was threatened, violently assaulted and told she was in debt to the couple. She was raped on multiple occasions and forced to work as a prostitute.
Zoe’s hopes quickly turned to horror as she realised that she had been trafficked.
Moved from town to town in the UK and then sold to another trafficker, Zoe was too terrified to escape. The traffickers had told her that if she tried to leave they would come after her family. At one point a police officer even spoke to her but she was too scared to tell him what was really going on. The traffickers had told her that they ‘owned the police’. Zoe said that no good thing had happened to her in the UK.
Hope for Justice found Zoe and rescued her from this devastating situation.
She was immediately placed into aftercare to allow her to recover and now she’s rebuilding her life. Good things are now happening to Zoe in the UK. She now has hope and we, here at Hope for Justice, have hope for all the girls not yet found.
Trafficked into the UK for sex.
Zoe was asked to come to the UK from Eastern Europe by a friend who said she could arrange a job for her in a hotel. Zoe was excited about the opportunity to come to the UK and on her arrival she was picked up by a man and a woman and taken to a hotel. Then she was handed some underwear and told to put it on. Zoe was confused and said she hadn’t come to the UK for this kind of job but she was threatened, violently assaulted and told she was in debt to the couple. She was raped on multiple occasions and forced to work as a prostitute.
Zoe’s hopes quickly turned to horror as she realised that she had been trafficked.
Moved from town to town in the UK and then sold to another trafficker, Zoe was too terrified to escape. The traffickers had told her that if she tried to leave they would come after her family. At one point a police officer even spoke to her but she was too scared to tell him what was really going on. The traffickers had told her that they ‘owned the police’. Zoe said that no good thing had happened to her in the UK.
Hope for Justice found Zoe and rescued her from this devastating situation.
She was immediately placed into aftercare to allow her to recover and now she’s rebuilding her life. Good things are now happening to Zoe in the UK. She now has hope and we, here at Hope for Justice, have hope for all the girls not yet found.
Gabriel
Trapped in forced labour
Gabriel is a talented young artist from Eastern Europe. He was promised a good job in the UK but when he arrived, he was forced to work for no money and soon realised that he was a slave. Gabriel worked non-stop in degrading circumstances.
He wasn’t given enough to eat or a bed to sleep in.
After encountering another person who was trapped in exploitation by the same traffickers, Gabriel realised just how bleak a future of captivity would be and he searched desperately for a way out. Hope for Justice was able to work with another agency to help him leave this exploitation and arrange safe accommodation in another part of the country. It’s with new hope and thanks to our supporters that Gabriel’s looking forward to starting over in the UK.
Trapped in forced labour
Gabriel is a talented young artist from Eastern Europe. He was promised a good job in the UK but when he arrived, he was forced to work for no money and soon realised that he was a slave. Gabriel worked non-stop in degrading circumstances.
He wasn’t given enough to eat or a bed to sleep in.
After encountering another person who was trapped in exploitation by the same traffickers, Gabriel realised just how bleak a future of captivity would be and he searched desperately for a way out. Hope for Justice was able to work with another agency to help him leave this exploitation and arrange safe accommodation in another part of the country. It’s with new hope and thanks to our supporters that Gabriel’s looking forward to starting over in the UK.
Arron & family
Arron is from a poor family and was approached by a businessman in his home town offering him and some others work in the UK.
Like a good father would, Arron took up the opportunity so he could give his family a better life.
When he and his family arrived in the UK, things were very different to what they’d expected. They were shoved into a crowded house where as many as 25 others were living. They were told they had to pay off the cost of their travel to the UK and were forced to work 12-18 hours a day with few breaks, 7 days a week to pay off this exaggerated debt. Different members of his family were told to sign documents they believed were necessary to register for jobs but were actually used by their traffickers to steal their identities for benefit and credit card fraud.
Arron was given just £15 a week to live on and his children complained of their hunger.
Hope for Justice worked closely with a government agency to free the entire family and transport them to a place where they could make a new start. Now Arron and his loved ones are free and looking forward to a promising future.
Like a good father would, Arron took up the opportunity so he could give his family a better life.
When he and his family arrived in the UK, things were very different to what they’d expected. They were shoved into a crowded house where as many as 25 others were living. They were told they had to pay off the cost of their travel to the UK and were forced to work 12-18 hours a day with few breaks, 7 days a week to pay off this exaggerated debt. Different members of his family were told to sign documents they believed were necessary to register for jobs but were actually used by their traffickers to steal their identities for benefit and credit card fraud.
Arron was given just £15 a week to live on and his children complained of their hunger.
Hope for Justice worked closely with a government agency to free the entire family and transport them to a place where they could make a new start. Now Arron and his loved ones are free and looking forward to a promising future.