"Caught in Traffic" trafficking in Scotland

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"Caught in Traffic" trafficking in Scotland

Postby sam » Wed Sep 27, 2006 10:44 am

Caught in traffic
KATE FOSTER Additional reporting by Arthur MacMillan
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1410362006

LOANNA came to the UK on a promise of domestic work, a vast improvement on her life in Africa. Orphaned as a young child she had slept rough and been beaten and raped by a number of men. When she was offered a way out of her dire circumstances by a British man, she accepted.

Instead, her life dramatically worsened. When she arrived in the UK with her new 'friend' Stuart, Loanna was taken to his house and beaten. She was told she would be working not as a cleaner, but as a masseuse. She was locked in the house and forced to have sex with up to seven men every day.

Her horrific ordeal lasted six months until the house was raided by police - at which point Loanna was referred to the Poppy Project, a service for trafficked women. But she is still scared to go out alone, terrified she will be found and punished by her traffickers.

Loanna's story echoes that of around 6,000 women and girls who have arrived in the UK over the past five years to find that promises of a better life were lies, and who are held captive and used as prostitutes, often sold on time and time again for price tags of around £7,000.

At first, London and the south-east of England was the mecca for trafficking gangs. But as the numbers of arrivals from Eastern Europe and Africa grow and police in the south make more arrests, the gangs are migrating north to Scotland, particularly Glasgow, a city with a growing population of immigrants.

The situation is chilling - police and council officials openly admit they are not yet in a position to be sure of the scale of the problem in Scotland - but they have seen enough to know that foreign girls as young as 12 are being prostituted north of the Border. They warn that Glasgow could soon have a human trafficking problem to rival that of London and Birmingham.

The first signs of Scotland's trafficking problem emerged earlier this year when a 14-year-old African girl in Dumfries was one of six young females rescued from brothels as part of Operation Pentameter, a nationwide crackdown. The African teenager is thought to have been thrown out of the brothel and left homeless.

As a result of the raids, two Slovakians will next month appear in court charged with trafficking women into Scotland. Two of the victims will be witnesses in the court case. The others have since been repatriated. But with many victims of trafficking vulnerable and highly likely to be re-targeted by slave gangs, their future is uncertain.

What sickens those trying to tackle the problem most is the age of the girls involved. Teenagers under the age of 16 are, police are now certain, being held captive in private flats, and their pimps are seeking punters from the local population. This is something which sickens those trying to tackle the problem.

The traditional Scots prostitute is a drug addict of any age, charging around £50-£60 for sex. Now experts say half of Glasgow's prostitutes are foreign, a massive proportion when compared to the number of immigrants among the city's general population, which alone suggests something sinister is going on. And it is a lucrative trade. Men in Glasgow alone spend an estimated £6.6m a year on prostitution, visiting saunas, private flats and escorts.

Detective Sergeant Mike McCormack, from Strathclyde Police's organised immigration crime team, says child prostitution is a "huge, huge issue", and that police are monitoring Chinese, Albanian and Slovakian gangs which have taken root in Glasgow and are growing in number.

"We have intelligence that Chinese and Slovakian girls from the age of 12 are being prostituted in Glasgow," he said. "People coming out of pubs are offered girls. We are trying to get intelligence on a number of operations. Fifteen-year-old girls are being exploited for £20 or £30 a time. And they are really good looking. As one of the local prostitutes will cost around £60 and half of them are junkies we can see the trend is changing. More people are looking for these girls."

It is a case of piecing together the evidence and police in Glasgow are working with their local authority to gather as much information as they can.

Ann Hamilton, of the violence against women section at Glasgow City Council, warns that half of Glasgow's prostitutes are foreign nationals, and is expecting an influx of trafficked prostitutes seeking help.

"We have a service for women involved in indoor prostitution who can come forward and access health and social care support," she said. "About 50% of those come from other nationalities. It does present a challenge in things like communication, the provision of interpreters and translation of materials. I suppose a lot of women from other countries do not have the same understanding of social work services and other NGOs that women have in the UK, so there is a bit of mistrust. That is certainly a challenge. We are convinced that the numbers that come forward to us are going to increase significantly over the next couple of years, so that is going to be a major challenge."

Another of the problems facing agencies is the reluctance of women to approach them and to speak out. The police will be delighted they have two witnesses to testify against the two Slovakian men in next month's court case. But these two women are the exception; there remain dozens who are too terrified to take action.

Glasgow prostitutes using Base 75, a clinic for sex workers, have revealed almost 30 cases of suspected trafficking among their colleagues over the past two years, after being urged to use an anonymous reporting system. This revealed that women from Lithuania, Albania, China, Thailand, Eastern Europe, Sudan, Kenya and Hungary were being prostituted in Glasgow alone. Yet just 10 trafficked women have actually come forward for help from the council.

In London, the homeless support organisation for women, Eaves, runs the Poppy Project, which provides trafficked women escaping their captors with accommodation, subsistence, information and support. They are able to accommodate 25 women, but consistently operate a waiting list.

Natalia Dawkins, the project manager, explained why the victims of the sex trafficking trade were so easily tricked and why they find it so difficult to leave.

"The typical experience is that they are young girls from remote areas who have vulnerabilities such as parental problems and are not well educated," she said.

"If you live in remote Belarus and you think there are opportunities, then someone is going to be very easily able to exploit that. They are lured with a story of work in the UK. They hand over their passports and when they arrive they have no idea where they are. They are trapped and owe money and are threatened.

"The women who arrive here are referred by police or outreach workers and are very distrustful and scared," she added. "They have been having sex with 15-21 men a night and have been subjected to severe violence over a long time. When they get to us they are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and are very detached and submissive. They all have some sort of sexual health complaint.

"One woman we helped estimated she had made £150,000 for her trafficker over a two-month period. Another estimated she had made her trafficker £9,000 in one week. They have to have sex more often and offer riskier sex than local women. They are also cheaper. Men are looking for something different and exotic."

Glasgow City Council is working with the Poppy Project and taking a lead in the UK on providing a service for the victims of human trafficking. It predicts its problem could soon be on a similar scale to that in cities in the south of England.

In the summer of 2003, the local authority established a working group to explore the issue, and in 2004 the group was given £100,000 by the Scottish Executive's Violence Against Women Service Development Fund to employ staff and provide support costs for women.

A briefing paper from Glasgow Council states: "We know that in Glasgow (and almost certainly) the other large cities in Scotland that there will be women trafficked to meet the demand of the off-street sex industry. This work is necessary as the issue of trafficking is only emerging in Scotland and we are warned that our situation could quickly mirror that of London and Birmingham."

The prediction is dire, but commitment from those on the ground who are tuned into the problem is unquestionable. Police, local authorities and charities are gearing up to be deluged with trafficked women and their complex needs, for translators, shelter, counselling, healthcare and repatriation or help in remaining in Scotland if they should wish.

But they are deeply concerned that despite assurances from ministers that they are committed to fighting trafficking, their dedication to solving this emerging problem will not be met with adequate resources from those who make funding and staff available. There are also concerns that forces other than Strathclyde are simply not picking up on the problem.

McCormack wants a whole team working on illegal immigration in all its manifestations, from prostitutes to domestic slaves and illegal workers to sham marriages.

He wants a team of police not unlike that working on stamping out drugs, tackling the dealers and arresting those who run gangs. But he is currently one of only two officers dealing with illegal immigration and admits that is far from adequate given the scale of the problem, which is not restricted to Glasgow.

Operation Pentameter saw 16 saunas, massage parlours and private flats raided in Dundee, Glasgow and Perth and 11 people arrested.

Despite this, McCormack believes his colleagues in other forces need to do more to tackle the problem and is critical of their efforts to date.

He said: "No one is really looking at the problem. We first found we had a problem in Strathclyde two years ago and now we are getting more and more intelligence. Anywhere where there are saunas there will be girls being used."

Cosla, which represents local authorities across Scotland, is committed to tackling the issue and its working group on asylum seekers and refugees has taken steps to encourage local authorities and other agencies to work together.

Andy White, Cosla's spokesman on refugees, said: "We are concerned about this issue and support the excellent and innovative counter-trafficking work already taking place within Glasgow City Council.

"This work will help inform the broader awareness-raising agenda which will, hopefully, culminate in a coordinated response from all of the key stakeholders across all sectors. There's an opportunity, too, for the UK to show commitment right now by signing up to the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings in support of victims."

But with the police, councils and charities unable to even make a guess at the true scale of Scotland's trafficking problem, to estimate the number of girls who are being held in private flats and houses across Scotland, to target gangs and to target those Scots who are using them, it is clear that there is a crisis brewing.
sam
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