Eastern European girls trafficked to UK more than ever

[sam]

What price for a girl's life?

Traffickers profit from immigrants’ lives in sex slavery

UK Northhampton Chronicle and Echo
http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk
/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleID=2184293&SectionID=255
Daniel Owens

Teenage girls are routinely being trafficked from Eastern Europe to work in the sex trade in Northampton, with criminal gangs paying thousands of pounds a time to "buy" their victims.

Agency workers campaigning to help women escape prostitution admit they have no idea of the scale of the problem, due to the hidden nature of the behind-closed-doors trade, but said there was a serious issue that needed to be addressed in Northampton.

The number of girls illegally trafficked into Britain in recent years is believed to have exploded.

The latest Home Office figures, from 2003, suggest at least 4,000 women from abroad have been forced into prostitution but that figure is now understood to be far higher.

Sam Benfield, spokeswoman for the Sex Workers Around Northampton (SWAN) project, said: "Historically, we have had cases of underage girls working as prostitutes in Northampton and we have had cases of trafficked women. In the past few years we have seen girls as young as 14 working on the streets.

"There may well be underage foreign girls working too but keeping tabs on everyone is impossible.

"There is so much off-street prostitution, it's impossible to know who's doing what exactly.

"A lot of brothels would never dream of touching illegal women but without doubt, there are some brothels in Northampton that do exploit their girls. It's difficult to estimate the extent of trafficking locally as it is such an underground business, you simply never see these people."

There is believed to be up to 200 girls currently working in backstreet massage parlours and brothels in Northampton.

One prostitute, who asked not to be named, told the Chronicle & Echo that anything up to 40 per cent of those could be working against their will having been brought in from overseas by criminal gangs under the pretence of securing a mainstream job.

She said: "The overseas girls are flooding into Northampton and are being made to offer a full range of services, often the type that long-standing girls simply won't do, for a fraction of the price.

"They are seeing anything up to 10 clients a day and are being treated horrendously.

"Sometimes, if the maid of a brothel suspects her girls have been trafficked, she will take them under her wing and try and help them escape, but it's not always possible."

Graham Maxwell, of the UK Human Trafficking Centre, said information programmes were in place in countries like Bulgaria and Romania to prevent people being conned into going abroad.

One woman, imprisoned and forced to be a prostitute, had been raped 50 times on Christmas Day, the Home Office said.

Another had been beaten to death after being held as a domestic slave and made to live in an outhouse, where she suffered from trench foot - caused by damp and wet conditions.

Mr Maxwell said being forced to have sex 30 times a day was common for some girls.

He added: "The average price for a trafficked woman is £2,000 to £3,000, but up to £8,000 is reported in some cases. We are talking about people here. These are prices that are being paid for individuals. There was £8,000 charged for two 15-year-old girls from Lithuania."

One prostitute, known only as Annabel, said the market in Northampton had become so overloaded with girls selling sex she was being forced to look for a mainstream job to bolster her income.

She said: "It's dead at the moment, there's too many girls working here and most of them are willing to do anything for hardly any money. They don't insist on safe sex and their prices are crazy.

"There is no business for people like me anymore, I'm going to give it up and get another job."

The extent of off-street prostitution in Northampton is difficult to gauge, with many girls working a shift system in high-class apartments and flats in quiet back streets.

The Chronicle & Echo yesterday approached a massage parlour in Northampton and was offered a full half-hour "service" with the girl of our choice for £65, or £120 for an hour.

A series of anti-trafficking raids took place in Northampton last spring as part of an operation to rescue women forced into prostitution.

Officers from the county force took part in the nationally organised Operation Pentameter and raided a massage parlour and a car wash in Northampton.
One man was cautioned for running a brothel.

Police minister Vernon Coaker said human trafficking was "a form of modern-day slavery" and called for a change in legislation which could see prostitutes' clients face prosecution for rape.

He said: "Frankly it brings tears to your eyes. It simply cannot carry on. If we have got a situation where a man knowingly has sex with a woman he knows is not freely consenting to that, then I think that that could be considered as rape."

The Home Office has called for specialist trafficking teams to be set up at UK ports and airports.

It is also planning to set up an advice line for police, immigration staff and social workers and a national system to identify victims more quickly.

"Slave auctions" are reportedly being staged on the concourses of British airports.

Mr Coaker said trafficked children detected at Heathrow had started "kicking and screaming" because they don't believe the police officer is trying to help them.
He added: "They've been so badly deceived they think if they don't get there will be big consequences."

[msjared]

hey sam, do you have a link to the actual article? i'd like to post it on my blog and wasn't sure if it's okay to link back directly to here?

thanks!

[sam]

I've added it to the original post.

The mods are a little split on how public this place should be regarding outside linkage. I figure it's already fairly public so linking back to the public forums every now and again isn't a terrible thing, especially from radfem blogs like yours.

Yet I agree with other mods that there is merit to using discretion if we want this place to stay as relatively troll-free as it has been since its inception. I suppose feminists all over the internet struggle with how to reach out to likeminded sisters without drawing in assholes at the same time.

Can I say I trust your judgment on the matter either way you decide without it coming off as a cop-out?

[msjared]

would it still be sketchy if i posted a "via genderberg" and just linked to the main page? (http://www.genderberg.com/)

coz i was thinking, i've been getting more hits on my blog of people searching for anti-porn resources and i don't think genderberg is very well known. i'm not sure if that's intentional, to keep the trolls at bay, or accidental, just coz folks don't know about it?

i too want to keep this space safe and troll free so i'll keep my link/trackbacks to a minimum. :-)

thanks!

[sam]

"would it still be sketchy if i posted a "via genderberg" and just linked to the main page? (http://www.genderberg.com/)

I think that's a fine way to handle the situation. It's important to me that anti-pornstitution folks learn we're here, so if they're coming your way then you sending them to the main page is a good thing.

[msjared]

excellent! and as always, thanks for the great insight and information you consistently provide!