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story of a victim! She was a teenage orphan living on the streets of Nairobi when a man approached her and promised her work in the United Kingdom. He told her she would be working as a house girl. True to his word, her "savior" brought her into the U.K. -- but instead of placing her with a family the man took her to a brothel, where she was systematically raped, beaten, and forced to work as a prostitute. Three months later, when the 16-year-old Kenyan girl became pregnant, she was forced to continue sleeping with a succession of men until she was almost due to give birth. The heavily pregnant teenager was then removed from the brothel, driven out of the town where she had been held, and dumped many miles away on the streets of Sheffield. "It's been a painstaking process but we now have a clearer picture of when and how the girl arrived in Sheffield and the terrible ordeal she has been through," said Detective Inspector Matt Fenwick of the South Yorkshire Police. "As you may expect, she is still extremely distressed. All interviews have been conducted entirely at her pace, and she is now being looked after by specialist carers. "The sequence of events that has emerged during those interviews is both shocking and tragic. It involves imprisonment, beatings, and systematic rape over a lengthy period. Anyone who can subject a teenage girl to such abuse needs to be caught as a matter of urgency before they can do the same again. I'd ask anyone who thinks they may have encountered this girl or her captors to come forward -- even if they were one of her clients." The 16-year-old girl's ordeal is similar to that of more than 4,000 other women who have been trafficked into the U.K. A Home Office study in 2002 suggested that the scale of trafficking of women may range anywhere from a hundred to several thousands annually. "There were 35 cases of child trafficking with the 17 boroughs of London, including nine children under 16 years of age; there are many more reported cases that the social services did not disclose. Increasingly, an influx of young Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai children, particularly boys, has been noticed by various agencies. The Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act of 2002 covered the offence of trafficking. the Sexual Offences Act of 2003, which defines a child as someone below the age of 18 and criminalizes trafficking for sexual exploitation. It also makes it an offence to traffic into, within, and out of the U.K., imposing a maximum sentence of 14 years. Additionally, the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act of 2004 makes it an offence to traffic in all forms of labor exploitation and imposes a maximum penalty of 14 years. Organizations working with victims of trafficking say these measures are not enough. victims of trafficking are rarely willing to testify because of threats the victims and their families receive from the traffickers.  |
"Currently, victims of trafficking have almost no rights in the U.K. In the eyes of the law, they are simply illegal immigrants and are routinely detained and deported. True story! Egle (23) "In the last four years I've been trafficked five times twice to Germany and once each to the UK, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. I worked in different cities but I never knew the names of them. I had a lucky escape in the UK. My traffickers took me to a clinic for a pregnancy test but weren't allowed to come in to see the doctor. I told her I had been trafficked and she called the police. I'm sheltering in a convent at the moment but will soon be going back to my home town. "I don't see how I will ever be safe again. I've got a three-year-old daughter. How will I ever be able to raise her safely when the traffickers are all around?"  |