ADVERTISEMENT – TRAFFICK PEOPLE FOR MINIMUM RISK MAXIMUM PROFIT
It is important to pause from time to time and reflect upon the magnificent mess which is Human Trafficking.
In a conversation with a lady recently I was told of the most recent police action to bring a trafficking ring to justice. I am privy in my own town to the Fact that when the 50 or so bars and clubs fill up on a Saturday night with around 20,000 revellers, there are on average just nine full time policeman available to deal with any issues that arise. The numbers of officers in London’s vice squad responsible for dealing with illegal prostitution and trafficking have similarly ridiculous human resources at their disposal. With such low numbers of investigators or enforcement officers allocated to these issues it isnt any wonder that the lucrative trade in human beings is probably the fastest growing investment for organised crime.
One recent case in London England took 3 years of police work before any arrests were made to a known trafficking ring. How many girls were subject to exploitation and rape in this time, how many of them are now lost without a trace within the regular re transportation of vicims in the trafficking system.
The situation is so vast and resources so small that the police have to be very sure indeed that a successful prosecution is likely.
The Selling of People for labour and for sex is an incredibly attractive option for criminals when there are significantly higher profits and lower punishments that that of trading in guns or drugs. Even this imbalance of credible legislation and punishment is an injustice.
What can be done to see this change in our lifetime, or even this decade?
Couple jailed after using trafficked girls in huge prostitution ring
Nigerians aged from 15 to 21 forced to work in business controlled from former vicarage in Wales
- Caroline Davies
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 February 2010 23.14 GMT
A couple were jailed today after running a prostitution ring from an old vicarage in Wales using girls trafficked from Nigeria.
Thomas Carroll, 48, an Irishman, and Shamiela Clark, 32, his South African wife, controlled their multimillion-pound business from a mobile phone “call centre” in Castlemartin, Pembrokeshire.
Among the prostitutes were six trafficked girls and young women, aged from 15 to 21, some of whom had been terrified into working for fear of breaking a “juju” oath they were forced to take during voodoo ceremonies in Nigeria.
Carroll was jailed for seven years, and Clark, a former prostitute, for three and a half years, at Cardiff crown court, after both admitted conspiracy to control prostitution for gain and conspiracy to money-launder.
Carroll’s daughter, Toma, 26, was imprisoned for two years after admitting laundering the profits which, in one year alone, totalled more than £800,000.
After the case, investigators said the evidence suggested that at the time of their arrest, the couple were in the process of setting up a similar operation in South Africa to coincide with the World Cup.
The couple ran more than 35 brothels, mainly in the Irish Republic, from the rented Welsh farmhouse to which they fled after coming to the attention of the gardaí.
The Nigerian women and girls, who were not trafficked by the defendants, were among prostitutes supplied to the ring. One girl rescued by police was just 14 when trafficked out of Nigeria, and 15 when placed in one of the Carroll brothels.
All came from poor family backgrounds, having lost one or both parents, and were promised a better life away from their remote, rural villages. One was told she could be a hairdresser, another that she would be put into further education.
“Instead, they find themselves being issued with forged passports in different names and being taken to Dublin via various routes and find themselves in the hands of the Carroll family,” Mark Phillips, deputy director of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which was involved in the operation, said after the case.
“The first these girls know they are going into a life of prostitution is when they are bought items of clothing, dropped off at a flat, and get a phone call to say ‘expect a male customer and do what you are told’,”
They worked 12 to 15 hours a day, were regularly moved from brothel to brothel, and supplied with “necessities” – condoms, creams and lingerie. Food was brought to them. The going rate was €160 (£140) for half an hour, but they had to pay their money into Toma Carroll’s bank account.
Of the 15 prostitutes caught in the police raids on Carroll’s brothels, some were from South America and Europe and willingly worked for him.
But many of the trafficked women and girls lived in fear of juju oaths, made during “terrifying and humiliating” rituals they were forced into by traffickers.
One was forced to sleep in a coffin to “put the fear of death” in her. Menstrual blood was drawn into a padlock, locked, and thrown in the river to signify their lives were in the hands of the river goddess, said investigators.
Live chickens were killed and the victims made to eat the raw hearts. Fingernail clippings and pubic hair cuttings were taken, and retained, to “instill the fear of God in them” and show they could be “metaphysically” reached wherever they were. Often the girls were naked, and one was cut all over her body with blades, said investigators.
An important part of the oath was each was told they had to pay back, on average, £65,000 to their traffickers. If they breached the oath, they would die, or their families back in Nigeria would die.
Investigations continue to track down those responsible for trafficking them out of Nigeria and those passing them through Europe to Ireland.
The defendants are said to have properties in South Africa, Bulgaria and Mozambique thought to be worth “millions”.
At the farmhouse, police found 70 mobile phones, all linked to adverts placed on sexual services websties or in newspapers.
Phone records showed 300 calls a day were made or received. “That gives you some idea of the scale”, said Tony Fitzpatrick of SOCA Wales. They also found drafted advertisements, one reading: “African Nandi, very petite tanned chocolate delight, petite slim size 8, 34C but leggy flexible kinky, Nandi enjoys nudism and exploring her body and yours making the sessions fun and intimate.”
Over a period of three months, they spent £5,200 on one telephone bill, running to 5,000 pages.
Male clients would phone and be given directions where to go. Unlike traditional massage parlour brothels, Carroll’s “closed brothels”, were set up in rented flats or houses, and regularly moved around 15 towns in the Republic and three in Northern Ireland so proved particularly challenging for investigators.
In one year Carroll, a father of four originally from County Carlow, spent £28,580 on newspaper advertising alone. From 2002 increasing amounts of money were deposited into his daughter’s bank account. In 2006 €111,000 were deposited, in 2007 €1.13m and in 2008 €500,000had been deposited by September.
Sentencing the defendants, judge Neil Bidder, told them: “I’m not sentencing you for trafficking those women and accept you were unaware of the personal circumstance of the women who worked in your brothels and you were not responsible for any violence and threats of violence.
“But the Nigerian women who were threatened with dreadful coercion all ended up working for you.
“You did not ask and did not care what personal tragedies had befallen those women submitting for your profit.”
The multi-agency operation was spearheaded by detectives from Northern Ireland Police Service’s Serious Organised Crime branch, in partnership with the Serious Organised Crime Agency and An Garda Siochana.
Philips, said: “This was a well organised and lucrative enterprise. The defendants made substantial amount of money from their business which they used to purchase properties in South Africa, Bulgaria and to make a down payment on a property being built in Mozambique. They will now be subject to confiscation proceedings to seize the proceeds of their crime.”
Read to the end for some Hot Off The Press News>
Its important to remember that sexual exploitation, commercial or through trafficking is not just something that happens somewhere else.
A day in London today and a visit to the infamous SOHO brothel district was a distinct reminder of this. I had lunch with an actor friend who followed our euro trek blog and wanted to get involved and that was great. He took me to SOHO to introduce me to someone who has been working with prostituted girls there for 20 years, a rock solid lady who has stayed long enough to see some things change, some of them good, like whole streets of brothels getting shut down recently, some of it not good like the transition from all english girls when she began her work to it being all foreign girls now. This in turn making her work more difficult due to language barriers.
So many of the new generation have been happy trafficked which is where prostitution abroad is presented as a fantastic female empowering job that will make them rich. Another route has been a strong manipulative love hate relationship developed by the pimp who brought them there. So many of the girls in SOHO are caught up in complex power based situations with their pimps and have no relationships beyond this – they are totally cut of from society and at their mercy.
I realised that our UK situation is not that different from what we have experienced in the rest of europe. I realised that just this week my small home town on the south coast is not immune either with 6 trafficked girls rescued from brothels just this month.
These things are not ‘over there’ issues – they are ‘at home’ issues too.
The Good News: Clause 14
I met a campaigner today who had just come from Westminster with government people. She had been meeting concerning something called clause 14 which is legislation to criminalise those who are found to have paid for sex with anyone who has been trafficked or more specifically anyone foreced to do so against their will. This has been passed for some time and stalled a little, and will be made active law this April. This is progress and i am sure the first run of prosecution with keep the trafficking and exploitation issue at the forefront of our media.
Who can you trust when you are a victim of trafficking?
When we were in Romania with a partner prevention programme, we asked who the victims could trust? The reply was, “it should be the police – some of the police really care, some of them are good!” I then asked if they themselves trusted the police, to which they replied, “No!” So how can you expect the victims to trust the police when you yourselves do not? In fact, though it shames me to say it, driving across Eastern Europe in an environment of organised crime, our only concerns were corrupt police. In the Romanian we were in, they had good reason to have misgivings about the police as while the mayor was looking at the issue of trafficking in people he had to jail his chief of police and two colleagues for having young girls locked up in their flat for their own personal use!
When we met the safe houses in Romania and Greece, we heard the word Freebie. It relates to an abuse of power by corrupt police and a failure to see the victims of trafficking as people. In Romania, girls would be rescued from Spain and Italy and after processing would arrive for collection in Romania before being taken to a recovery programme. The carer informed us that “some police are good, but some police just refuse to change, they collect the girls from the airport and call them filthy whores, then force them to give them a Freebie before handing them over – Trauma upon Trauma. It was the same in Greece only that many of the police who are meant to intervene in organised crime, offer protection to illegal brothels for Freebies with the girls.
Who can they trust – who is worthy of trust.
In almost all of the countries where slavery and sexual exploitation are rampant, there exists laws to protect people from being forced to do anything, held against their will, kidnapping and rape. But these laws are all too frequently not enforced .
There are many points of engagement for Abolitionists and i am grateful that there are those who work in prosecutions, legislation and changing laws. There is Sooooo much space out there for people to find a point of engagement to see change happen. I am hoping that the next time someone asks me what they can do, i am bold enough to give them the question back and say ‘what can you do’ in the hope they press in and find that connection point and dig deep. Money is critical, it is easy to ask for money and important to do so, there is so much that money would help at this stage. But this issue needs people too, trustworthy people who understand the worth and value of these young girls beyond all personal gain.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
Thats the title of the first Star Wars related ‘extra’ story book which came out in the 70’s to accompany the first film. I felt the title somewhat conveys what you are left with after a roadtrip touching some of Europes trafficking issues, you are left with splinters in your mind, splinters which it is difficult, even impossible to get to and pull out regardless of how much they irritate and become sore.
One of the splinters picked up as we have rubbed against the rough surface of European counter trafficking, relates to a comment made by two aftercare programmes in two different countries. The programmes tried to help us grasp the gravity of what the girls have slowly disclosed as time has gone by.
“A man came into the room and told me to do many terrible things and i refused. He slapped me and punched me and told me that when he paid my pimp, the pimp had told him very clearly that for the next hour he could do whatever he wanted to me, except kill me”
Whilst we heard this in Europe coming from young girls, it was not the first time i had heard this story, i had also heard this from the stories of child prostitutes in Asia, as they also tried to convey the dispair of situations they were in. It goes some way to levelling the ground in our understanding of sexual exploitation:
* No.1 – you have no rights and are at the mercy of others
* No.2 – you have no rights and are at the mercy of others.
Anything goes, there are no boundaries to what you will be subjected to over the coming, weeks, months or perhaps years, if you are lucky? By lucky i mean that the man raping you actually holds back on the beatings for fear of breaking the pimps only rule – not to kill you, not to ruin his investment.
It goes some way to explaining why those who are involved in the recovery process in aftercare programmes have to hold onto small steps of progress. As one carer said ” when they arrive, they sleep with the lights on, but slowly they turn the lights off – this is a significant beginning to a long journey. We have no control over when the girls will talk to us, it may be the middle of the night, or when we are making a cup of coffee – we just have to be ready to listen as they peel back a layer”
Perhaps even finding ways to pull out just one of the many splinters in their own minds. Is it foolish to believe that through effective prevention programmes, we can stop some young girls, and boys having to go through this? Especially when it is such a pathetically low number who find their way out and into recovery.
We arrived home from Rome today, after a 24hr through the night drive. We are home 2 days early but in most respects our trip ended as we left Athens. The intense hopscotch from trafficking prevention project to safe home to victim identification project had taken its toll and we did little to chase potential projects to connect to once in Italy. We have so much to process already.
We were a little disapointed as we wanted to have a full stop to our journey but as we said in a twitter yesterday, we ended with a comma, a far more suitable ‘turning page’ to the story.
As with some of the other cities, we took our Love 146 logo and stood in front of the Colosseum in Rome (gladiator movie) with our inadequate camera and tripod struggling to find its balance in the gravel. 2 girls came up speaking english and offered to take the picture saying ” hey – do you have any literature with you about this (child sex exploitation) stuff? Its something we are really interested in, im a film maker from L.A”.
We exchanged e mail addresses and all i had on me was a copy of the trafficking prevention magazine we launched in Moldova recently.
Awesome, in all the horror of the trafficking stories and issues we had been around on the journey to date, you forget that there is a growing number of people out there with a smouldering conviction to intervene, to act, to engage with the tools that they have at hand and make a difference.
So, no full stop to this journey, just one new page unfolding in the story of this modern abolition movement.
I am sure that there is far more to Athens than we have seen, but we came to touch issues of trafficking, not delight in old things… and believe me there are some great old things in Athens.
We are on our own now until we leave for Rome on monday so we got to explore the back streets under our own steam last night. We are not naive and are used to being around unsafe places, but this was pretty intense. Away from the legal brothels are the dirty streets, the smell of urine and dog faeces that i can’t imagine it on summer nights. There were pimps and drug pushers on almost every corner, completely un-policed, in fact after dark they seem to disappear. Some times 5, sometimes as many as 20 pushers and pimps on a corner which the locals have to walk past. Nigerian girls were trying to stop cars and bikes almost in desperation of picking up a client, reducing their dept to their pimp and avoiding a beating. It’s a whole other thing to see the girls at work now we know the backdrop of what controls them and drives them towards a ‘hoped for’ liberation.
One girl came over to us, linked arms with me and walked a while under the gaze of her pimp, offerring us many things in the hope of that 15 euro before eventually walking off to some more likely clients. It was a sad moment, one which we will ponder upon for a while to come.
Kids? The same story of Thessoloniki, everyone expects them to be here being used for sex, but nobody knows where. A raid in a brothel some time back freed a whole bunch of male children locked in a brothel being used by men. People know it’s there, but it’s going to take more than our passing through to even begin to uncover it.
We picked up a ‘things to do in Athens’ brochure and were shocked by a section just about sex, with very overt wording of where to get the cheapest girls – that being Nigerians. It also tells the reader what they should expect to pay in a brothel for ‘clean’ girls and more surprisingly, where you are likely to find your more unpleasant tastes for sex met. This includes transexuals and male prostitutes, mostly used again, by married men.
The degree to the normalised of paying sex is quite shocking for modern Europe. The variety in types available in overt and public spaces confirms that what takes place illegally behind closed doors must be pretty gruesome and should be exposed. This is All exploitation of people. Whether it comes through cultural or economic erosion of a persons worth for prostitution, or whether it has come through brutilisation, kidnapping and torture of the trafficking victims who make up most of the girls in this city. It’s just plain nasty robbing of a persons worth and humanity. Nobody, and i mean nobody, WANTS to service 100 smelly sweaty men. Nobody wants to be put in a room where a man will walk in and say do this or that, because the pimp has told him he can do anything to you except kill you.
This is a bit of a long blog, mostly because we want to get some stuff off our chest before we go quiet for a few days travelling to Italy. It’s been a privilege meeting here with great people, so frequently poorly supported financially or with encouragements. The team here are engaged in victim identification, an arm of trafficking care which seeks to find out who someone is through face to face interaction. The detritus we passed through last night, is their second home through necessity. They seek to know a persons name, draw out some of their stories, and be a mirror which reflects back to the girls that they are human, that they have worth and that someone gives a crap.
Remember us as we leave here, the farmers are on strike and blocking all major roads, like the one to our port and sailing point of Patra.
