Teenagers traded for slave labour and sex

Today, a new international study reveals that Britain has become an easy target for child trafficking gangs. In a special report, Audrey Gillan exposes the plight of the victims of this hidden trade in human misery

Wednesday July 30, 2003
The Guardian

The woman whose picture was in the passport looked a little bit like Funmi Adeyemi, but just a little. This made the 15-year-old nervous but it was fine. When her trafficker brought her to Heathrow airport the pair of them sailed through immigration. It was easy to pass as the man's sister because no questions were asked. Easy to become anonymous. Easy to slip into a life of domestic slavery in modern-day Britain.

Out of Nigeria and on her way to a council house on the Ferrier estate in south-east London. Out of a life of selling plastic cups and plates at the side of the road for no pay and a regular beating to a life as a "maid" working from 6am to midnight, looking after seven kids and cleaning a house for no pay and a regular beating.

Funmi is the face of a hidden problem in Britain. Her story is like that of hundreds of other girls trafficked to Britain for either domestic servitude or sexual exploitation. A story of children trapped in rooms with no papers, no identity, where they are nothing but a commodity traded for slave labour or tawdry sex, and living under the fear of voodoo.

Funmi is one of the first trafficking victims to brave the threat of reprisals against herself and her family and speak publicly about the burgeoning, hidden trade in children coming into the UK.

In the course of a month-long investigation the Guardian has spoken to other victims and dozens of people working with similarly affected children and uncovered a problem that is growing steadily in major cities across the country. Children, mostly from Africa, have recently been discovered in cities such as Newcastle, Nottingham, Northampton and Glasgow: almost all of them have definitely been trafficked.

Funmi escaped from the Kidbrooke flat where she worked for three years in March. The Guardian knows the name of her trafficker but cannot identify him because a lack of legislation means he cannot be prosecuted for bringing a child into the country illegally, leaving her on her own with his children, and enslaving her. Often authorities believe the man, the "trafficker", rather than listen to people like Funmi. She says her trafficker once forced her to have sex with him but she will never be able to prove it.

"He told me he would break my hand. I told him no but he wouldn't listen," Funmi said. "After that.. I went to live with his sister and she used to beat me. She banged my head on the wall and was beating me with a belt. One day she just threw me out of her house. I didn't have any shoes on and I didn't know where to go. She came after me and when I got back to the house the grandma said I should get on my knees and say sorry to the brother. During that time I was always crying and thinking about running away from them.

"One day I went to our neighbour's house and asked her if she had a maid and she said she didn't have time. I contacted our pastor and I told him everything and he said there was nothing I could do. He would just pray for me."

No one seemed to want to listen to what Funmi had to say. When police were called to the house they believed she was her trafficker's sister. When he tried to take her back to Nigeria through fear he might get caught, immigration officers believed his story not Funmi's. He was free to go, Funmi was fingerprinted, photographed and held in a detention centre.

Today sees the launch of a report by Unicef UK which highlights the changing face of trafficking in the country. It says: "Children are being brought to countries and cities all over the UK. In places such as Newcastle and Nottingham cases have only emerged in recent months, indicating that traffickers are widening their operations, targeting places where the authorities are not aware of the issue."

The charity says that whilst the government is attempting to legislate against people being trafficked for sexual exploitation within the sexual offences bill currently passing through the House of Commons, children being trafficked for other reasons, be it private fostering or domestic labour, remain unprotected.

Unicef's report reveals that recorded figures of children trafficked here is "the tip of the iceberg". It says: "There may well be hundreds, if not thousands, of children in Britain who have been brought here for exploitation. We won't know the true extent of the problem until the necessary mechanisms are in place."

Unicef says it is not just an international problem but is "here in our own backyard". The report points out that the face of trafficking in Britain has changed over the past five years and "the biggest noticeable difference is the wide range of African nationalities being trafficked". It says "traffickers are widening their operations and trying new places".

Britain is emerging as a key staging post for girls being trafficked to other European states, such as Italy, where laws against the illicit trade are more stringent.

Authorities first became aware that west African girls were being trafficked to Italy via Britain when they started disappearing after being taken into the care of West Sussex social services following discovery upon arrival at Gatwick airport. A police investigation - Operation Newbridge - was launched and a pattern of trafficking detected. Such is their fear of the trafficker that, since 1995, 74 girls have "disappeared" from the care of social services and returned to the men who sneaked them into the country.

The Guardian has found that over 18 months between 1998 and 1999 180 suspected trafficking victims went missing after arrival at Heathrow airport.

Diana Mills, coordinator of the women's project at the charity Asylum Aid, said she was taking dozens of calls from girls. "Just yesterday I had a call from a London hospital because they had a 16-year-old kid who has been raped. I presume that she is so badly injured her traffickers have just dumped her. She's quite clearly been trafficked," she said. "We get calls from all over the place. They are always about young girls aged between 14 and 17."

Elizabeth Little of the Refugee Arrivals Project based at Heathrow said that the Operation Newbridge model was used there and it was soon found that girls who fitted the criteria were also arriving at Heathrow, many with "similar appearances, similar demeanour and similar luggage and were disappearing quickly".

She said: "Our supposition - as well as that of police and immigration - was that Operation Newbridge caused disruption to the trafficking route involved. We are not suggesting that it is not happening, it's just that it has moved elsewhere."

Soft touch

Ms Little said fewer people were being detected, but she believes this is because they have managed to procure papers good enough to enter the country without being caught at immigration.

"We know Britain is seen as a soft touch for traffickers. It's really quite hard to detect somebody who is likely to be the victim of trafficking. And there are so many different routes into the country. We think the numbers that we know of are just the tip of the iceberg."

Because of raised awareness trafficking rings are being squeezed out of the south-east and moving out across the country. Last month eight African children were taken into care by Newcastle city council as part of an organised crime inquiry. Five others turned up in Nottingham, from different African countries and not trafficked together, leading investigators to believe that the city has become a major trafficking target. Two Nigerian boys are currently in the care of a Glasgow charity after escaping prostitution in the city and one girl is currently in Northampton.

Last December the Guardian revealed that former Portuguese footballer Pedro Miguel da Costa Damba had trafficked 50 children into Britain in 2000.

One detective investigating child trafficking told the Guardian: "I would say it is naive to talk about hundreds. Thousands and thousands is better. It is a very lucrative business. I fear for the motives of those who run the trade. They do not do it for the good of the children."

"We are finding kids from all sorts of nationalities," said Detective Sergeant Andy Johnson, a Kent police officer operating out of Dover as part of Operation Reflex, which deals with international organised immigration crime. "There are a lot of unaccompanied arrivals at ports across the UK. It's a bit like turning a stone over - when you start investigating it things come running out."

Sue Gregory, assistant director for children and families at Nottingham city council, said little was known about the five young women in her care: "There's certainly sufficient evidence from all of them that they have been trafficked into this country in an organised way. They are all from different countries."

Over the last year Sally Keeble, Labour MP for Northampton North, has seen 10 people in her surgery that she suspects were trafficked and has one confirmed case, a girl brought from Zimbabwe to be enslaved into domestic servitude.

"I have been surprised at the number of them and the fact that there appears to be clearly commercial channels that bring them in from Africa," said Ms Keeble. "I have not gone out and looked for it. This has just turned up on my doorstep."

Endemic

Debbie Ariyo, of Africans United Against Child Abuse, said: "It's a serious, growing problem and it's an international problem. We don't know who are the key people behind it. There has to be trafficking rings here in the UK because it is very well organised. It's so easy for people to bring children who are not their own children into the UK."

Ms Ariyo believes the domestic labour problem is endemic because it is deeply engrained in west African culture and even the most educated people do not see anything wrong with it. "I think there are now far more children being brought in to the UK for domestic labour and childcare. Everything that's happening here, it's a replication of what's happening over there.

"If people can use children for domestic slaves in Africa, there's no reason why they can't use them in the UK. They think of the expense of paying a nanny. These are people just like me, lawyers, dentists, professional people. They feel you can trust a child, they are not going to run away. It's very covert in nature."

Funmi is clearly disturbed by what has happened to her and though she is 19 now, she seems very much younger. She is seeking asylum in the UK but still she finds people less than willing to believe her story. As one police officer who dealt with her case put it: "If the adults tell us they are related to these children then we believe them."

· Funmi's name has been changed

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