What Is The Scale Of The Problem?
The usual impression one has of people being traded for sex in western countries is that the victims are usually young foreign women from an undeveloped country who have been trafficked into a western country and made to work as prostitutes. Sometimes the victims may be foreign children. However, UK children’s charity Barnado’s worked with 609 sexually exploited children last year, of whom 90 seemed to have been trafficked within the UK. Figures compiled by the UK Human Trafficking Centre, though, are much lower. The Centre’s figures for April 2009 to March 2010 reveal that only 38 Britons were registered as victims.
Lack Of Accurate Figures On Human Trafficking
Accurate figures for human trafficking are hard to come by. A police report into sex trafficking in England and Wales due to be published soon has already been criticized by a senior police source as being “amateurish”. Of particular concern was that this study, named Project Acumen, found no case of human trafficking from Africa even though a national shelter for trafficked victims is full of African victims. Trafficking of Britons was not investigated by Project Acumen.
How British Children Are Lured Into The Sex Trade
According to British newspaper The Independent, which had access to the figures from the UK Human Trafficking Centre and Project Acumen, most of the British victims are between 12 and 16 and may have family and friends who are reduced to despair by how the children are lured into the trade and how much their behavior and personalities change as a result. Although the traffickers may be part of a gang, usually the children are targeted by one person, who first wins their trust and grooms them for sex before they are pimped to others and forcibly transported round the country.
The Independent quotes Chief Superintendent Tony Blockley, head of crime in the Derbyshire police force: “We’ve always thought of this as a problem that comes from overseas, whereas this is actually happening on our doorsteps. The scale of it is enormous; Derby isn’t a hotbed of this – it’s just one town that’s decided to look at this as a problem. This is a new area of policing for us. As soon as you lift the stone up, you start to find things, but people weren’t lifting up the stone before. These are the kids that slip under the radar. Victims come from chaotic backgrounds; they are often in children’s homes. As they get more involved in the network, the grooming lessens and the abuse increases.”
Think About It
How can children be protected from sex abuse and the sex trade? How can families be helped to protect their own children, and to detect problems early? How vigilant should people be so as not to miss things happening under their own nose, instead of assuming that a problem usually lies elsewhere?
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