-Caveat Lector-
Sex and slavery
http://www.observer.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,901001,00.html
Police estimate that 10,000 illegal immigrants are working as prostitutes in
Britain today. Many are from Eastern Europe, brought here by ruthless
Balkan pimps who sell them into a life of enforced vice for as little as £150.
John Gibb travels from the mountains of Moldova to the saunas of King's
Cross and Chingford on the trail of the human traffickers
John Gibb
Sunday February 23, 2003
The Observer
Hidden away in the bleak back streets of the Moldavian city of Chisinau is a
sanctuary where damaged women are brought to recover. At first sight it
appears to be just another anonymous communist-era tenement among a
collection of rundown buildings, but glance through the plate-glass doors
and you will see the shadowy figures of men in uniform, there to prevent
unwelcome visitors from reaching the interior of the building. The security
is a reassurance to the residents and their protectors, because this is
where women who have been trafficked from Moldova into the West are
brought after repatriation. The refuge is funded by the International
Organisation for Migration (IOM). It holds 20 patients and is always full.
More than 1,000 victims have been sheltered here in the past two years.
I went to Moldova with Paul Holmes, a former inspector in the Met, for six
years operational head of the Vice Unit at Charing Cross. Holmes works as
a consultant for the IOM. He's a big man, round shoulders, naval beard,
hard eyes - looks at you like a boxer. Holmes has said many times that the
influx of women from Eastern Europe into the UK vice trade is out of
control. 'Over 90 per cent of the women who come back have been victims
of deception, usually with false job promises, and have been forced into
sexual slavery,' he says. 'They're all damaged, many badly. It's a huge
problem here.'
Chisinau is surrounded in the suburbs by apartments piled like blocks of
concrete Lego. Kiosks sell cheap and lethal cigarettes dumped by the big
tobacco companies, and a bottle of brandy costs a quid. In the early
evening, the city streets seem half empty and the traffic is a sparse
mixture of ancient cars and horse- drawn carts. The prime minister, unable
to live on his meagre salary, works part time for a baby-food company.
Government posters warning girls to be wary of promises of employment
overseas litter the walls of the city.
The women in the IOM shelter have been expelled from the Middle East,
Europe, South America. Some have been kicked out of Britain, detained by
immigration and sent home 24 hours later. Many have been tortured.
Holmes gives me an example. 'One of the girls here was picked up by the
Caribinieri in a car park in Bologna. Her pimp had taken out her front
teeth to make it easier for her to give oral sex. She is 16 and comes from a
village 30 miles from the border with Yugoslavia. She believed she was going
to work in a restaurant. When they brought her in, she was naked and had
been badly beaten. She was deeply traumatised, unable to speak. When
her family learnt what had happened, her father shot himself.
'Very few make it back after they have been abducted, and many will never
fully recover. IOM gives them the medical treatment they need,
psychological help, counselling, group therapy if they want it. We train
them to be independent and find work by passing on entrepreneurial skills
which are vital in a country where education is cursory, unemployment
endemic and 30 per cent of the population has walked out.
'It has become part of the culture that young females migrate and try to
support their families from overseas. Moldavian women are known for their
looks, which is why they are in such demand by organised criminals. They
are the tangible victims of the trade in human beings.'
Fred Larsson arrives for a meeting with Holmes after driving from Kiev,
through the rogue state of Transnistria and across Moldova. Operational
director of the IOM in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, Larsson is a spare,
ex-military Swede; short hair, bit of a whippet. He is not happy. 'You won't
believe this,' he says, 'but nine months ago, an Anti-Trafficking Unit from
the Interior Ministry in Kiev sends a request via Interpol to a police HQ in
England. I can't tell you where. They want information on a language
school operating near the south coast. Nine months later and we've heard
nothing. It happens all the time.'
Language schools are often used to gain access into the UK by criminals
trafficking in women. An application to join a course by a 'student' in
Eastern Europe is accepted by the school and an enrolment form sent.
The student takes it to the British Embassy and applies for a visa. When she
arrives in the UK, she is met by the trafficker and disappears.
The Ukrainian police believe the school is a cover for organised criminals
dealing in vice and child prostitution. Holmes says that the inquiry would
have been a simple matter of a few hours' work by a single officer, and
should have been in Kiev within a week. But now the impetus has gone out
of the investigation and there is a residue of bad will.
'Every year,' says Larsson, tens of thousands of women leave the Ukraine to
look for a better life. Most slip illegally away, enticed by promises of
security and a golden dawn in the EU or the Middle East. The traffickers
operating in Ukrainian villages spirit the gullible into the EC, where they
are sold, their papers taken away and they become stateless and
vulnerable to coercion.
'In the West, there is little understanding of the horror of the
dispossessed. When Immigration picks them up in the UK, for instance,
they are flown home within 24 hours. They are often met by traffickers at
the airport and simply taken back to Britain where little effort is made to
trace the criminals who have exploited them. In the Ukraine, the ebb and
flow of the population has destabilised society. Victims in their thousands
suffer from sexually transmitted diseases and psychological damage.
Ukrainians believe that their women are victims of a crime legitimised by
the torpid indifference of countries such as Britain.'
'The only police unit dedicated to counter trafficking in the UK,' says
Holmes, ' is my old mob, the Vice Unit at Charing Cross.' Last July, an
Albanian pimp named Kaidu was convicted and jailed for the rape and
corruption of a 14-year-old Romanian girl after a long investigation by the
Vice Unit. But convictions for trafficking are rare in the UK. 'The provincial
squads have been closed down,' says Holmes, 'and there isn't the will to
tackle illegal prostitution because chief constables haven't the resources
to deal with it. Britain is rife with women and children forced into the vice
industry against their will while we're doing nothing about it.'
Larsson and Holmes agree the only way to convict traffickers is to
persuade their victims to give evidence. This is virtually impossible in the
UK, where victims are treated as illegal immigrants and rarely encouraged
to complain or give evidence. Investigations against traffickers are
expensive and time consuming and, without a material witness, there is a
high risk of failure. A draft EU directive that would allow police to apply for
30-day residency permits while victims consider whether to testify, is,
according to sources within the police, unlikely to be signed by Britain or
France.
By contrast, the IOM has worked with the Ukrainian Ministry of the
Interior to recruit and train 176 police in dedicated anti-trafficking units
throughout the country. The USB, once known as the Soviet Secret Police
and, arguably, the toughest squad of coppers in the world, deals with the
'more difficult' cases - in particular the Albanian gangs which are deeply
involved in the trade.
In the past 12 months, the Ukrainians have brought 260 prosecutions and
launched hundreds of investigations. Larsson says: 'We signed up to the
Palermo Protocol in 2001. It is designed to prevent, suppress and punish
trafficking in people - especially women and children. The trouble is,
although the EU are signatories, Britain and France still consider
"trafficked" women and children as illegal immigrants while, in truth, they
are victims of a horrendous crime. That's why I'm angry. I can't understand
why the British won't cooperate.'
I traced a girl who had been expelled from the UK and passed through the
Moldavian refuge. Desperate to escape relentless poverty, she had applied
for a job looking after the elderly in Italy, but had been abducted and
taken to Belgrade where two Serbs 'seasoned' her - a pimping term for the
technique of raping and beating girls until their resistance disappears.
Thin, black hair with a yellow strip where the dye is growing out, Irina sits
on a wooden chair, while a friend translates her story. 'She was taken
across the Serbian border to Belgrade, to the Mala Romansa, a bar owned
by Tsitsa, a Serbian woman. Ten girls entertained their clients in three
rooms at the top of the building and were kept locked in. There was no
hot water, little food and drink. The windows were barred. Tsitsa claimed
she had paid $1,000 for her and that she must pay it back. Any dispute,
Tsitsa beat the girls. After a month in Belgrade, Irina was sold on and taken
through Macedonia to Albania and on to the Adriatic coast. In September
2001, she arrived by boat on a beach south of Brindisi. She had become
the chattel of Zef, a pimp who had acquired her in the port of Vlore. They
travelled by train to Paris, where for a few days she was put to work on
the streets above Port Maillot. No one examined their papers. With
passports borrowed from Zef's Albanian relatives in Nanterre, they took
the Eurostar to London and on 25 January 2001 emerged unchallenged into
the concourse of Waterloo Station.
'Irina stayed in a flat in Edmonton, north London, with Zef's cousin. The
windows were barred and she was in a room with another girl from the
Ukraine. She was there maybe two days and she was taken to a sauna near
King's Cross where she met a man called Carlos, who agreed that she could
work for him. She was paid £60 by the customer for sex, gave £20 to Carlos
and the rest to Zef. There were other Moldavian girls there.'
Irina was working seven days a week and passing all her earnings to Zef.
She was arrested in a raid on the flat in Edmonton and interviewed by the
Vice Unit and Immigration officials who sent her straight back to Chisinau,
where she was admitted into the IOM clinic. She has refused to return to
the UK to give evidence against her pimp, who has, understandably,
disappeared.
The unofficial estimate within the Metropolitan Police is that there are
10,000 illegal immigrants working as prostitutes in the UK. The Association
of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) says that it is a problem largely confined to
the capital, but my own research into the websites advertising prostitutes
throughout the UK shows that many hundreds of Eastern European and
Asian women are working throughout the country.
'There is constant movement of illegal immigrants from Eastern into
Western Europe,' says Paul Holmes. 'The UK is full of Moldavian, Romanian
and Ukrainian girls. We don't know exactly how many are here illegally
because it's impossible to produce accurate statistics when there are no
records, but we are certain there are thousands of Eastern European girls
working in Britain without the right to be here. A small example: if you
take the 70 walk-up flats being worked by prostitutes in Soho, we know
that 90 per cent of them are Eastern Europeans being run by Albanian
pimps. Arrest a girl and her pimp and they are immediately replaced.'
The Metropolitan Clubs and Vice Unit was formed in 1975 after the police
corruption scandals of the 60s. Similar specialist units outside London,
dedicated to the protection of oppressed women involved in the vice
industry, have been disbanded as provincial police forces prioritise their
resources. 'Prostitution has become acceptable throughout the British
Isles,' says Chief Superintendent Simon Humphreys, who commands the
unit, 'and this attitude is reflected in the approach of some provincial
constabularies to enforcement of the law. Vice is attractive to the
professional criminal because the returns are high and the penalties low.
The recommended tariff for pimping handed down by the Court of Appeal
is two years; peanuts compared to the penalties for drug dealing. If you
control a woman on the game, you have a long-term and reliable source of
income which can be used to finance other serious crime.'
Alenka's story is a disturbing example of what is happening on a wide scale
in the UK. Persecuted by a vicious pimp from the age of 15, she sought
sanctuary at a youth project in east London. The Vice Unit provided
protection and encouraged her to give evidence against her persecutors. I
met her while she was in the care of the social services and under the
protection of an outreach worker from a youth organisation.
This is what she told me: 'I am from Timisoara in the county of Timis, I am
16 years old. I left Romania on 18 February 2001 and I arrived in Beserica
Alba in Yugoslavia the next day. I was involved in import-export between
Romania and Yugoslavia with my brother.'
The outreach worker, a tall, angular woman in jeans and an English football
jersey smiles, 'You mean you were selling black-market cigarettes?'
'Yes. Some men came while I was there and they forced me to get into
their car. They were Albanians and they drove me to a hotel in
Montenegro. After a while, an Albanian man arrived and bought me. He
took me to the border with Albania. He drove me to a place called Shiak,
where he sold me to another Albanian for 3,000 Lek (£150). This man took
me to a hotel, told me he wanted to have sex, and, when I refused, drew a
pistol and forced me.
'The police came to the hotel on an inspection and said that I was working
as a prostitute and put me in a prison. It was known as "313" and was in
Tirana, the capital. After two weeks, I was given a lawyer and went to
court.'
I watched the girl, tense in her chair, staring at her feet, chain smoking.
After a time, as she told her story, she became distressed, and, while the
outreach worker took her out of the room, I waited in the silence which
seemed to hang in the air like a fog. When she came back, clutching a cup
of coffee, she told me about the lawyer, who took her to a hotel and sold
her on for 2,000 Lek to a man who drove her to Vlore on the Adriatic
coast. At Vlore she had stayed with a woman called Vera, who told her
that she had a daughter in London. 'She said that she has a friend who
would go with me to England.'
There was an inevitability about Alenka's descent into tragedy. It seemed
unimaginable that someone so young should experience such things.
Everyone she met made money from her. Vera's friend Tomas arrived with a
fake passport and they took a boat to Italy and drove to Venice, then to
Belgium. The girl sighed as if she had told the story many times. 'When we
arrived at Vlissingen to board a ship, the Dutch police took the passport
away and returned it after a while. They said, "OK, go." At Sheerness,
Vera's husband Stanislav was waiting for us in his car and we drove to a flat
in Kitchener Road in Forest Gate, east London.
'Stanislav and Magdelena, Vera's daughter from another marriage, were
lovers. They shared the bedroom while I slept on a sofa in the sitting room.
That night, Stanislav had an argument with Magdelena and beat her. She
was badly injured in the mouth and her face was swollen. The next
evening I went with Stanislav to collect her from the sauna and as she was
getting into the car, she handed over a bunch of £20 and £50 banknotes.
As he drove, Stanislav again struck Magdelena with his hand. I was sitting in
the back of the car and I saw him hit her twice. I was frightened.
'Stanislav told me that I owed him £3,000 for having brought me here to
London. And he took me to a sauna to work. During this time, my name was
Angela and I worked 10 flats and six saunas. On average, I earnt £300 a day,
sometimes more. Once I made £700. I gave all the money to Stanislav.'
We broke again for a few minutes and went outside the youth centre for a
breath of fresh air. The girl told me how, one day, Magdelena had written
down a customer's telephone number and hid it in the bag where she kept
her condoms. She had found Stanislav several days later going through the
bag on the floor in the bedroom.
'He said, "What's this?" 'I swore to him that I knew nothing and he slapped
me, took a knife from the table which he put to my throat and said, "Ti
amazo" ("I kill you" in Italian). Magdelena had planted the number on me
because she was jealous because Stanislav did not beat me. I decided to
leave Stanislav once and for all.'
By now, although only 15, the girl had become streetwise beyond her
years and was working in a sauna with a Kosovan girl called Vali. 'She took
me with her to Wood Green and I lived with her and worked as a
prostitute until February 2002, when one of her Albanian friends told me
that Stanislav was willing to pay £10,000 to kill me.'
What followed was a familiar Balkan confrontation. Another girl in the
sauna had recognised Alenka and phoned Magdelena. Stanislav arrived soon
after with two friends. When she refused to go with them, he drew a knife
and took her by the hair and pulled the gold chain from her neck. She
describes the beating in a low monotone: 'He hit me on the back of the
head and on my arm and on my knees and I was badly hurt. They dragged
me from the sauna and took me back to Forest Gate.
'We then travelled to Manchester, because Stanislav was frightened that
my new Albanian friends would follow me and try to kill him. He beat me
again and made me swear on my brother that I would not leave again. He
bought a pistol, about 20cm long, which carried eight bullets. He said it
was a present for me if I leave him again and he demanded sex, and I
always agreed because I was frightened he'd murder me if I refused.'
Finally, on 18 April 2002, Irina went to Welwyn Garden City to talk to an
English girl she had befriended at one of the many saunas she had worked
in. The girl put her in touch with "Liz" at the youth project and the Vice
Unit was called in.
Since the interview, Alenka has absconded to Holland and disappeared.
Her pimp, Stanislav, has been convicted of burglary, but, without a witness
or a victim, the police are unable to charge him with rape and assault.
'Alenka's tragedy is commonplace,' says Simon Humphreys. 'The Balkan
criminal, becoming familiar in Britain, is of great concern to us. There is no
organised Albanian mafia, the problem is more dangerous than that - it is a
loose affiliation of small groups of ruthless, violent and unpredictable men
joined together by blood or tribe. If we don't make an effort to bring them
to heel, they will become the future of crime in this country.'
Three years ago, the Home Office started a review of the Sexual Offences
Act which is expected to become law before the summer recess. There
are many welcome initiatives in it, but while the interminable drafting has
continued, the UK has been flooded with criminals and prostitutes from
Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. Simon Humphreys says that vice-related
crime will increase dramatically during the next five years. 'Professional
criminals thrive on the exploitation of weak law enforcement, and the
introduction of meaningful anti-trafficking legislation is long overdue. But
without the resources to tackle this problem properly, I'm afraid Alenka's
terrible story will become all too familiar in Britain.'
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
Forwarded for your information. The text and intent of the article
have to stand on their own merits.
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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