Abstracts: October 2005  

09-Oct-05
Britain's shameless role in helping sex traffickers keep thousands of women in slavery

According to this article:
On Oct. 10, a committee of MPs and peers will debate whether to launch a formal inquiry into the Government's failure to sign the new European agreement aimed at combating human trafficking. MPs on the Joint Committee on Human Rights will argue that the Government is failing to stop "criminal vice masters" who are profiting millions through the growing trade in trafficked women and that thousands of trafficked women and girls are not being protected due to the refusal to grant rescued women the right to stay in Britain long enough to recover from their ordeal.  The Government is accused of turning sex trafficking into an immigration issue.

The unofficial police estimate is that 10,000 illegal immigrants are working as prostitutes in Britain.  The Home Office has no accurate figures.  Senior police say that turf wars are breaking out between gangs due to the demand being less than the supply. 

The article goes on to discuss the police raids in Birmingham (Cuddles Massage Parlour) and Amnesty's complaint that the trafficked women discovered  were treated as illegal immigrants and deported.  (See articles re: raid) 

A Home Office consultant pointed out that the only successful way to tackle sex trafficking is to change the attitude of British men.

Examples of trafficked women are given.

• Goodchild, Sophie, Marie Woolf & Tom Anderson. "Britain's shameless role in helping sex traffickers keep thousands of women in slavery" The Independent. Oct 9, 2005.
  http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article318227.ece

20-Oct-05
It's all very well condemning the sex traffickers, but what about the punters who keep the trade going?
Opinion

In this eloquent opinion piece, Columnist Catherine Bennett comments on the "sophisticated acceptance of the sex industry, in virtually every form that does not involve children or animals."  She refers to the Punternet website on which punters rate prostitutes and quotes "field reports" on the website rating girls whose "English isn't brilliant",  who appear to be underage, etc.

Bennett refers to the recent sentencing of Eastern European sex traffickers Tasim Axhami and Emiljan Begirat and the "warm welcome" they were given by certain parts of British society.  She explains that without men like the Punternet correspondents, there would be no market for trafficked women and children.

Specifics are given of victims' experiences; imprisonment, the profits to pimps, and the language barrier... factors that, in effect, amount to these women being raped by the men who purchase their "services."  Bennett wonders why the men writing "field reports" on Punternet do not wonder whether the girls are being held captive, as in the case of Cuddles in Birmingham, recently raided by police. She points out that the men would perhaps be "encouraged" to wonder this if Harriet Harman's proposal earlier this year to make sex with trafficked women a criminal offence (rape).  That proposal was dismissed as unworkable although the 2003 Sex Offences Act could lead to the charge.  The rape conviction rate in the UK makes Bennett wonder whether a potential rape charge would even be a deterrent.

Bennett concludes as follows:

"In reality, it is probably the extreme powerlessness of these complaisant, identity-free foreign girls, who could never talk back even if they wanted to, that renders them such appealing members of a trade in which women are commodities. The indulgence extended to glossier participants in the lap-dancing end of the sex industry cannot account for the thousands of law-abiding British men for whom the abuse of a trafficked teenager constitutes a satisfying sexual encounter. But perhaps the two things are not wholly unrelated."

• Bennett, Catherine. "It's all very well condemning the sex traffickers, but what about the punters who keep the trade going?" Guardian. Oct. 20, 2005
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column
  0,5673,1596294,00.html

27-Oct-05
Woman remanded on brothel charge
Belfast
South African, Patience Mumba charged with controlling prostitution for gain and obstructing police after raid at St John's wharf.  3 other women arrested, released without charge.  Police warned court that Mumba would flee to ROI if released.

• http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j
  =160601586&p=y6x6xzz9z