31 Mar UK Children Trafficking Is On the Rise
Ryan Mahan, Head of Information, Media & Online Campaigns of ECPAT UK.
By Rafaela Sousa
Child Trafficking in the UK is one of the most serious topics at the moment. Unfortunately, this topic has risen in the UK throughout the years and the amount of children that have been forced into prostitution and slavery has increased into a large amount.
According to the National Crime Agency, the number of sexual exploitation for children has risen up to 155%, in the UK. This number has doubled since last year.
ECPAT UK, is an organisation that works with child trafficking and transnational child abuse and exploitation. In an interview with Ryan Mahan, Head of Information, Media & Online Campaigns of ECPAT UK, he explained that, ‘‘prostitution might be legal in the UK, but not when you force someone, especially children, when in this case they are more vulnerable and more naive to what is happening around them.’’ He further adds, ‘‘the top 5 countries that have children and young women being trafficked into the UK are China, Vietnam, Romania, Nigeria and Slovakia.’’
Children are being trafficked into the UK and then held and forced to do things they don’t want to do and that they shouldn’t do. Those children are treated like slaves by the gangs who are transporting them from their hometown to the UK, a place where they don’t know the language or anything about the country. Many of those children, either girls or boys, are being trafficked into the UK for the production of cannabis.
Mahan expresses his concern by saying, ‘‘it’s sad really, because when the police find those children locked in, they then suspect they are producing cannabis, and they are often arrested and prosecuted as criminals, when in reality it’s not like that, and that’s why our organisation wants to ensure that they are not treated like criminals, but treated as victims of trafficking and modern slavery.”
Mahan explained that as there are a lot of children who are suffering from effects of the experiences they go through, and their organisation always try to push them for a very strong protection for the victim, once identified. They try to teach people on how to identify the victims, so they can help these children and try to give them the best support they can get.
In the UK there are various issues with children that are being trafficked, and it is not only for drugs or prostitution, but also into domestic services, which they are essentially brought to the country to work as a servant in the house and not allowed to leave, many of those children work for long hours, in which makes this subjected as one of the many forms of exploitation abuse. ‘‘There’s a quite wide range of trafficking and exploitation issues that children are subjected in the UK.’’, explains Mahan.
Greg Rogers, who serves for London, England, Police Department stated regarding the vulnerability of children that, “in terms of the UK, traffickers normally choose very vulnerable children to be trafficked into the UK. I’ve seen a lot of cases involving trafficking, and one of the main reasons I believe on why these children do not run away is because they feel trapped into that situation as the traffickers, themselves, have access to their family and every other personal detail about their lives; therefore, they think they have to deal with that in order to their family to remain safe.’’
Despite of all the statistics going around, Rogers believes it’s difficult to maintain figures and statistics on child trafficking, that being the case, he can never tell the amount of percentage that child trafficking has increased over the years.
‘‘In UK, in 2011, there were only 8 cases of convictions for human trafficking, meaning prosecution are getting extremely low.’’ admitted Greg Rogers.
Children are exposed to many causes of physical violence; more than young adults normally are, mainly because they happen to be more vulnerable and weaker against the traffickers. These children are more likely to suffer from physical and psychological abuse, and they might be traumatized for a very long time or for their whole life.
In an interview with an ex-prostitute and trafficker, who just turned 26, she admitted that she was a victim of trafficking when she was younger. ‘‘It’s very hard,’’ she says. ‘‘I don’t even like to think about it, but it’s not something I can just avoid it.
‘‘It’s something I will never be able to forget.’’
The 26 years old, who wanted to be anonymous due to personal issues and insecurities, explained that she was at the age of eleven when she was forcedly moved out of her country, Thailand, into the UK, and throughout most of her childhood and teenager years, they made her believe that her life was perfectly fine.
‘‘It was terrible. They got into my head, making me believing that everything I was going through was normal, when actually it was wrong in all sort of ways. I didn’t know what was to have a family and a life that everybody wants,’’ she says.
She confessed that she remembers when she was forced to move to the UK like it was yesterday and not almost fifteen years ago.
‘‘When I moved into the UK, I didn’t even know where I was, and it was very difficult for me to escape from this situation, as I didn’t speak the language. So, I remember saying to myself that it was better if I stayed with the people who trafficked me, than to be isolated with nowhere to go,’’ she tells me.
By the age of 17, she was found by the police and was able to go to school, but after a year she decided to get into prostitution, as she thought it was the only way she could do to get money.
‘‘It’s something that I will never be able to forget, and that it will probably haunt me during my whole life, but for now, I am trying to live my life, leaving the past behind,’’ she concludes.
