Missing: 48 trafficked children taken into care

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Missing: 48 trafficked children taken into care


Paul Lewis
Monday January 15, 2007
The Guardian

Forty-eight children illegally trafficked into Britain have disappeared while in the care of social services. More than half of the 80 children identified in a report on victims of trafficking have gone missing, according to an assessment of care provision in parts of the north-west, north-east and West Midlands.

The authors of the study of five local authorities warned that the 48 were only "the tip of the iceberg", and there are likely to be hundreds of child victims of smuggling who have escaped the radar of the social services. Many are thought to have been returned to the criminal gangs who smuggled them in - often for child "slavery" - or to have fled in fear that they would be recaptured

full article........
http://www.guardian.co.uk/immigration/story/0,,1990495,00.html

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Tuesday, 16th January 2007
Plight of child 'slaves' trafficked through city
David Ottewell

TWENTY-NINE children are suspected of being illegally `trafficked' through Manchester for sexual exploitation, labour exploitation and forced marriage, according to a new report.

The shocking study has led to calls for immediate government action, with one campaigner claiming it highlighted `a contemporary form of slavery'.

The children were all known to social services and the reports' authors warned they could be just `the tip of the iceberg'.
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The Missing Out report found 80 young people were known or suspected of having been trafficked into the country in three places - Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle - over the past three years.

Twenty two were under 16 and 48 have never been traced.

The report was drawn up by ECPAT UK, a coalition of children's charities. Cases included young people from China, Vietnam, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Cameroon, Congo, Somalia, Liberia, Eritrea, Burundi, Uganda, Moldova, Russia and Albania.

Christine Beddoe, director of ECPAT UK, is urging the government to put the safety of children above its well-documented concerns about immigration.

Isolation

She said: "Child victims of trafficking are missing out on accessing essential care because of their isolation, their uncertain immigration status and because they have no-one who can speak on their behalf about their needs.

"Child trafficking is a contemporary form of slavery, and children must get access to safety."

Manchester council said that while it was seen as `a good practice' local authority in terms of dealing with the issue, it was `very difficult' to locate young people who wanted to disappear.

A council spokesman said: "We treat unaccompanied children coming into Manchester from abroad, including those who appear to be trafficked, as looked after children in line with government policy.

"This means an approach that takes into account the problems they have already faced before entering this country as well as potential future difficulties.

"However, if a child from abroad goes missing while in our care, then it can be very difficult to locate them."

http://tinyurl.com/wk9up

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I didn't see the need to start a new thread on this age old, world wide issue..........


posted 10-15-11
Joy vanished into Britain's child-sex trade - why aren't we looking for her?A terrifying report, by Mark Townsend, on the immigrant girls vanishing into Britain's sex trade

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On the morning of 15 March Joy Vincent left Croydon's Gilroy Court Hotel, and then she disappeared. No one knows what happened next: whom she met, where she was taken, whether she even went left or right. She had no family, no apparent friends, no one whom the 17-year-old could trust.

Little is known about Joy. All we have is a handful of biographical snippets from her brief interviews with police and social services. Conducted in broken English – her first language is Edo – they explain that she was born on 13 July 1993 into the poverty of rural Nigeria. It was a far-from-innocent childhood. "Her parents attempted to sell her to an 85-year-old man whom she did not know," one transcript read.

Despite the austere language of the documents – a summation of police case notes leaked to the ******* – they portray a resourceful, determined but acutely vulnerable figure. They chronicle Joy's escape to another Nigerian town where she survived by selling newspapers on the street. There, she met the man who would change her life. From the documents it is evident the character, referred to only as Steve, is a human trafficker.

He promised Joy a new life in Europe. "She agreed and got on a plane with him," reads a police entry. Aged 14, she entered the UK, but the UK Borders Agency has no documentation of her arrival. For the first three years of Joy's life in England there is absolutely no record of her existence.

According to the interviews, her fresh start soon soured. Upon arriving in the UK, Steve confiscated her passport, an established trafficking tactic to augment control over victims.

What happened next is covered in the briefest of detail, but Joy managed to "lose" Steve during the following years, finding work as a church cleaner before sliding into Britain's vast but secretive underground sex industry to "feed herself and survive".

Joy claimed to have merely responded to an advert for work at a Croydon massage parlour at the start of 2011, but the sordid surroundings where she was found, aged 17, in the days before the interviews were conducted – with its Fort Knox obsession with security, its reinforced doors and barred windows – suggest she was a captive sex slave.

In the month Joy went missing there were 491 unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Croydon and it is these, say police, who are most vulnerable to traffickers. No one knows how many vanish without trace into the sex trade, but local campaigners estimate that up to two trafficking victims can be found for each of the borough's 40 or so brothels. In London, a further 2,103 illegal massage parlours and sex shops have been identified by police intelligence. Few of these victims ever escape. Had it not been for a phonecall on Saturday 6 March this year it is almost certain Joy would never have been noticed.

Clearly anxious, the female caller described a teenage girl detained "against her will at an address in Croydon".

SNIPPED  MORE>>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/oct/16/britains-child-sex-trade?newsfeed=true