My name is Njida and I am from Nigeria. I was brought up by a woman who found me when my parents abandoned me. I never knew my real parents.

When I was about nineteen years old my life changed, a lot. The woman who looked after me was killed by members of a cult. I witnessed the murder and knew I could never return home again, as the cult members would try to kill me too. I did not return to the village and later I heard that they had burned down my house, and were hunting for me.

Internal trafficking

Sarah aged 17 had been accommodated by Social Services. She was regularly reported missing to the Police after going missing from care. On her return Sarah informed workers that she had been staying in a number of different addresses in South Wales. She describes being picked up by different males who she had been introduced to by her ‘boyfriend’ who would then transfer her to a different male in various locations across South Wales for the purpose of her performing sexual acts. Sarah also reported being taken to different address in Birmingham and Manchester by two Kurdish males.

Yin was born in a province of China. Her parents died when she was young. She was adopted by a friend of the family and was prevented from going back to school and was forced to do housework and look after the younger children in the household.

At age 15 she was told she was going to Europe to work. The family friend prepared the necessary documents. Yin was put on a train and told she would be met by a man in Moscow.

She was taken, along with a number of other young people to a house where she stayed for about 2 days. She was instructed to hand over her documents. She was moved over the next several months through different countries on trucks, goods trains and by foot. They finally stopped in France. Here she was raped before being put on another lorry aboard of ferry.

“I didn’t have the best start in life… my family abused me and I was raped by strangers. School was really difficult and by 12 I’d stopped going. I was taken into care and had loads of carers who said they couldn’t cope with me.

Then I went to children’s homes… some were far away from my own home. I got involved with older men who I thought would be my friend or love me; they gave me alcohol and drugs and I could stay with them and not go back to the unit. I had sex with them.

The girl told her Welsh Refugee Council (WRC) case worker that she had been sold by her foster parents to a female trafficker who locked her up with other girls. She was then sold on from man to another, being made to watch videos of children being beaten until she came to the UK.

On arrival to the UK, at Heathrow, the white man, accompanying her was spooked and told her to wait in the toilets. She hid in the toilets for 3 hours, before being picked up by security and being told to make a claim for asylum.

Luan Plakici had trafficked young women, forcing them to work as prostitutes. His activities were discovered after one of his victims escaped and went to the police. Victims were brought back from overseas to give evidence at his trial. He was convicted on 22 December 2003 on fifteen counts of assisting unlawful immigration, living on prostitution, kidnapping, procuring a girl to have unlawful sexual intercourse and incitement to rape.

Plakici was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but following the CPS referring the case to the Attorney General as an example of an ‘unduly lenient sentence’ the Court of Appeal increased the sentence to 23 years (29 April 2004).

H reports that in April 2005 her brother had a motor cycle accident and her family got into debt to pay for his medical care. In May 2007, ‘H’ began a long journey to the UK on the understanding that she would be married to a man of Chinese decent and be able to earn money to send back to her family. ‘H’ alleges the following. She left China and flew to Moscow on her own passport. Once there her passport was taken from her and she was locked in a basement by a gang of men. Then she and about ten other women were forced to walk to Poland by the gang. She was arrested at the Polish border and detained in an immigration centre for about a year by the Polish authorities. She was released in July 2008, she sought out the local Chinese community and was held captive and repeatedly raped by a Chinese man until her family paid for her release in September 2008. She was then taken to Italy and handed over to another gang. Again her family had to pay for her release and then she was provided with a passport in another name and a ticket to the U.K.

Operation Adject began in September 2007 following a co-coordinated national search for the victim. The Lithuanian woman was 17 years old at the time of entry into the UK in July 2007, an already vulnerable female who was recruited from a children’s home in Lithuania, having been promised work as a cleaner or in a shop. She had arrived via Dover Port with three or four other women and was taken to a brothel in Manchester and handed over to a member of the gang, Albanian Xhevdet Cikaj, who told her she would have to work as a prostitute. When she refused and asked to return to Lithuania she was imprisoned, terrorised, and forced to comply. When she attempted to escape she was beaten and threatened by Xhevdet Cikaj and Lavdrim Cikaj. After being forced to work as a prostitute in Manchester she was ‘sold on’ to two other members of the gang in Newport for £2,000. Lithuanian-born Edita Tavoraite and Tafil Kadria told the victim she would pay off her ‘debt’ by working as a prostitute. At some point when in Wales, she contacted the home and said that she did not want to be where she was and that she wanted to come back. The woman was rescued from a premises in Newport by local police, who worked with SOCA’s Vulnerable Persons Team to ensure the victim was cared for and referred to the Poppy Project in London.

The experience of one woman, enslaved by traffickers and and shuttled across Europe to serve the sex trade, highlights the need for urgent reform of the law

When they assessed her case, British immigration officials knew that Katya, a vulnerable 18-year-old from Moldova, had been trafficked and forced into prostitution, but ruled that she would face no real danger if she was sent back.

Marinela Badea was a 17-year-old student in Romania when she was forced from her home and plunged into a nightmare of brutal sex crimes

When police turned up at the Shangri-La, it was quiet. Marinela Badea was catching up on sleep and was awoken by the commotion. Minutes later, on a grey Manchester morning, she and half a dozen other women were handcuffed and marched out of the red-brick massage parlour in Openshaw in the east of the city.