October 09, 2010
Three Romanian women jailed on prostitution charges have had their convictions quashed after it emerged they were smuggled into the country by violent sex traffickers and were just ‘pawns in a game’.
The women, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were each detained and imprisoned for terms of between 10 and 11 months at Manchester Crown Court in May after each admitted two counts of controlling prostitution for gain.
But lawyers for the women, all in their 20s, said they should never have been put on trial because they had been forced into the trade by a violent gang, who tricked them into coming to the UK to work as prostitutes.
Now, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind, three senior judges sitting at the Court of Appeal have declared all three convictions ‘unsafe’, and quashed them. Henry Blaxland QC, for the women, told the court they were living in Birmingham and were arrested there in October 2008 following a raid on a brothel in Manchester the previous day.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) alleged that, although the brothel had been primarily controlled by two Romanian men, the three women helped to control two victims, who had been used as prostitutes.
The three women, two of whom were just 18 at the time, said they had been tricked into coming to Britain before being threatened, and repeatedly beaten and raped by the ringleader of the operation.
Mr Blaxland said it was clear that any alleged involvement in the brothel would have been carried out under duress, and argued that the prosecutions were ‘an abuse of process’.
He said: “The police and prosecution should have taken steps at the time of the arrests of the appellants to establish if they were themselves the victims of sex trafficking.
“The failure to do so constitutes a breach of Article 10 of the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings and a failure to observe the requirement in the CPS’s own guidelines to be proactive in ensuring that proper enquiries are made to establish if a suspect is a trafficked victim.”
He said it was clear the women were ‘pawns in a game’, and that the police should have been chasing those who brought them into the country.
Lord Justice Hughes, sitting with Mr Justice Owen and Mrs Justice Thirlwall, overturned all three women’s convictions and will give reasons for their decision at a later date.
The women, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were each detained and imprisoned for terms of between 10 and 11 months at Manchester Crown Court in May after each admitted two counts of controlling prostitution for gain.
But lawyers for the women, all in their 20s, said they should never have been put on trial because they had been forced into the trade by a violent gang, who tricked them into coming to the UK to work as prostitutes.
Now, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind, three senior judges sitting at the Court of Appeal have declared all three convictions ‘unsafe’, and quashed them. Henry Blaxland QC, for the women, told the court they were living in Birmingham and were arrested there in October 2008 following a raid on a brothel in Manchester the previous day.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) alleged that, although the brothel had been primarily controlled by two Romanian men, the three women helped to control two victims, who had been used as prostitutes.
The three women, two of whom were just 18 at the time, said they had been tricked into coming to Britain before being threatened, and repeatedly beaten and raped by the ringleader of the operation.
Mr Blaxland said it was clear that any alleged involvement in the brothel would have been carried out under duress, and argued that the prosecutions were ‘an abuse of process’.
He said: “The police and prosecution should have taken steps at the time of the arrests of the appellants to establish if they were themselves the victims of sex trafficking.
“The failure to do so constitutes a breach of Article 10 of the Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings and a failure to observe the requirement in the CPS’s own guidelines to be proactive in ensuring that proper enquiries are made to establish if a suspect is a trafficked victim.”
He said it was clear the women were ‘pawns in a game’, and that the police should have been chasing those who brought them into the country.
Lord Justice Hughes, sitting with Mr Justice Owen and Mrs Justice Thirlwall, overturned all three women’s convictions and will give reasons for their decision at a later date.
Mercy for trafficked women wrongly jailed for prostitution - Manchester Evening News
Source: Manchester Evening News
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