Exactly five months after Bob Tooby took up his role as Wales’ first anti-human trafficking czar, the former Chief Superintendent of Cardiff told Wales on Sunday: “I want the criminals to know – wherever they are – we will be coming for them.”
The former top cop has been travelling the length and breadth of the UK to look at how trafficking works and what police and charities are doing to tackle the vile trade.
He said many victims are being smuggled in to Wales’ ports from Ireland right under the noses of border authorities.
“We have got two million people coming into Holyhead each year, plus half a million coming into places like Milford Haven and Swansea and traffickers are choosing these ports as a route into Britain,” he warned.
“It can be almost impossible to tell if someone is being trafficked. Their trafficker might be a family member, someone travelling with them, or standing near them.
“That is why I have sat down with the authorities in charge and with the charities and we have started to look at what the common trends are.”
He said people were almost certainly being brought in through ports including Holyhead, Fishguard, Milford Haven and Swansea, as well as through airports.
Others fall victim to internal trafficking, where they are brought to Wales from other parts of the UK.
“Some traffickers are choosing Ireland as an easy option,” he said.
“They might bring victims into Ireland, flying them in on a false passport with the promise of jobs in hotels and cafes.
“They are not necessarily unknown to the victims. In some cases, they might be as close as brothers, cousins, other relatives or family friends.
“They will travel with them and sometimes they will groom them back in their home countries saying things like, ‘I’ve been to Britain and look at me, look at my nice new house and my new car’.
“Sometimes they even bring their unwitting victims over here legitimately with legitimate passports. It is not until they get here that they are forced into slavery.
“It is an easy option for these traffickers to stop off in Wales for a week or a month.”
Official figures show just 34 victims of human trafficking have been reported to police across the UK since 2009, but Bob said the real number could be many more.
Victims of the modern-day slave trade come from all over the world, but most commonly from places like Nigeria, Vietnam, China and former communist countries in eastern Europe like Romania and Slovakia.
Many fear they would face deportation if they asked for help or that corrupt officials would hand them back – a myth encouraged by traffickers keen to scare their victims into complying with their demands.
Others do not ask for help because they fear what their tormentors might do if they found out about it, with many being told their families will be at risk.
Bob said: “When you talk about trafficking, most people automatically think of sexual exploitation, but this can be dangerous because there are many other forms of trafficking out there.
“If a person is coerced, deceived or forced in order to be taken from one place to another and subjected to threats and suffering as a result, it is trafficking.
“There is no average experience for a victim. Some will be brought to the country for sexual exploitation or domestic servitude – or a mixture of both.
“A victim of labour trafficking might be working in a sweat shop, a takeaway or in a hotel, and they will be going through a completely different experience to a child, who might be forced into domestic servitude before falling victim to sexual exploitation.
“But what they have in common is that they are all victims of human trafficking and the people who are committing the crimes have no morals whatsoever.
“These people target those who are most vulnerable in our society.
“It is a myth to say that traffickers are all part of organised crime gangs – they are just as likely to be a group of three and as likely to be Welsh or English as they are to be Albanian.
“They see their victims simply as goods to be bought or sold and they will coldly use them in whatever way will make them the most money.
“But I want them to know – wherever they are – we will be coming for them.”
High-profile trafficking cases uncovered in Wales in recent years have included:
Thomas Carroll, who controlled a prostitution network of trafficked Nigerian women in Ireland from the Pembrokeshire village of Castlemartin. The 49-year-old, from Bagenalstown, Co Carlow, was last year jailed for seven years and had £2m assets seized;
A council investigation that heard Eastern European gangs were trafficking women into Cardiff in a trade that saw up to 60 women involved in the city’s sex trade at any one time; and
The jailing of two Albanian gang members for a total of 10 years in 2005 for smuggling a 21-year-old Lithuanian into Cardiff to be sold for £5,000 to work in brothels. The judge labelled the sick trade “21st century slavery”.
In Wales, charities like Black Association of Women Step Out (Bawso), Women’s Aid and Amnesty International are working to help victims of trafficking know where to get help.
According to Bob – who has previously raised concerns about a rise in sex trafficking to the UK coinciding with next year’s London Olympics – Wales is in a unique position to fight the war against trafficking because agencies, charities and authorities in the country already have tried and tested ways of working together.
“Can Wales make a difference?” he said.
“Yes, it can make a massive difference.
“In 12 to 18 months, I hope we will have built up enough awareness so that there won’t be a public service provider who is not aware of what to do or who to contact if they come across a case of trafficking.”
He hopes leaflets explaining telltale signs of trafficking and who to contact will be in “every GP surgery and post office in Wales”.
Responsibility also needs to lie with business owners, landlords and even neighbours, who suspect trafficking might be taking place, he said.
“If I say domestic servitude you might say, ‘what on earth?’.
“But we call it the Cinderella system, where two children in a house go to school and one child doesn’t.
“It could be possible that child is a victim of trafficking.
“I would hope that neighbours would report this, but we see cases where it has been going on for years and no one has noticed or said a thing.
“Sometimes these children are being forced to work up to 18 hours a day.
“That is not acceptable, and it is time we all did something about it.”
If you suspect someone is being trafficked you can call the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC) on 0114 252 3891, or call Crimestoppers free, and anonymously, on 0800 555111
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