Police bust sex slavery ring near elementary school | ksdk.com

Source:  ksdk.com

Westminister, CA (CNN) -- Just across the street from an elementary school near Los Angeles was a house holding alleged sex slaves from China.

However, this is not an isolated case.

The Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force busted an international prostitution ring called "Operation China Doll".

For many Westminister Police, this was the culmination of a 7 month investigation.

Four suspects were arrested and accused of pimping and pandering as many as ten women from rural China.

Police believe they were the victims of human trafficking, based on control with immigration status. They say the women were brought here on visitor visas.

"They didn't speak any English. They were in these brothels where there was no transportation to and from. They were dropped off at these locations and left for days at a time with no clothing, very little food. A lot of times they went right from the airport directly to a brothel."

Inside the brothels, police found boxes of condoms and cash hidden in the freezer. In the suspected pimp's home, there were pregnancy test kits and thousands of dollars stuffed into marked envelopes.

"The victims are sleeping with as many as 10 men a day and they were charging 160 per person." 

Watch the video in the player above to view the entire story.
http://www.ksdk.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=1684318361001

CNN

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Part Two: Svay Pak’s glimmers of hope (with video)

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Part+Svay+glimmers+hope+with+video/6350093/story.html

Source: The Vancouver Sun

By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver Sun March 23, 2012

More Images »

A rape cell in Svay Pak.

Photograph by: Courtesy Tim Doak, www.timdoak.me.uk

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Part+Svay+glimmers+hope+with+video/6350093/story.html#ooid=tnM3g4NDqC3N-tGVkW1Gx-NhqE9A7MVR
Svay Pak is a notorious village where up until a few years ago children were openly sold to pedophiles including many sex tourists. Bridget and Don Brewster, co-founders of Agape International Missions, moved there a year ago. They do what they can to disrupt the child sex trade and provide a safe haven to kids still being exploited. Bridget talks about what it's like to live


PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Svay Pak is a hellhole, a dirty, stinking slum of about 4,000 people. It’s also notorious for being one of few places where men can pay for sex with children as young as three.

When Pastor Chantha Hem, his wife, Bunthan, and their baby son came here three years ago from Phnom Penh, they moved into a former brothel. Their pink room, upstairs, had been reserved for the raping of virgins.

Downstairs, there were bare-walled cells with wooden slatted beds and sleeping mats that had been rented out by the hour, mostly to foreign men who wanted to have sex with children.

“I am not just a pastor,” Hem says. “We try to stop child trafficking. Sometimes we confront traffickers and gangsters. This is my challenge ...

“The foreigners come night and day. Sometimes I pretend like a pimp and we have communications with them and we try to record it and we try to get information to give to the police. It is very dangerous. But we have to try to stop this.”

The pastor says 90 per cent of an estimated 2,000 children in this village have been sold to a pimp or a brothel owner and been sexually abused.

“Most are abandoned by their parents and live with their grandparents or a neighbour or some other relative. The moms are gone ... It’s very difficult to forgive the parents.”

Among his 250 parishioners, Hem says 12 or 13 are former brothel owners — both men and women. 

Among their business partners, he says, were government officials and even army officers.

“They told me that when you sell children who are five, six, seven or eight years old, you feel shame. 

Your heart feels guilty ... But now they come to church. Some are doing good [things] and some are still doing bad things.”

The village, however, has changed.

Because of Hem’s work and other programs funded by Vancouver-based Ratanak International and California-based Agape International Missions, children now have a safe place to go during the day. 

When AIM took applications for the school it runs, 2,000 children applied along with six villagers in their 80s who had never had the chance before.

The general health of the community has been improved because of AIM’s twice-weekly medical clinic and an annual dental clinic, staffed by American volunteers who fly in and work for a week.

But it hasn’t ended the sexual exploitation. It’s driven it underground, making it harder to detect.

“During the day, you see many girls here. At night, you hardly see any. The brothels, they keep them secretly and move them around from one place to another. Some of them go mostly by [motorcycle] to Phnom Penh at night. But from here they are also sent to Siem Reap and Sihanoukville,” says Hem.

Dangerous

As rewarding as the work is, it may get the pastor killed.

“Many times people have tried to kill me. Right now, every night, they stone my door. They are drunk and have been taking drugs. ‘Come out, we want to kill you,’ they say. I trust Jesus. God has called us to come here and I believe God will protect us.

“Sometimes I feel afraid. When I pray to God I ask him to protect us.”

Ever since he arrived, Hem’s had death threats.

People accuse him of coming here to ruin their business — the business of selling in children.

According to the 2011 U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report — which specifically mentions the child sex trafficking ring in Svay Pak — that business is being run by people “believed to be well-connected and protected from effective government investigation and prosecution.”

The threats against Hem intensified after he rescued two five-year-old girls — one in 2010 and the other late last year — by notifying police that both were about to be sold into sex slavery.

The most recently rescued girl is now in a safe house. Her mother is in jail.

Hem finds it hard to accept his neighbours who sell their own children. But the foreigners who come here to buy them trouble him more.

“They are so rich and they use their money in the wrong way. Why don’t they use their money to help the people? Why don’t they use their money for good? This is the wicked thing in Cambodia.”

Daily kids camp

One of the first things the pastor did when he moved here in 2006 was set up a daily kids camp, a safe place for children to come, play games, sing songs and forget even for a few hours the misery of their lives.

At first, only 16 kids showed up.

“People would not allow their kids to come. So, I would knock on their doors day by day and more and more would come together. At first it was very hard work. We didn’t know anybody and they don’t know Jesus, they had their own culture and religion. They were used to gambling, alcohol and abusing girls.

“At first, I tried to build a relationship between them and us. I would go and hang around every day. We would try to help them. Even if he’s a bad guy, I kept telling myself that God still loves him.”

Soon, the number of kids had doubled. Now, there are days when as many as 500 children attend kids club or the twice-weekly medical clinic — or simply show up to watch cartoons and have some lunch or a snack. Attendance at Sunday church services also increased, to the point that the congregation outgrew the former brothel that had been renamed Rahab’s House.

In 2010, AIM — with funds from Ratanak International — rented a bigger building on the main street. It was to have been a brothel and hotel. It’s now called The Sanctuary.

Moved in eight years ago

Californians Don and Bridget Brewster, who founded Agape International Missions eight years ago, moved into The Sanctuary a year ago. They moved to the top-floor apartment from Phnom Penh, where they’d been living at the organization’s trauma recovery house for rescued girls.

Since opening that safe house in 2006, nearly 200 girls have benefited from the intensive counselling, education and training offered there.

Among them are at least one of the victims of Canada’s first convicted sex tourist, Donald Bakker, and seven girls whose testimony in a California court resulted in ex-Marine and sex tourist Michael Pepe being sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.

Although their home is called The Sanctuary, Bridget admits that it’s frightening to receive nightly death threats and that she frequently cries in the shower where no one can see or hear her.

“It’s the Wild West here ... The other night there was a machete fight outside with boys and girls all drugged up fighting. It’s a little crazy.”

While we talked, the noise at times was almost deafening as about 175 children laughed, screamed and sang their way through kids club.

“I think the worst that I’ve seen is some bloody clothes from a little girl who had been raped during the day,” says Bridget. “A man took her out behind The Sanctuary, behind that big bougainvillea tree, and raped her. Then, she came here.”

But there are successes that make the work worthwhile. One of the rescued girls has now returned to Svay Pak, where she runs her own sewing business and will soon be married.

Still, Bridget says the best thing is seeing kids being kids.

“I never knew how cruel a person could be to totally devalue then totally rob a child of innocence. But to see these girls laugh and be kids again is a look into the future.”

Still, that future is far from guaranteed.

On a second trip to Svay Pak, we walked out of Rahab’s House — where a group of American dentists (many former Vietnam veterans) were working in conditions that looked like a scene from the old television show M*A*S*H — to see four young Americans hunting for children.

Noticing us, the Americans urged the driver of their tuk-tuk — a motorcycle-powered cart — to turn around.

Several people snapped photos of them. A couple of missionary volunteers jumped on motorbikes to follow them.

Will they be charged? Not likely.

It’s not a crime to go to Svay Pak, even though Svay Pak is nothing like Bangkok’s notorious Patpong where tourists now go to shop and take a look at what was once the heart of Southeast Asia’s child sex trade.

There are no signs on the paved road pointing to the small, bumpy trail that passes for Svay Pak’s main street. Even most tuk-tuk, moto and taxi drivers — the decent ones — don’t know how to get here.

It’s not surprising. There are only two reasons come.

One is to have sex with children; the other is to rescue them.

dbramham@vancouversun.com

She’s 10 and Now May Be Sold to a Brothel - NYTimes.com

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: June 1, 2011

KOLKATA, India

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Nicholas D. Kristof

M. is an ebullient girl, age 10, who ranks near the top of her fourth-grade class and dreams of being a doctor. Yet she, like all of India, is at a turning point, and it looks as if her family may instead sell her to a brothel.

Her mother is a prostitute here in Kolkata, the city better known to the world as Calcutta. Ruchira Gupta, who runs an organization called Apne Aap that fights human trafficking, estimates that 90 percent of the daughters of Indian prostitutes end up in the sex trade as well. And M. has the extra burden that she belongs to a subcaste whose girls are often expected to become prostitutes.

M. seemed poised to escape this fate with the help of one of my heroes, Urmi Basu, a social worker who in 2000 started the New Light shelter program for prostitutes and their children.

M., with her winning personality and keen mind, began to bloom with the help of New Light. Both her parents are illiterate, but she learned English and earned excellent grades in an English-language school for middle-class children outside the red-light district. I’m concealing her identity to protect her from gibes from schoolmates.

Unfortunately, brains and personality aren’t always enough, and India is the center of the 21st-century slave trade. This country almost certainly has the largest number of human-trafficking victims in the world today.

If M. is sold to a brothel, she will have no defense against H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases. Decisions about using a condom are made by the customer or the brothel owner, not by the girl. In one brothel I slipped into to conduct some interviews, there was not a single condom available.

The police make more effort to help girls like M. than they did a few years ago, and in a column a week ago I described a police raid on a brothel and the rescue of girls inside ages 5, 10 and 15. Yet the police force’s progress is uneven, with one prostitute explaining why brothels hide young girls from police: “Because when the police come through, they confiscate the very young girls, and then the brothel owners have to pay a bribe to get the girls back from the police.”

Now at age 10, M. is running out of time. Her parents have pulled her out of her school in Kolkata and are sending her back to their native village hundreds of miles to the west.

“Our family situation is such that we have to take her back,” said her mother. She is vague about the reasons, except to say that the girl’s grandfather insists upon it. M. has a scholarship through New Light to study free in Kolkata, so the cost of M.’s education is not a factor.

This leaves Basu and me with an extremely bad feeling, fearing that once she is back in the village and away from her protectors at the New Light shelter, her grandfather could sell her to a trafficker for transfer to a red-light district anywhere in India.

When we ask M. what she thinks, she looks down and says in a small voice that she worries as well. But she says she will never give up: “I will not stop my studies,” she told me firmly.

Then again, she is unlikely to be consulted. And traffickers offer families hundreds of dollars for a pretty girl.

I’m here in Kolkata with America Ferrera, the actress from “Ugly Betty,” to film a television documentary. Ferrera fell in love with M., and M. with Ferrera; they spent much of their time giggling together.

“When I look at her, I see all the 10-year-old girls I’ve ever known,” Ferrera said. “She’s bubbly, silly, and optimistic. It would be heartbreaking to lose such a beautiful spirit to a life of violence and prostitution.”

Ferrera, Basu and I jammed into M.’s one-room shack to beg her parents to let her stay in school in Kolkata. “I’m pleading with you,” Basu said. “Let your daughter have this opportunity!”

We got nowhere. Her parents have bought M. a train ticket back to the village in a week’s time.

I don’t know how this will end up. Ferrera said she will be writing letters to M. in hopes that this may make her family nervous about a sale. And Basu is counseling M. on what to do if she is sold to a trafficker. We just don’t know what else to do.

What I do know is that it is surreal that these scenes are unfolding in the 21st century. The peak of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was the 1780s, when just under 80,000 slaves a year were transported from Africa to the New World.

These days, Unicef estimates that 1.8 million children a year enter the commercial sex trade. Multiply M. by 1.8 million, and you understand the need for a new abolitionist movement.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 2, 2011, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: She’s 10 and May Be Sold To a Brothel.

Source: NYTimes.com

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Raiding a Brothel in India - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: May 25, 2011

KOLKATA, India

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Nicholas D. Kristof

At the beginning, I knew only about a young teenage girl imprisoned on the third floor of a brothel in a red-light district here in Kolkata.

The pimps nicknamed her Chutki, or little girl. She had just been sold to the brothel-owner and seemed terrified.

Investigators with International Justice Mission, a Washington-based aid group that fights human trafficking, had spotted Chutki while prowling undercover looking for prostituted children. I.J.M. hoped to convince the Kolkata police to free the girl, but it would help to have more evidence that the girl was still imprisoned. So an I.J.M. official asked: Would I like to accompany him as he sneaked into the brothel to gather evidence?

India probably has more modern slaves than any country in the world. It has millions of women and girls in its brothels, often held captive for their first few years until they grow resigned to their fate. China surely has more prostitutes, but they are typically working voluntarily. India’s brothels are also unusually violent, with ferocious beatings common and pimps sometimes even killing girls who are uncooperative.

Unicef has estimated that worldwide 1.8 million children enter the sex trade each year. Too many are in the United States, which should prosecute pimps much more aggressively, but the worst abuses take place in countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Cambodia.

So I set off with the I.J.M. investigator (who wants to remain anonymous for his own safety) into the alleys of the Sonagachi red-light district one evening, slipped into the brothel, and climbed to the third floor. And there were Chutki and three other girls in a room, a pimp hovering over them. Perceiving us as potential customers, he offered them to us.

We demurred but said we’d be back.

The Kolkata police agreed to raid the brothel to free the girl. I.J.M. told them the location of the brothel at the last minute to avoid a tip-off from police ranks. The police casually asked us to lead the way in the raid since we knew what Chutki looked like and where she was kept.

So along with a carload of police, we drove up to the brothel and rushed inside to avoid giving the pimps time to hide Chutki or to escape themselves. With the I.J.M. representative in the lead, we hurtled up the stairs, brushed past the pimp and found Chutki and the three other girls in the same room where we had seen them before.

Two female social workers from I.J.M. immediately began comforting Chutki, who police said was about 15 and looked terrified. They explained that this was a police operation to rescue her, and they helped her put on a robe for modesty’s sake.

Then another of the girls in the room asked if she could be rescued — but a few days later. She explained that if she left now, the brothel-owners would blame her for the raid and possibly harm her grandmother, whose address they knew.

We told the girl that this chance might not come again. She dissolved into tears, wavered and then decided to come out. Then a third said that she wanted to escape as well.

The girls tipped off the police that the brothel-owner was in another building, arranging to sell a new girl named Raya for the very first time, either that evening or the next night. The police hurried off and returned with Raya, a wide-eyed girl of about 10 years.

It seemed that the brothel had purchased Raya just a week earlier, after her own brother-in-law tricked her and trafficked her. If the raid had been delayed by a few hours, she might have faced the first of many rapes.

With Raya was a 5-year-old girl who seemed to have been abandoned. Perhaps the brothel-owners were grooming her for sale in a few more years. So we emerged from the brothel with five lives that had just been transformed.

Equally important, one pimp had been arrested and arrest warrants had been issued for two more. There are no quick fixes to human trafficking, but experience in several countries suggests that prosecuting pimps and brothel-owners makes a difference. A study in Cebu, Philippines, found that helping police and courts target child prostitution resulted in 87 arrests over four years — and a 79 percent reduction in the number of children in the sex trade.

We drove the five girls to a police station to fill out paperwork so that they could move into shelters and receive schooling or vocational training. Raya, the 10-year-old who otherwise at that moment might have been enduring her first rape, was giggly and carefree as she pretended to drive the car. She behaved like a silly little girl — which was thrilling.•

I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

Raiding a Brothel in India - NYTimes.com
Source: NYTimes.com

Fijian Women “Sex Slaves” Case Tossed For Lack Of Witnesses |

Sunday, March 6th, 2011 

EDMONTON – The case of two-Fijian women found to be “sex slaves” at a Chinese run massage parlour in  Edmonton has been thrown out due to lack of witnesses.

The case, which had touted the first human trafficking in Western Canada, was resolved Wednesday with three people pleading guilty to keeping a common bawdy house. But, as a result of “significant witness issues,” the Crown had to withdraw multiple charges of human trafficking, unlawful confinement and living on the avails of prostitution, said prosecutor Carrie Sharpe.

At the time of the September 2009 raid at a west-end massage parlour and subsequent arrests, police said they had rescued three terrified immigrant women, two from Fiji, forced to perform sex acts, calling it a case of “modern-day slavery.”

Meifang Chen, 34, Xiu Chen, 40, and Qui Wang, 42, each pleaded guilty in provincial court to one count of keeping a common bawdy house and were all placed on probation for two years.

Court heard the trio had also served between two and three and a half months behind bars in pre-trial custody prior to being granted bail under strict conditions.

Court heard the victims, who police earlier said were from China and Fiji, performed sex acts for money at the Sachi Professional Massage and Spa, 17519 100 Ave.

The women were forced to pay a room rental fee of a minimum of $50 for each sex act, whether it was at the massage parlour or on an outcall basis, which brought in between $1,200 and $2,000 a day to the bawdy house.

One of the rescued victims told police the room rental fees were usually given directly to Meifang Chen, but said she also saw Meifang give the money to Xiu Chen as well.

Sharpe also told court the women were also fined on numerous occasions, ranging from $20 and upwards, for such things as failing to keep the toilets unplugged and not turning off lights and shutting doors.

Court heard ads were placed in Chinese newspapers in Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto looking for masseuses and indicating they could earn up to $20,000 a month.

Sharpe said Wang, who was also a sex trade worker at the spa, acted as the “enforcer” and would watch over the women and enforce the “rules of the house.”

One of the victims, who fled the spa and alerted police, told officers about Wang “assaulting her with a shoe” and saying the beating was because she refused to have sex with a customer who had previously assaulted her and forced her to have sex without using a condom.

Photos were taken of the woman to show the bruising she had near one of her eyes and on other parts of her body.

Defence lawyer Peter Royal said Wang admitted the assault, but not the reasons for it provided by the victim.
Court heard that after the one woman fled the spa on Aug. 4, 2009, and went to police, a surveillance operation was set up on both the massage business and a nearby residence where Meifang Chen was living and Xiu Chen was staying when he was visiting from Toronto.

On Sept. 4, 2009, search warrants were carried out at both places and the two Chens were arrested by police as they were leaving the spa, court heard.

Police seized about $4,000 in cash from Meifang Chen as well as ledgers documenting sex acts done for money. Another $12,500 in cash and several pages of similar ledger accounting consistent with the sex trade business was found during a search of her residence.

Inside the massage spa, police found four female sex trade workers, including Wang, and various items typically used in the sex trade business.

At the time of the 2009 raids and arrest, Edmonton police Det. Dave Schening spoke of how the victims, who spoke almost no English, were terrified.

He said the women’s identification was taken from them by their captors and the women were threatened that, if they didn’t do as they were told, their families would be told that they were prostitutes.

Schening said they lived at the massage parlour, and were expected to service clients 24 hours a day. “They ate, drank and slept in the room they worked in.”

They weren’t beaten, tied up or physically harmed, he said, adding the terror of shame was enough to keep the women, who were “very traditional” and “honour-oriented,” in line.

Anjani Lata, a member of Edmonton’s Fijian community, understands the power of emotional enslavement.
“If I was in that situation, I’d probably do the same thing,” she said.

“If people thought you had (willingly) become a prostitute, you could never go home. It would be a big, big deal.”

Young Fijian women are very sheltered and innocent, Lata explained, and would be easy prey for manipulative predators.

“And then you come to a city where you don’t know anyone and don’t speak English, who are you going to tell?”

Source:  thelinkpaper.ca
Fijian Women “Sex Slaves” Case Tossed For Lack Of Witnesses

BBC News - Four face court after raids linked to human trafficking

FROM BBC NEWS NORTHERN IRELAND

6 September 2010 Last updated at 01:16 ET

A series of raids were carried out on suspected
brothels in Belfast

Two men and two women are due to appear before Belfast Magistrates Court later on charges linked to human trafficking.

It follows a series of raids on seven suspected brothels across Belfast on Friday.

A 21-year-old woman and two men, aged 33 and 46, face charges of trafficking for sexual exploitation, controlling prostitution, brothel keeping and money laundering.

Another woman, who is 22, is charged with controlling prostitution.

The raids, which were carried out on Friday, were part of a UK-wide operation called Operation Apsis.

Police said its objective was "to recover victims, both UK and foreign nationals" who have been trafficked for sexual exploitation.

In all, 16 properties were searched across the UK by a number of police forces.

Police said 12 women and three men who, they believe, were being forced to work as prostitutes, were rescued. They would not say how many of them were from Northern Ireland.

BBC News - Four face court after raids linked to human trafficking

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Video: The Day My God Died

(2008) 54 min

An unforgettable look at young girls in Bombay whose lives are shattered by the child sex trade

The child sex trade is a highly organized syndicate that rivals the drug trade in profitability. The industry has formed a pipeline which starts in the villages of Nepal and feeds a continuous supply of girls to brothels in Bombay’s nightmarish red-light district, where over 200,000 young women and children are held in captivity. Recruiters capture the girls, smugglers transport them, brothel owners enslave them, corrupt police betray them, and men rape and infect them. Every person in the chain profits except for the girls, who pay the price with their lives: 80 percent become infected with HIV. THE DAY MY GOD DIED presents the stories of young girls whose lives have been shattered by the child sex trade. The film weaves the stories of children, and their stolen hopes and dreams, into an unforgettable examination of the growing plague of child sex slavery. These girls describe the day they were abducted from their village and sold into sexual servitude as, “The Day My God Died.”

The Day My God Died

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/watch/the_day_my_god_died/

FIELDS OF MUDAN: A Film on Modenr Day Slavery

When Mudan, a frightened, young Asian girl, is forced into modern day slavery by the brutal child brothel owner, Madam Zhao, the only solace she finds is through the memory of her Mother and the promise that she would one day find Mudan and take her away to America: the place where dreams come true. Yet despite her hostile surroundings, Mudan finds sympathy, compassion, and friendship in an unexpected brothel girl, Faye. Through each other, they find the courage and the hope to live thier lives as innocent, ordinary little girls. But even the bonds of friendship cannot stop the bleak future that awaits them as their time of innocence runs out.

Trailer clips for Fields of Mudan







FIELDS OF MUDAN

Human trafficking: Woman jailed for 15 years

From Adibe Emenyonu in Benin, 01.15.2010

A High Court in Benin yesterday sentenced a 35-year-old woman, Mrs. Juliet Peters Ewinramen to 15 years imprisonment without an option of fine for human trafficking.

Ewinramen, a native of Edo State, was until her conviction by Justice Phillip Imoedemhe of High Court 9 resided at 20, Apata Lane , Apata area of Ibadan, Oyo State.

In addition to her conviction, Ewinramen is to forfeit her personal properties which include household possessions believed to be proceeds of the illicit business of trafficking, to the Victim’s Trust Fund of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matter (NAPTIP).

The convicted woman, who was arrested during a raid on a brothel by a combined team of security operatives, was convicted for trafficking some girls to the said brothel in Ibadan, Oyo State for prostitution.

She was arraigned on a five-count charge, ranging from procurement for prostitution contrary to section 15(a), deceitful inducement contrary to section 19(b) and trafficking in slaves contrary to section 23 of the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Law Enforce-ment and Administration Act, 2003 as amended.

The prosecution called a total of six witnesses to prove the offences against the accused which included two of the under-aged girls who were victims of the trafficking and a senior police officer who was part of the rescue team who raided the hotel.
At the trial, it was established that the accused had trafficked the victims to a popular hotel in Ibadan called Lucky Star Hotel, where they were forced into prostitution while the daily proceed of the illicit trade went into her pocket.

Barrister (Mrs.) Victoria Oburoh led other counsels for the prosecution while Nigeria Legal Aid Counsel represented the accused person and at the end of satisfactory submission from both counsels, the judge found the accused guilty on two counts--1& 5 which dealt with procurement for prostitution and trafficking in slaves while the accused was discharged on counts 2, 3, and 4 on the ground that the prosecution was unable to prove the ingredient of the offence beyond reasonable doubt..

Commenting on the issue, the Benin Zonal Head of NAPTIP, Barr. (Mrs.) Adefunke Abiodun, described the conviction of the accused as another landmark in the operation of the Agency, saying that it will no more be business as usual for traffickers in the Zone.
According to her, “I want to say that 2010 will be a very tough year for traffickers and their cohorts in the zone. NAPTIP is ready and determined to smoke them out of the zone”.


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