AIBU to think human trafficking only happens in foreign countries and not in this country?

Do you have anything constructive to add or are you here just to insult others? It genuinely is a good question and many people have been able to answer without being rude

A lot do have passports which are removed from them by their traffickers when they arrive in the UK. Also in the back of lorries, so many stories from around Dover of people getting in curtain siders. My uncle is a HGV driver and even at a motorway service station in the Midlands has seen men pushing women into lorry trailers.

Private fostering arrangements mean young children get in they don't always go out for anyone to ask why they are not at school.

Trafficking isn’t just about bringing people into the UK from other countries. It is also when victims are moved from one location to another within the UK. Town to town, county to county, even within the same town. It is the intent behind the movement that makes it trafficking.

trafficking is not what you imagine.

Someone who lived in my village was trafficked and I saw this person at the school gates dropping the family’s kids off for years. Never crossed my mind.

They were on their own and had opportunities to tell someone but it’s not till you read up on it and realise how scared they are that they don’t ask for help. The family who trafficked the person got 10-15 years in prison each.

oh and the person was English.

They definitely can be. Trafficked doesn’t just mean kidnapped across countries. It can mean tricked into thinking they’re coming for a job, only to find no job, or the ‘job’ is being forced into prostitution.

So many domestic staff.
Farm workers
Hotel staff (one in the lakes was in the news this week)
Prostitution.

It's depressingly common.

I doubt if many families are trafficked as such, very young children are too visible, people ask why they aren’t in school etc, so most will be single people. In some countries, eg Vietnam, a family will club together to buy passage for a young person to be smuggled into a western country in the hope that they will be able to send money home to support the family. Sometimes they take out huge loans from loan sharks ( ie the traffickers) to pay the smugglers which means the home country family then has a huge debt to repay which Impoverishes them further and makes it even harder for the trafficked person to ask for help. It is a vast and horrendous world wide trade in human life which has enormous rewards for the organisers and misery for the trafficked people.

Modern slavery affects us in all in many ways. Where do you buy your chocolate from? Many cocoa farms rely on trafficked children. Only ever buy fair trade who are supposed to monitor the cocoa farms workforce. How many cheap t shirts do you own, indentured workers in textile factories in Bangladesh work in appalling conditions. Cheap goods bought from China are often made in factories “staffed” by prisoners, who might well have been “imprisoned” for religious , cultural or ethnic reasons rather than what we would class as actual crimes.

@newtlover I am, thank you, life is everything I used to dream of.

Apparently private jets are used too. Bear in mind these types of criminal organisations have collosal amounts of cash and can pay people off.

I never go to nail bars or hand car washes for these reasons.

@BouleDeSuif I hope you're safe now and recovering

Or those begging at traffic lights. Many have a disability, deliberately inflicted to garner sympathy. They have to hand over money they make to gang leaders in many cases.

This is a piece about collaboration between various government departments and collating data sources to match common indicators which when combined can flag up potential trafficking / slavery

😂😂😂😂 it's not a funny topic at all but you made me laugh out loud there.

@Acrazybimbo the UK is probably one of the worst countries for trafficking going undetected.

https://nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/nsa-modern-slavery-and-human-trafficking#:~:text=Almost%20two%2Dthirds%20of%20British,smaller%20towns%20and%20rural%20areas.

Survivor Stories | Medaille Trust (medaille-trust.org.uk)

I'm not sure why you think technology would make it harder, if anything it's made it easier and worse.

Op we had an absolute explosion of slave labour when the eu barriers first came down.

Men with mental health issues or learning difficulties kept in squalor working for over lords, much of it was Eastern European organised gangs.
Many are lured by these gangs to the UK then when they get here, by bus or however their passports are removed. They are threatened with violence and hidden away.

Thank fully... We've not seen too much in the news in recent years so hopefully we are tackling it. I remember one of those real life police programs may still be on player addressing this issue.
They were after a Romanian who held many girls in many brothels.

It's really easy to get fake/forged passports to enter the UK.
Identity theft is a huge problem, and a massive industry. It's used for criminal activity and trafficking but also people who choose to immigrate here illegally can gain access to fake identities surprisingly easily.

Women from South America and South Asia get shipped over here on a regular basis and forced to work for escort agencies etc. They wouldn't be here if there were no demand for sex workers obviously so that's another issue.

It happens here. Trafficking can happen within a country, smuggling is across borders.

deception and exploitation are key words for trafficking.

I thought a lot of the people trafficked into the UK came here willingly but on false pretences. So getting into the country wasn’t the problem, but they would then arrive to have passports removed, no pay, being controlled, forced to work etc.

Yes , many are. Come in on a legal passport from any European country, promised a job but told to say a holiday if stopped at immigration, passport immediately taken by the trafficker on arrival. Threatened by personal or family violence, lied to about what will happen if they are discovered.

Probably a bit harder if you are originally from outside the EU, but the stories emerge, remember the Vietnamese people who died suffocated in the back of a lorry? Or the Chinese cockle pickers drowned in the North East a few years ago? All trafficked.

I’m a nurse and I’ve had patients who we realised were victims of human trafficking when stuff wasn’t adding up. It’s very much hidden in plain sight.

You've also got the "private fostering" where kids are brought over been happening for years.....there are no areas it doesn't happen just many where it's not talked about but that nice big house down the lane might have a young house guest doing the cleaning and you will never see them.