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

YABU: it’s a huge problem in the UK.

A charity called Unseen run a modern slavery helpline and we have an anti slavery commissioner as well as a Modern Slavery Act.

Thousands of instances reported last year, including 3 to the Unseen helpline for cases of forced surrogacy.

Trafficking is a huge problem, with forced labour in to the care sector, building and agriculture.

“Chinese nail salons” as people call them … trafficked / modern slavery victims from Vietnam (nobody seems too care)

Op, surely being on Mumsnet you've read about coercive control, and domestic abuse that's in the form of threats, emotional blackmail, gaslighting, etc?
Trafficking often involves similar behaviours, by the perpetrators grooming their victims.

I've worked in homeless shelters where we often had victims of trafficking come to us, and we also had to be on the watch for vulnerable people being targeted by people wanting to exploit them - for men, typically with promises of work with accommodation included, for women, 'relationships' that turn into 'debts owed' and forced into sex work.

Bear in mind people can be trafficked into this country, but also from and around this country.

Listen to the To Catch a Scorpion podcast - there is a lot of trafficking in the UK

Trafficking is a world wide issue. Some come legitimately into the country but then don’t leave whereas others are smuggled in.

It's a very serious offence. As part of my job once I worked with a lady who'd been trafficked here for sex work. She wasn't totally duped. She knew that's why she was coming but saw it as her only option. The reality of it was down played to her. I think they made it sound like she'd be "high class" and could pick and choose. Which isnt what happened.

Even while she was doing it she convinced herself she was "ok". It was only after the traffickers were arrested and convicted that the reality seemed to really sink in for her and she realised that actually she had never been OK. There had been threats to her family back home if she didn't comply. I think convincing herself she was doing it willingly was a coping mechanism.

This is why I think even if a sex worker is outwardly giving the impression that they're doing it by choice. The reality is never that simple.

It's huge in the UK Op.

Sexual exploitation for commercial means is massive. Women are usually smuggled in from abroad and literally taken from hotel to hotel to be exploited. They only usually come up on our radar (entering the NRM pathway and supported to claim asylum) when they are pregnant and no longer of use to their handlers. Most currently are Vietnamese, but there are also Chinese, Albanian and people from various African nations.

I supported a vulnerable woman who was smuggled in this way from China. She became a domestic servant to her traffickers wife who she called her boyfriend.

She was eventually found by authorities, provided with support and she joined a programme to support victims of trafficking. Unfortunately she then began to recruit women from the group who had a history of being exploited back into the trafficking circle. She was arrested for running a brothel shortly after and is currently in prison. The only upside is that her trafficker also was sent down too.

Unfortunately trafficking and exploitation are complex. It often involves people who are not aware of their immigration rights, or are indebted to their traffickers in some way, or whose family are at risk in their home country. These factors makes it near impossible for victims to seek support unassisted.

Holbeck. Sanctioned by the local council. They were talking about setting up another similar area. I don't know if they did it.

It definitely happens here. Traffickers are skilled - if you knew I could hurt your family at home if you annoy me, then I told you to smile and pretend we're friends/cousins/a couple while we travel, you would - so airport security etc can be bypassed relatively easily,

There are a lot of awful stories if you look for them.
This one is the one that sticks with me, because the company is so well known - https://amp.theguardian.com/law/2021/jan/14/three-victims-of-trafficking-and-modern-slavery-to-sue-biffa]

Here’s a handy quiz you can do about human trafficking. https://www.unseenuk.org/human-trafficking-quiz/

Fuck me.

Have you never heard of a ferry, or the people in small boats, or coming hidden in lorries.

They're not flying through Gatwick on an Easyjet flight, are they??? Seriously.

I was trafficked. I was born and raised in England and it happened to me. Through that, I met a lot of women from Eastern Europe who had been brought over for the sex trade. Some had been sold by family. Some couldn't remember their real name.

I was forced into it by a much older man, who I had thought was my boyfriend- it wasn't the first time he'd done it and he mostly worked me through escort agencies that were open through the night, because they're legal and nobody cares where you come from.

The agencies knew I was being forced- didn't care, because I was making them money.
They never even asked my real name. They never asked for ID. They just sent me out to men who rang up and asked for a girl.

Some girls there were living in houses with ten, fifteen, twenty others, being taken to work for agencies every night, all their money going to the man who owned them.

They get away with it because they make sure you're terrified of them, they make sure you're frightened of going to the police, they threaten your family, and because nobody cares enough about you to do anything to help you.

The agencies all had police, CID, vice squad, etc, on their books as clients and they were the worst because they could just get away with anything.

Farm “workers”, nail bars, car washes, cannabis farms, indentured servants brought into the country by families with diplomatic immunity, care workers recruited and brought over on false promises, anyone working in the hospitality/ food/ farming industries who doesn’t have a work permit.

And personally I would also add surrogate babies.

Are you on a wind up OP? Nobody can be this naive.

Was in my local paper last week about a local shop being raided by police. It was a brothel and people have been arrested for people trafficking. Couldn’t believe it. I’ve walked past that shop.

We have modern day slavery in the UK.
Some of it gets to court.

Of course it's a problem here - and not new. I remember watching a drama probably on C4 about 20 years ago about two girls trafficked to the UK from Moldova. A girl who had herself been trafficked recruited her. It was fiction but based on a very sad reality. It's often right under our noses.

It’s a huge problem! Where did you get the idea it’s something that only happens elsewhere?

Mo Farah was brought here as a trafficked child- that's not even his real name. There's a BBC documentary about his story.

https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/crime-threats/modern-slavery-and-human-trafficking

"Thousands of people across the UK are being held in squalor and undertaking forced labour. Some may be fleeing war zones, others may have financial problems, but all find dream turns to nightmare as their life descends into fear, debt and drudgery in exhausting, ill-paid, dangerous and degrading work, with escape impossible, forbidden or punished".

Have a read of the reality.

Children being drugged and passed around for rape and drug running (County Lines) is far too common.

Nail bars, car washes, takeaway food places, fake vape and corner shops... If you see they are cash only, with a high turnover of staff and a man lurking who could be a manager or a bouncer and you're starting to spot the signs....