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

[Acrazybimbo]

I’ve been hearing a lot about trafficking lately and always thought it only happens in foreign countries but rarely if ever in the UK as it’s never been a thing or talked about round here. I know a random thread to start but how in this country do they get away with it in this day and age with technology being how it is?

Any stories or experiences? I know it’s becoming more of a problem online nowadays

I read an article about young English women being snatched from Cruise ships and sold off. Quite chilling... The Madeleine Mccann latest documentary gave some horrific insight into organised child abuse sites with catalogues of stolen dc on.

Have you ever seen a nail bar or a hand car wash?

What do you think county lines is? It's a huge problem across the whole of the UK.

There have been so many stories on the news in the UK over the years. Sex trade, manual labour...

I think that's a very naive belief to have, people definitely get trafficked into and out of the UK, why would they not, corrupt people and criminals operate in every nation.

Nail bars , hand car washes are notorious for modern day slavery . That's 2 off the top of my head .

Huge problem
Mental health services see victims of trafficking- for their trauma

It happens here. In 2020 I was involved in housing a man who had been hospitalised and was homeless. He had been working at a car wash and given accommodation in a caravan and his passport confiscated until he “paid back his debt”. His family were all in an Eastern European country. He only got away from it because his leg became so infected and was wet all the time and he ended up having to have it amputated. Luckily it was during the covid lockdown so he was housed in a hotel and eventually helped to get home, otherwise he would probably have been out on the streets with nothing.
Its very much happening under your nose.

Of course trafficking goes on here. It happens everywhere. I'm curious to know how you think "technology" would stop it?

Where do you think all the sex workers come from? Poor girls thinking they have signed up to au pair or other jobs only to be forced into sex slavery.

Just read or listen to the news.
There are far too many horrific stories of human trafficking and what happens to those people - usually young single people, predominantly women.
Some have died in transit due to the terrible nature of the transport used.

Of course it happens here !! Rotherham Rotchdale around 2012. As people have said nail bars etc can be a front. Trafficking doesn't have to be huge distances....town to nearby town counts.

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....

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

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

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.

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

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.

I’ve heard the horrible stories of massage parlours and car washes. I was thinking because of airport security how they get them through without getting flagged

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

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.

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.

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

How do they fly them in? A private plane?