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?

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

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.

@BouleDeSuif I hope you're safe now and recovering

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.

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

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.

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

It's depressingly common.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I went on a training course at work raising awareness of this. It was by zoom and all the people on the course were in different parts of the UK

We all got told to Google human trafficking and then our home town. Every single person on that call had a story come up that was local to them.

That's the ones we know about. There is much more going on that doesn't get reported.

yes @VanWeezer I went to a talk probably 20 years ago and the police officer said there was nowhere in the UK untouched by modern slavery (even Ambridge)
@BouleDeSuif pleased you are in a good place now

Why did this make you laugh? Yes, they are being flown through Gatwick on easyJet.

I think it's worth pointing out, OP, that people smuggling and human trafficking are two different things. You can be trafficked with a passport, taking planes, and entering the country on some kind of pretext, before you're siphoned into organized crime.

With people smuggling, I have no idea how human bodies are moved undetected across borders apart from on small boats and through containers on trucks.

I met a lovely middle aged lady at a conference, you wouldn't have looked at her twice in the street, only she was wearing her Salvation Army uniform and specialised in modern slavery, she spoke about accompanying police to raids and about supporting survivors it was something I will never forget

I’ve NC for this, I work for Medaille Trust, a charity for victims of modern slavery. They have safe houses all over the UK. I work in one with women and children but they have them for men as well. They’re almost all at capacity or nearly at capacity with new referrals all the time. Medaille are one of many charities offering this service as part of the contract under the Salvation Army and the Home Office.

It is a huge problem, and growing all the time.

https://www.medaille-trust.org.uk/

Which is the latest macann documentary please?

@BouleDeSuif this is heartbreaking. I truly hope your safe and well now x

Often come her happily themselves on the promise of a job. Then get their passports taken when they get here

It must happen more than we think, all families travelling with children regularly have to stand in separate queues at passport control. This happens upon entering the UK.

I find passport control always chat to my son. call him by his name and ask where he's been on holiday etc, and judge his response

I'm an inner city community midwife.

Yes, it is happening here. I have seen
-sex workers
-pregnant women trafficked on student visas with the promise of work and a better life, but they end up working as servants or unpaid factory workers
-unofficial surrogacy
-forced marriages

We have training around warning signs, but it's often a gut feeling and can sometimes be very difficult to evidence. If something doesn't add up, it gets reported as a safeguarding concern and if appropriate it will be looked into by maternity safeguarding and social services.
.