Women and Girls exploited again - why are we surprised?

[jlpartnerrs]

I've just read this article in the Guardian and it's a mirror of Rochdale, really. Vulnerable girls being pimped abroad in this case, and the police and authorities' washing their hands of them. It makes me feel sick.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/04/police-treated-us-like-criminals-say-families-of-girls-trafficked-to-islamic-state-in-syria

If this was happening to boys and men it would be a different story.

[hoodathunkit]

I understand that this is a complex issue but I am unconvinced that the situation of minors recruited into Daesh mirrors that of girls exploited by sex trafficking networks.

This is simply because the situation of minors recruited into sex trafficking networks is itself very complex.

Nobody would suggest that the recruitment of children and / or vulnerable adults into trafficking networks is a good thing. Everybody understands that the minor person is a victim in these situations.

Where it becomes complex is when the exploited minor goes on, whether as a minor or an adult, to commit serious criminal offences.

This happens with sex trafficking, labour trafficking, criminal cults, recruitment into terrorist networks and with county lines.

I suspect that most people would agree that someone groomed and radicalised as a minor is much more vulnerable and less culpable for subsequent criminal acts than someone who was radicalised as an adult.

However it really does depend on the nature of the subsequent crime.

So a minor girl groomed, radicalised and trafficked to Syria who endures abuses in Syria without abusing others will be perceived more favourably than a female in the same situation who goes on to enslave other women and describe celebratory emotions when encountering the bodies of decapitated people.

A minor girl who is sex trafficked and who is subsequently forced to recruit further victims via threats to her sister or baby will be perceived as being less culpabale than a girl who works as a recruiter for financial reward or simply to try to impress and gain the approal of her pimp / trafficker.

I am not a lwayer but I understand that in France they have a "Picard law" that means that children nd vulnerable adults who are groomed, brainwashed and radicalised by criminal cults can be treated leaniently by the courts providing they assist prosecutors in convicting the puppet masters higher up in the chain. I understand that the RICO laws in the US can work in a similar way.

I wonder whether this kind of legislation is something we could usefully explore in the UK?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About-Picard_law

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act