Katya's story: trafficked to the UK, sent home to torture

[closeupready]

Source: The Guardian

When they assessed her case, British immigration officials knew that Katya, a vulnerable 18-year-old from Moldova, had been trafficked and forced into prostitution, but ruled that she would face no real danger if she was sent back.

Days after her removal from the UK, her traffickers tracked her down to the Moldovan village where she had grown up. She was gang-raped, strung up by a rope from a tree, and forced to dig her own grave. One of her front teeth was pulled out with a pair of pliers. Shortly afterwards she was re-trafficked, first to Israel and later back to the UK.

The Home Office decision last week to pay her substantial damages has raised serious questions about the way Britain treats trafficked women. The unprecedented case also opens the possibility that other individuals who have been removed from this country and subsequently found themselves exposed to danger in their home country, could attempt to sue the Home Office for damages. The Moldovan woman was first kidnapped by traffickers when she was 14, repeatedly sold on to pimps and other traffickers, and forced to work as a prostitute for seven years in Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Israel and the UK. She told the Guardian that British police need to do much more to protect women like her and to prevent others from being trafficked into prostitution.

"Just look around you - see how many girls there are like me. They are coming all the time. I see them every day - in tube stations, all made up, early in the morning. Maybe for you it is difficult to see them, but I see them," said Katya (not her real name), in an interview in her solicitor's office. "I think the police should work better to stop this. Why don't you shut down saunas and brothels? Then there would be no prostitutes, no pimps."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/apr/19/sex-trafficking-uk-legal-reform

[cali]

1. heinous.

hopefully this case will change things in Britain.

[closeupready]

2. +1.

nt

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Doubt this is just a UK problem

remember craigslist, et. al.?

[intaglio]

5. Don't hold your breath

The UK has a dreadful record even in regard to its home-grown sex workers and currently asylum seekers are demonised by all the media.

[TheMadMonk]

7. Are you aware of the SOP in the USA when dealing with girls trafficked...

...for prostitution.

They are CHARGED with prostitution, which, through the wonders of modern technology, automatically brings them to the attention of ICE, which then swiftly deports them, using the unresolved criminal charge as a threat to secure compliance; reason not to pursue/investigate "fanciful claims"; and then as a future barrier to re-entry. (Sometimes with the flow on effect of allowing traffickers and/or their customers to go free for want of an accuser.)

Both cases it's authorities not wanting to admit that the problem of human trafficking for sex and labour is far more common than we are led to believe. So they make the evidence "go away".

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

9. They are rarely swiftly anything,

Many of them will languish in immigration detention for months or even years as their homelands refuse to replace their travel documents or even acknowledge their nationality.

[Blue_Tires]

3. I hope there is some kind of effort to arrest those pimps in her hometown...

[TheMadMonk]

6. Read again. She was "tracked down" to her hometown.

It will almost certainly be an organisation based in a large city, and will almost equally likely enjoy some degree of official protection.

You don't make a statement this big, including returning the girl to the UK to make a similar "You don't want to fuck with us." to the authorities there.

Nor is granting asylum any guarantee of safety, more than a few rescued girls have been forcefully reclaimed by their pimps and owners.

[Blue_Tires]

11. Then that means she isn't safe in the UK either, right?

Couldn't they track her down just as easily?

[truthisfreedom]

8. Does this happen in Germany?

I was just there and was told prostitution was legal and well-regulated.

[dipsydoodle]

10. What a sad fucking world we live in.

:(