Luring young girls for sex

£100,000 a year profits for pimps

On another day desperately short of good hard political news, one story which took my eye, and of which I have blogged about previously, is the sordid sex trade in young girls which continues to shock and abhor in parts of this country.

Surely one of the most hideous crimes that we allow to continues in Great Britain in 2008 is the dreadful trade in human beings, for profit! Many young girls, and their mothers are lured from other parts of Europe with the false hope of a better life in the UK, duped by evil men with twisted ideas about morality and enslaved for years afterwards. These crimes tend to originate in other countries, it is not inherently a British criminal tendency, but our territory is being used and abused, treated as nothing more than a market place by international pimps.

It is good to see that Shadow Home Secretary David Davis (pictured) is attempting to wake the government up to it’s own responsibilities, having signed the European Convention on Human Trafficking, a year on it does not yet have a plan or a timetable for it’s ratification! As a result, the convention will enter into force next month without Britain as a party. In the meantime this dreadful problem continues.

Hundreds of young girls are falling victims to these criminals every year in Britain and at the moment it is difficult for them to access specialist specialist support projects to assist victims aged under 18. Launching a Tory research paper, Davis said that Operation Pentameter, the anti-trafficking initiative, should be made a permanent campaign, adding:

“It is a nationwide problem, it is a nationwide tragedy, it is a nationwide disgrace and it should be treated on a nationwide basis.”

A United Nations survey found that out of 330 youngsters saved from criminal gangs in the UK, well over half subsequently went missing from local authority care. The fear is they were followed and recaptured by their traffickers. One prostitute can make more than £100,000 a year profit for her “pimp” in an industry worth an estimated £5billion a year.

Thankfully, this is a problem that we don’t appear to have in South Shields, but there is documented evidence of wholesale corrupt networks controlling and luring young girls for sex in major towns and cities in West Yorkshire and Lancashire as well as Birmingham, Manchester, and London.

Conservatives have been calling for a specialist border police force for the past two years, properly equipped to deal with and root out people traffickers, terrorists, drug dealers, counterfeiters, gun runners, and other ne’er-do-wells, but the government continues to turn a deaf ear. Conservatives have already pledged, in preparing for government, to extend quickly the prison building programme and to halt early release schemes.

Current figures released by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith reveal  that only 16 convictions were made for trafficking offences in 2007, surely this is the most pathetic response to modern day slavery!