A sex trafficking case from 2023 in London, United Kingdom. 1 source on file.
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Vulnerable women were recruited in Romania and transported to the United Kingdom for sexual exploitation. The organized crime group operated an escort agency in London, took at least half of the victims’ earnings and charged them for transport, lodging and advertising, creating financial dependency. Threats and violence were used to maintain control.
United Kingdom
Saudi diplomat's domestic worker held on diplomatic visa. Passport confiscated worked around the clock slept on kitchen floor Accused: Saudi diplomatic family.
United Kingdom GB
Oriental Gems was an "online brothel", which specialized in girls from the South East Asia. A gallery on the site showed photographs of more than 60 naked and semi-naked women. Many of them were effectively commodities who had been traded and invested in by "bondholders". Southwark Crown Court heard that Oriental Gems was run by Pongpoj Pitayatanakul, his brother Bordee, and Pongpoj's girlfriend Monthira Duangthip, all from Guildford, Surrey. They employed four men as drivers and assistants: Panya Peakaew, from Paddington, west London, Nopharat Charoenying, and Graipich Vudto, from Bayswater, central London, and Thatri Pornpaditkong, from central London. One specific case is of a woman - advertised on the website as "Helen" – who had been "bought" from her traffickers by a syndicate of two women and a man for £11,000 and then told she would have to pay her "bondholders" £30,000 to win her own freedom. Brian O'Neill, prosecuting, said she effectively had to sleep with 300 men, at £100 a time, to buy herself out of a modern-day form of slavery. The "bondholders", who effectively owned several of the women and expected them to pay off their £30,000 debt, were two women, Jirapha Sriwicha, of Hendon, north London and Sutima Khongpon, and Phanusak Kaewbenjarkarn, both from Streatham, south London. Metropolitan Police’s Chief Superintendent Ian Dyson, in charge of the Clubs and Vice Unit has said, “What is notable about this gang is the level of exploitation that the women had to work under - their debt bondages are the highest we have ever come across - in the region of £28,000.”
United Kingdom GB
Arab slave traders raided and destroyed the village of a 12-year old girl in the Nuba mountains of Sudan. She was repeatedly raped, then sold into slavery as a domestic servant in Khartoum. Eventually she was sold to an Arab family in London. She was never paid and was emotionally abused. More information: "Slave" (the book) by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis, Virago Press, Great Britain, 2004, 2008.