Louise Hulland - Stolen Lives: Human Trafficking and Slavery in Britain Today

Louise Hulland is a Sony Award winning journalist, TV and radio presenter and documentary maker. She has been investigating the plight of victims of modern slavery and human trafficking since 2010 and has reported on the subject in print and on TV (The Independent and BBC Ones The One Show). Louise has more than a decade of experience in news, current affairs and documentaries, reporting for BBC Ones Watchdog, Watchdog Daily and Inside Out, as well as BBC Radio 1, 2 and 4, covering topics such as HIV in young Britons, unlicensed minicabs and girl gangs. As a reporter and news producer for the BBC and ITN, she has worked on some of the biggest current affairs stories of the last decade.

Trafficking & Slavery on the Streets of Britain

LOUISE HULLAND

First published in Great Britain by

Sandstone Press Ltd

Willow House

Stoneyfield Business Park

Inverness

IV2 7PA

Scotland

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright Louise Hulland 2020

Editor: Moira Forsyth

The moral right of Louise Hulland to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBNe: 978-1-913207-18-2

Cover design by Mark Ecob

Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh

For E & L
Boja me Gisht

You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know

William Wilberforce

With Stolen Lives, Louise Hulland has become a powerful voice for the dispossessed and enslaved, those for whom freedom is their lost past, or a longed-for future.

If all your knowledge of human trafficking and modern slavery is from news reports, as is the case for most of us, then this book is full of shocks. Three things struck me most forcibly. First, the majority of victims in Britain today are not trafficked from other countries, but British citizens. Second, they are not hidden away in locked rooms: theyre in plain sight, in nail bars, hotels and car washes, on construction sites and farms. Third, this is a multibillion-pound industry; its big business.

The British citizens who are enslaved are most often recruited from the streets. Homeless people, often with learning difficulties or mental health problems, frequently addicted to alcohol or drugs, are easy prey for determined criminals. They have no protective family network and no defences. They live in shadows and can disappear all too easily. The other British people who are particularly vulnerable are teenagers, especially those who are, or have been, in care. They are targeted for what is now known as County Lines drug smuggling. In other words, these are people about whom nobody cares enough to notice they are missing, or in serious trouble.

Most people are aware of how people from other countries are brought in on lorries and containers, sometimes with horrific outcomes, as in the case of the bodies of thirty-nine Vietnamese people found in a sealed container in Essex in October 2019, whose deaths in that confined space we dont want to imagine. Less known about are the lives they are likely to live in the UK, if they survive the journey. Stolen Lives carries reports from those working on the front line, trying to identify and support victims, and its clear from their experience that rescuing survivors is not straightforward. People who have been enslaved, often for years, are terrified of moving from the situation theyre in, which is at least familiar, to another, which they fear might be just as bad. They are also terrified of those who have imprisoned and controlled them.

Bernie Gravett, formerly a Metropolitan Police Superintendent, now an expert in this complex subject, tells Louise Hulland, in no uncertain terms: Trafficking is a business. Its all about making money. All about making money. Perpetrators are interested primarily in profit, but they dont have the qualms or the moral compass that most of us have, to hold them back from exploiting other people simply to make money. These are not impressive people, however dangerous to their victims. Louise, in court to see a group of people on trial for multiple trafficking offences, is taken aback by how puny and pathetic they look when she sees them in the dock.

What makes this book riveting are the individual stories of courageous men and women who have escaped and the testimony of the selfless and tireless people from charities and from the statutory authorities who support survivors. The linking thread in Stolen Lives is the story of Elena, a young woman trafficked from Albania and kept prisoner in a brothel in Belgium, who escaped to the UK, then had to find a way to stay here. Her voice is heard clearly and movingly, but this is a traumatic and nail-biting account.

For ten years, Louise Hulland has explored this difficult subject, becoming familiar with (and to) all the major organisations working in the field. She also puts the subject in its political and global context, describing the progress made in tackling this appalling crime, and the long road that must still be travelled. When she tells us what must change, in the law and in government policy, she is worth listening to.

Sandstone Press is proud to publish this important and wide-ranging study of trafficking and slavery in Britain today. It will open your eyes, and it will also let you see what we all, as individuals, can do to promote that change.

Moira Forsyth
Publishing Director, Sandstone Press

Imagine completing your degree, going on holiday with your boyfriend, then finding yourself imprisoned in a brothel.

Imagine meeting a friendly benefactor at your local church, who offers you a new life in the UK but who on arrival takes your papers, refuses to pay you and threatens your family if you complain.

Imagine befriending a kindly neighbour as a child, who then passes you around groups of men, inflicting on you repeated sexual and physical abuse.

Imagine your money, your passport, your phone, your family, your friends and your freedom snatched away from you, and every last shred of dignity sapped by violent, manipulative criminals working you to the bone, limiting your food intake and making you sleep eight to a room.

These things are happening all around us.

Whoever you are, reading this, I can make a few basic assumptions about your life. You freely decided to buy the book, with your own hard-earned money. Youre maybe at home with a cup of tea or a glass of wine either of which you selected and poured yourself. You chose the brand, decided when and how you wanted to enjoy it, grabbing ten minutes on your own before you have to do the washing-up or check the kids homework. You might be reading this on the bus or train, commuting to or from work perhaps in a career that makes your heart sing, perhaps in a job that drives you to distraction but pays the bills.

No matter what brought you to this book, to this moment, Im guessing most of the decisions you made in the run-up to purchasing it and sitting down to read it were made by you, with no coercion or control, no psychological bullying or threats, and no fear of reprisal. No one is controlling your cash flow, your ability to go to a shop or get online, no one is restricting your daily movements, or what you eat or drink, or how you travel.

That is exactly how your life should be.