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3. The problem of child trafficking

What evidence is there of child trafficking?

The trafficking of children is a clandestine activity and, therefore, it has been difficult to identify and record the number of trafficked children, although some data does exist. This is not specific to Scotland. Recent research reported in Missing Out⁹ (2007) by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes ( ECPATUK) into missing children and data collected by the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre ( CEOP) in its scoping report provides evidence of child trafficking into and within the UK.

The CEOP report, A Scoping Project on Child Trafficking in the UK¹⁰ (2007), identified 330 children as potential trafficking cases when using the child trafficking profile developed by the London Safeguarding Children Board. The UK Action Plan on Tackling Human Trafficking (2007) describes how the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre ¹¹ ( UKHTC) will become the central focus for all intelligence and data collection of human trafficking.

During Operation Pentameter, a national, police led anti trafficking operation in 2006 targeting off street sexual exploitation, officers found 12 child victims of trafficking who had been sexually exploited in the UK during the period of 21 February - 31 May 2006. At the time of publication, Pentameter 2 is underway.

Why do people traffic children?

Most children are trafficked for financial gain. This can include payment from or to the child's parents. In most cases, the trafficker also receives payment from those wanting to exploit the child once in the UK. Some trafficking is carried out by organised gangs. In other cases, individual adults or agents traffic children to the UK for their own personal gain. For example, these children may be used for:

• sexual exploitation;
• domestic servitude;
• sweatshop, restaurant and other catering work;
• credit card fraud;
• begging or pick pocketing or other forms of petty criminal activity;
• agricultural labour, including tending plants in illegal cannabis farms;
• benefit fraud;
• drug mules, drug dealing or decoys for adult drug traffickers; and,
• illegal intercountry adoption.

Younger children are sometimes trafficked to become beggars and thieves or for benefit fraud. Teenagers are often trafficked for domestic servitude or sexual exploitation.

Why is trafficking possible?

Children may be trafficked from a number of different countries for a variety of different reasons. There are a number of factors in the country of origin which might make children vulnerable to being trafficked. The factors listed below are by no means a comprehensive list.

• Poverty: in general, this is the root cause of vulnerability to exploitation. The recruiter's promises of work or income are seen by families as a possible escape route from impoverished circumstances. At the very least a child's departure means one less mouth to feed.
• Lack of education: attendance at school has proven to be a key means of protecting children from all forms of exploitation, including trafficking. Traffickers promise education for children whose parents cannot afford to pay school fees, or where schools are difficult to access or are of poor quality.
• Discrimination: this can be based both on gender and ethnicity. In some cultures, girls are expected to make sacrifices in terms of their education and security for the benefit of the family. They represent less of an investment for the family because their contribution to the family will end when they leave to marry (in some cases marriage itself may be too expensive for the family). Many trafficking victims are from minority communities who are socially discriminated against and disadvantaged in their own country.
• Cultural attitudes: traditional cultural attitudes can mean that some children are more vulnerable to trafficking than others. In some cultures the rights of children are ignored and they are seen as commodities to be traded. In some countries it is the custom for children to work as domestic servants in households. It is, therefore, possible that a child is taken abroad by a relative, or someone claiming to be a relative, to work as a domestic servant. Sometimes the child, or the family of the child is promised an education and a better life.
• Grooming: children are sometimes trafficked out of their country of origin after having been groomed for purposes of exploitation.
• Dysfunctional families: children may choose to leave home as a result of domestic abuse and neglect, or they may be forced to leave home for a number of reasons. They then become vulnerable to trafficking, particularly if they become destitute or homeless.
• Political conflict and economic transition: these often lead to movements of large numbers of people and the erosion of economic and social protection mechanisms, leaving children vulnerable.
• Inadequate local laws and regulations: trafficking involves many different events and processes, and legislation has been slow to keep pace. Most countries have legislation against exploitative child labour, but not all have laws specifically against trafficking. Even where there is appropriate legislation, enforcement is often hampered by lack of prioritisation, corruption and ignorance of the law.

It is also true that whilst there is a demand for children in the UK, trafficking will continue to be a problem.

How are children recruited and controlled?

There are three phases in the trafficking process: the recruitment phase, the transit phase and the destination phase. The traffickers might be part of a well organised criminal network, or they might be individuals involved in only one of the various stages of the operation, such as the provision of false documentation, transport, or places where the child's presence can be concealed.

Traffickers recruit their victims using a variety of methods. Some children are subject to coercion, which could take the form of abduction or kidnapping. However, most children are trapped in subversive ways. For example:

• Children are promised education or what is regarded as respectable work - such as in restaurants or as domestic servants.
• Parents are persuaded that their children will have a better life elsewhere.

Many children travel on false documents. Even those whose documents are genuine may not have access to them. One way that traffickers exert control over trafficked children is to retain their passports and threaten children that should they escape, they will be deported. The creation of a false identity for a child can give a trafficker direct control over every aspect of a child's life, for example, by claiming to be a parent or guardian.

Even before they travel, children may be subjected to various forms of abuse and exploitation to ensure that the trafficker's control over the child continues after the child is transferred to someone else's care. Methods that are used include:

• confiscation of the child's identity documents;
• threats of reporting the child to the authorities;
• violence, or threats of violence, towards the child;
• threats of violence towards members of the child's family;
• keeping the child socially isolated;
• keeping the child locked up;
• telling some children that they owe large sums of money and that they must work to pay this off;
• depriving the child of money; and,
• voodoo or witchcraft, which may be used to frighten children for example into thinking that if they tell anyone about the traffickers, they and their families will die.

How are children brought to the UK?

Any port of entry into the UK might be used by traffickers. There is evidence that some children are trafficked via numerous transit countries and many may travel through other European Union countries before arriving in the UK.

However, recent experience suggests that as checks have improved at the larger ports of entry such as Heathrow and Gatwick airports, traffickers are starting to use smaller ports, as well as other regional airports. Traffickers are also known to use the Eurostar rail service and ferries to UK sea ports.

Accompanied children

There are many legitimate reasons for children being brought to the UK, such as economic migration with their family, education, re-unification with family or fleeing a war-torn country. Some children will have travelled with their parents or carers.

However, a number of children arrive in the UK accompanied by adults who are either not related to them or in circumstances which raise child protection concerns. For example, there may be little evidence of any pre-existing relationship or even an absence of any knowledge of the sponsor. There may be unsatisfactory accommodation arranged in the UK, or perhaps no evidence of parental permission for the child to travel to the UK or stay with the sponsor. These irregularities may be the only indication that the child could be a victim of trafficking.

To curb illegal migration and improve children's safeguards, new global visa regulations have been in place since February 2006. A photograph of the child is now shown on the visa, together with the name and passport number of the adult/s who have been given permission to travel with the child.

Some accompanied children may apply for asylum claiming to be unaccompanied, after being told by their trafficker that by doing so they will be granted permission to reside in the UK and be entitled to claim welfare benefits.

Unaccompanied children

More is known about unaccompanied children as they often come to the notice of agencies such as local authorities, the police, the Scottish Refugee Council or UK Border Agency ( UKBA). Unaccompanied children may come to the UK seeking asylum (Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children - UASC), or they may be here to attend school or join family. A child may be the subject of a private fostering arrangement.

If the child is unaccompanied and not travelling to his or her customary care giver, or if there are some concerns over the legitimacy or suitability of the proposed arrangement for the child's care in the UK, they should be referred to local authority children's services by UKBA.

Some groups of children will avoid contact with authorities as they are instructed to do so by their traffickers. In other cases, the traffickers insist that the child applies for asylum as this gives the child a legitimate right of temporary leave to remain in the UK.

It is suspected that significant numbers of children are referred to local authority children's services after applying for asylum, and some even register at school for up to a term, before disappearing again. It is thought that they are trafficked internally within the UK, or out of the UK to other European countries.

Local authorities have the same duties to unaccompanied children as they would have to any other children in their area. So they are eligible for support under the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 and other provisions.

Note: The arrangements for supporting unaccompanied asylum seeker children are likely to change. The UK Border Agency announced proposals for improving the care of UASCs in January 2008, for example it is proposed to establish a number of "specialist authorities" (to which UASCs will be dispersed), in order to concentrate resources, expertise and experience. It is not yet clear exactly what the new arrangements will look like or when they will begin. The final version of this guidance will, as far as possible, take account of these new arrangements.

Internal Trafficking

There is increasing evidence that children (both of UK and other citizenship) are being trafficked internally within the UK. This guidance focuses mainly on trafficking from abroad, but many sections of this practice guidance will help practitioners and their managers who are concerned that a child may have been trafficked internally. The list of indicators in section 7 should also help practitioners identify these children. Children may be trafficked internally for a variety of reasons, many of them similar to those outlined above.

There are documented cases of teenage girls, born in the UK, being targeted for internal trafficking between towns and cities for sexual exploitation. Such cases are highlighted by the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping ( CROP) in its paper, Trafficking in Our Midst ¹²(Annual Review 2005/06). It describes how girls have been lured away from their families to perform sexual acts with groups of older men and threatened with violence if they refuse. The traffickers exerted strong control over the girls who had no means of communicating with family or friends and often had no idea where they were in the UK. The girls complied with the sexual demands to avoid being further assaulted or their family or friends threatened.

The UKHTC is currently compiling evidence of such cases and this will help to build a better understanding of the nature and spread of internal trafficking of children across the UK. Whilst evidence so far relates to girls, there may be cases of boys being trafficked within the UK.

The impact of trafficking on children's health and welfare

Trafficked children are not only deprived of their rights to health care and freedom from exploitation and abuse, but are also not provided with access to education. The creation of a false identity and implied criminality of the children, together with the loss of family and community, may seriously undermine their sense of self-worth. At the time they are found, trafficked children may not show any obvious signs of distress or imminent harm, they may be vulnerable to particular types of abuse and may continue to experience the effects of their abuse in the future.

Physical abuse

This can include:

• beatings;
• being subdued with drugs, on which victims then become dependent, thus becoming trapped within the cycle of exploitation;
• alcohol addictions; and
• physical disorders such as skin diseases, migraine, backache.

Emotional and psychological abuse

Some kind of emotional abuse is involved in all types of maltreatment of a child, including trafficking.

Trafficked children may feel:

• disorientated, after leaving their family environment, no matter how impoverished and difficult. This disorientation can be compounded for some children who have to assume a new identity or have no identity at all; and
• isolated from the local community in the UK by being kept away from school and because they cannot speak English.

They may:

• fear both the adults who have physical control of them and the threat that they will be reported to the authorities as immigration criminals;
• lose their trust in all adults;
• have low self-esteem and believe that the experience has ruined them for life psychologically and socially. They may become depressed, and sometimes suicidal;
• worry about people in their families and communities knowing what has happened to them, and become afraid to go home; and
• feel like criminals as a result of the new identity forced on them, which can have long term consequences for their adult lives.

All children who have been exploited are likely to suffer some form of mental harm, usually the longer the exploitation, the more mental health problems that will be experienced. These can include:

• psychological distress owing to their sense of powerlessness. In many cases involving violence and deprivation at the hands of their traffickers, which can be extreme, it will take the form of post traumatic stress disorder;
• dependent relationships with their abusers;
• flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety attacks, irritability and other symptoms of stress, such as nervous breakdowns;
• a loss of ability to concentrate; and
• becoming anti-social, aggressive and angry, and/or fearful and nervous - finding it difficult to relate to others, including in the family and at work.

Sexual abuse

Children who have been trafficked may be sexually abused as part of being controlled or because they are vulnerable. In many cases, sexual exploitation is the purpose of the trafficking. Children being sexually exploited are at risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/ AIDS; and for girls there is the risk of an unwanted early pregnancy and possible damage to their sexual and reproductive health.

Neglect

Trafficked children may also suffer neglect. In particular, they may not receive routine and emergency medical attention (partly through a lack of care about their welfare and partly because of the need for secrecy surrounding their circumstances). They may also be subject to physical, sensory and food deprivation.

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