Young girls brought to Britain as sex slaves have been found wandering the streets after being discarded because they were pregnant police said today.
The girls aged between 14 and 17, were discovered during a national drive against human trafficking. A dozen teenagers, many of them from West Africa, were found during Operation Pentameter and about half were pregnant.
A permanent unit is being set up to continue the work already carried out. The UK Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC), based in Sheffield, will include police, lawyers from the Crown Prosecution and officers from the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
Police believe that there is a growing trade in girls brought to Britain from countries including Sierra Leone, Ghana and Cameroon.
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Grahame Maxwell, deputy chief constable of South Yorkshire and the head of Pentameter, said today that the abandoned girls had been found in a number of cities by police.
They were set adrift because they were no longer of use to the gangs who ran them and could not be sold to another sex operator.
Police estimate that there are at least 8,000 women and girls kept working against their will in brothels, massage parlours and saunas across the country.
Mr Maxwell, reporting on the end of the four month operation, said “sex slavery is happening in the United Kingdom” and girls were being kept against their will not only in city centres but also in leafy surburbia.
He told an international conference in London that three women were recently rescued from a house they were held in a suburban area close to a cathedral. “This is happening in suburbia,” he said.”This is an international crime but is also a very local problem.”
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Pentameter targeted the more obvious end of the trade like saunas, but now police working with a new national co-ordinating centre will start to hunt down more of the “covert” brothels operating among unsuspecting neighbours in blocks of private flats or quite streets.
Girls are being brought in by East European gangs and groups from the Far East. Many are duped like the 17 year old girl who answered an advertisement in Russian to work in Spain who was taken to Italy and Germany before being sold to an Albanina who brought her to London.
A 15 year old Lithuanian girl was sold in an airport cafe and another 15 year old was sold to human traffickers by her mother.
Mr Maxwell said the price of sex is dropping as the number of women brought into Britain rises.
Bill Skelly, an assistant chief constable in South Yorkshire and the second in command of Pentameter said that average price for trafficked women was £2,000 to £3,000 but prices for newly-trafficked women can be much higher, with some up to £8,000.
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He said: “Young, innocent, virginal women attract the highest prices. People are seen as a commodity.It is awful to talk about people as commodities, but that is how they are viewed by the trafficking gangs.”
In one case, a Lithuanian girl was said to have been sold for £8,000 on arrival in the UK because she was a virgin.
Customers were charged anything from £40 to £60 for half and hour and the girls were sometimes forced to work 16 hours a day. Men were urged to report situations where the girls were reluctant and could not speak English.
The operation involving every police force in the United Kingdom led to 232 arrests after searches of 515 premises. Police found 188 women and at least 84 women and girls had been forced into prostitution. Some have been returned home and others are in care.