Prosecution concerns over trafficked child

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has told the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal in England and Wales, that a 14-year-old boy who was trafficked to the UK and forced into slave labour should not have been prosecuted.

In this case the boy, identified as T, was arrested by police at a house in England that had been converted into a cannabis factory. T said he was coerced into debt bondage after a man in Vietnam took the deeds to his parent’s home as collateral saying he owed 20,000 US dollars.

T, who arrived in the back of a refrigerated lorry, was told he would come to the UK to study and pay off his debt by working in a restaurant. Once here he was forced by his agent to work in the factory.

Despite showing all of the signs of a trafficked child, and being referred by the police to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), which aims to identify victims of trafficking, the Crown Prosecution Service went ahead with a prosecution. T was sentenced to 12 months in a Young Offenders Institution after eventually pleading guilty.

He started to self harm and was traumatised, says the EHRC. The NSPCC referred him back to the NRM for a fresh decision. Following a positive outcome he was released into local authority care, but went missing two weeks later. It is suspected he is again under the control of traffickers and the case was heard in his absence.

The Commission, which intervened as an independent third party expert on human rights law, said that, apart from any decision to prosecute, authorities are obliged to carry out a thorough investigation into allegations of trafficking. Any decision to prosecute should not be made until this duty to investigate has been met.

“Trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery and one of the most serious human rights violations. It is the Commission’s view that the law in this area is piecemeal, despite it being a growing problem. This causes confusion amongst those who use it,” said Wendy Hewitt of EHRC. “If the outcome of T’s case is positive it will affect the way child victims of trafficking are dealt with by the criminal justice system.”

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