CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING 'WITHIN UK'

Jul 2, 2008
British-born children are being trafficked for sexual exploitation within the UK.
Police officers involved in a project which targeted human trafficking said it was a mistake to believe that all children targeted by pimps had been brought in from other countries.
A Government report said there was an "emerging issue" of British children, usually teenage girls, being trafficked within the UK.
It also emerged that new measures are underway to tackle the problem of children being forced into criminal activities such as working in cannabis farms and street crime gangs.
Further measures are under way to combat the trafficking of children into Britain to make fraudulent welfare claims.
Figures released at the end of a six-month crackdown on people traffickers showed 167 victims were rescued across Britain and Ireland and 528 suspected traffickers were arrested. It included 13 children aged between 14 and 17 who were rescued from sexual exploitation and two children who were under forced labour.
Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said it was difficult to establish the scale of the problem with internal trafficking.
Gloucestershire Chief Constable Dr Tim Brain, who co-ordinated the major trafficking crackdown known as Operation Pentameter Two, said it had revealed a large number of brothels in apparently ordinary suburban locations.
Out of more than 800 premises visited by this campaign, nearly 600 were residential and 157 were massage parlours, saunas and nail bars, which are the more traditional "front" for brothels.
Latest estimates by police are that there may be as many 18,000 trafficked victims that are forced to work as prostitutes, Dr Brain went on.

Threats over Nigeria amputation

Saratu's family say she can no longer go to school or help them on their farm A Nigerian doctor has told the BBC he is in hiding after receiving death threats for amputating a girl's arms. Dr Dandyson Allison says he saved 13-year-old Saratu Yusuf's life after she was run over by a truck in April. But he was subsequently arrested and spent a week in jail after Miss Yusuf's family accused him of removing her arms without her family's consent. Other neighbours have accused him of being a "ritualist" who needed body parts for black magic, which he denies. Miss Yusuf was riding on the back of a motorbike when she was knocked down by a truck, witnesses to the accident told the BBC. "Hippocratic oath" "I was in my clinic when I heard a loud commotion outside," Dr Allison, who runs a private clinic in Kuje, just outside the capital, Abuja, told the BBC News website. Dr Allison has not been able to open his clinic since the accident "Both limbs were completely disconnected, just held by small piece of skin. She was unconscious. She must have bled torrentially at the scene of the accident." There was no time to get her parents, he says, so he had to act immediately. "In private clinics it is standard that before you are treated you have to register, get a card, pay money. "But I took the Hippocratic oath to save life. Waiting would have meant the end of the life of that poor girl." Miss Yusuf says she was conscious until she was brought to the hospital and the bones in her arm were not broken. "They sent the boy to get my parents, but by the time they came he had already cut off my arms," she said. "I asked him why he did it and he said I would have died. The bone was not broken." But witnesses and Dr Allison said the truck had shattered the bones and already severed the arms. Threats Now Miss Yusuf's family say she cannot go back to school, and cannot work to help them on their farm. They want Dr Allison to pay them 50m naira ($424,000, £212,000) in compensation. Dr Allison said he was prepared to help them get prosthetic arms for Miss Yusuf and give them 300,000 naira ($2,500, £1,250). But they refused, and days later Dr Allison was arrested. He is now on bail pending a further court hearing. His clinic was closed down by the state authorities and all his medical instruments seized. He also received death threats and a mob threatened to burn down his clinic. He was condemned in the Nigerian press and accused of wanting to sell the arms to a "ritualist" to be used in black magic. Correspondents say such allegations in the media are common and children have in the past been killed and dismembered for their body parts. it is an allegation Dr Allison strongly denies. "There are a lot of stories about people dismembering human beings for money. It happens, but the truth is people at the site of the accident saw that the hands could not be salvaged." He gave the amputated hands to the family and they buried them near their farm.

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