This is an extract from an illuminating article in this week’s Sunday Times colour supplement entitled “Modern slavery: shocking stories from the front line of human trafficking”.
Pages from a ledger bear witness to the profitability of modern slavery, even when those being exploited refuse to bear witness in person. I am shown some recovered from a brothel in west London — one of ten set up by a Romanian OCG [organised crime group] — and they are a record of one day’s business for the five women working there.
The first transaction of the shift is recorded at 3.30pm. It is a payment of £50 to the OCG for sex with a named woman — we shall call her Worker No 1 — and, according to Detective Sergeant Jon Knox, who is engaged in trying to convict the women’s traffickers, this will cover the cost of 15 minutes of intercourse. Each visit is logged and timed, and the amount of cash paid by the client faithfully written down next to the names of Workers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. There are 28 encounters in all, with the last one timed at 7.35am the next day. The most common payment is £100, which is for anal sex.
The total income for the evening is £2,775, of which the women are paid £595 between them. This comes after charging them for accommodation, food, “security” and even condoms. One of the women was involved in nine of the transactions, including six for anal sex. She was paid £135.
“The pages give you some idea of the extent to which these women are being exploited and abused, and the amounts of money being made by the OCGs,” Knox says. “This one was running 40 to 50 girls at a time and we believe they were making up to £5 million a year from the operation.”
The women’s services are usually advertised on legal adult sex websites such as Vivastreet and Adultwork. The cost of the advertising is deducted from their wages. At the time of writing, 3,842 sex workers were advertising on Adultwork in London, and that is just one of several similar sites. Not all the sex workers are being exploited by criminal gangs, but detectives believe a large proportion are.
“The women are usually from very poor communities, they are poorly educated and have very few prospects at home,” Knox says. “I’ve visited places in rural Romania where many of these women come from, and their living conditions are terrible. Poverty is rife. They live in breeze-block homes with corrugated iron roofs, wells for water and poor sanitation.
“So to be offered work here — even sex work — where they can earn £25,000 to £30,000 a year, means they can send money home to their children and wider family. Most of their money is taken from them by the OCG, and they often still can’t see how much they’re being exploited because, to them, the money’s good.”
If a sex worker had ten clients a day — not unusual — each paying an average of £70, then that woman would be worth about £220,000 a year to an OCG, less the money the group paid her after deductions. This, if she works just six days a week — most women are expected to work seven.
“It’s all about money, greed and exploitation,” Knox says. “The women may come into it with their eyes open to some extent, but they will have no idea of the sheer amount of abuse they will be subjected to. They have no idea of the horrible world they’re entering.”
