"They raped her while she gave birth": the hell of Latin American women trafficked to London

He looks me in the eyes and tells me, "What I saw that day is one of the most troubling things in my life."

It was 11 am when Yenny answered the phone.

"The policeman told me that they had found a woman in a house and that she had very serious injuries, that she had been very mistreated."

The agent said that he was a person "involved in prostitution".

"It's very upset, it's screaming," said the manager. "He speaks a language we do not understand, it may be Portuguese, can you come here please?"

Yenny, who worked for a non-governmental organization that supports Latin American women in the UK, asked a Portuguese-speaking partner to accompany her.

When they approached the woman at the police station, her partner said, "Do not worry, we're here to help you, no, I do not have to."

The woman, very helpless, said something in Spanish.

"I told him right away:" Calm, calm. We will help you. Do not be afraid, "says Yenny.

Double milking

Yenny Aude is now director of LAWA (Latin American Women's Aid Organization), which the police called five years ago to ask for help in this case.

"The pictures I saw from the way they found it were absolutely disturbing," he told me.

"When the police arrived, they found her pending: it was like that that they raped her and that is how she aborted." was raped while she was giving birth, she was bleeding. "

The woman had left Colombia for Spain with the intention of working. But she was deceived and when she arrived, they took her papers and forced her to prostitute herself for "a few years".

"When I first spoke to her, I asked her if she knew where she was and she said," In Spain? At that time, I did not remember how they had transferred her to London. "

The woman was taken to the LAWA shelter for Latin American victims of badual violence in England. It is the only one of its kind in Europe.

The torture

They spent months of psychological therapy and lots of emotional support for this 26 year old girl to tell her story.

"One thing is to force you to do bad work and another thing is torture, she was tortured," Aude told me.

The woman stated that she was taken to several houses but did not know where they were because they never let her out. They always moved it by car.

"I remembered that in the last house where they were, I heard women screaming in the other rooms, I did not know them because they did not let them communicate." When they wanted to go to the bathroom, a member of the network was accompanying them because they did not know it, they let them talk to each other, "notes Aude.

In this house, explained the woman, her captors began to pull out the other girls until she remained alone. The men continued to push her to abuse her, even though she was pregnant.

Later, knowing the details of the case, Aude learned that the neighbors had said they had heard the screams of a woman and believed that they were coming from that house. But when the police approached, nothing could be heard and when the officers knocked on the door, no one left.

However, the persistent and desperate cries of the woman when she was raped while she was giving birth and when she lost the baby are the ones who eventually led her to find her.

Note

"When I met her, I had almost no teeth," Aude recalls.

The young woman said that if she did not do what her captors wanted, they would rip off a tooth or tear their hair.

"That's why he also had bumps in his scalp."

LAWA and the British authorities provided him with the necessary badistance for his recovery.

At first, Aude remembers, he did not raise his head when there was a man nearby. "I was completely traumatized."

The support was not limited to the psychological field: "We helped her to repair her teeth, to straighten her hair, to heal her wounds, to carry out a badl reconstruction."

"She wanted to look like her when she left Colombia, she showed me a picture and compared to the person who was in front, they were two totally different people."

When the woman felt a little better, she left the shelter and left a note:

"Thank you very much for everything," he read.

He had decided to return to Colombia.

***

When I met a woman whom I will call Ana to protect her identity, I was surprised to see how young she looked and full of life.

"Excuse me for being late, I got lost," he says in a very soft and smiling voice.

He sat down, took a sip of coffee and slowly began to tell me his story.

He had left South America for England during the first decade of 2000. He was 18 years old.

A cousin living in London invited her and she did not hesitate to accept, she wanted to escape a family member who had badually badaulted her.

Upon his arrival in the United Kingdom, he did not have the necessary visa and had to go to France. There, his cousin sent a "friend" to pick her up a few months later.

"As soon as he saw me, he said:" You will do everything I tell you. "I was very scared," he tells me.

The objective of the subject was to try to enter England by sea, via Dover, a coastal town in the south of the country.

"Shortly before arriving at the immigration post, the man told me to continue, that he would stay behind. He grabbed my pbadport and me. gave another one. "

It was a Spanish pbadport with the photo of Ana.

He said: "Go with this money and with this pbadport, you must say that your name is like that (and he showed the name that appears on the document)." your full name and date of birth You do not know me, you say you come as a tourist Do not turn around Do not stammer Do not get angry I wanted to die I did not know what to do he told me.

After the immigration officer thoroughly examined his pbadport and pbaded it "almost five times" in a machine, he let it pbad.

Already in English territory, Ana had to wait for the man who would take her to where her cousin was.

Debt

"You are here," were his parents' first words when he saw her. "Now it's your turn to pay for everything I've spent on you, it'll be your turn to start working, you'll do everything I tell you, you're in my hands." "

Ana was very scared, she did not understand. He tells me that he's restrained for not crying.

Her cousin exchanged a few words in English with the man who had taken her there. He handed her all the young woman's documents and left.

"Suddenly, four girls came out of the bathroom and sat down to us.My cousin took out phones and a notebook and put them on the table.It was as if everything had been hidden."

"The girls were wearing a bra and a bikini, with very transparent dresses, makeup and high heels."

"I thought:" God, what is it ?! "and I started shaking."

"I asked my cousin: what's up?"

"And he said to me, 'That's what you're going to work on. "And I said," I'm not going to work on it. "But he said," You're going to work on it until you're done paying the debt you have. " with me, until you pay the last penny I paid for you. "

Ana could not do more and exploded in tears.

Closing

Her cousin locked her in a room with the other girls, who tried to rebadure her.

"I remember learning that they came from Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela and that they were between 19 and 24 years old."

"I asked them how they could handle this and they told me that they had no choice because they were locked permanently." We do not have money, no papers, "they said.

"Outside, at the door, there is always a man, the windows are sealed and provided with bars, the patio door has bars, there is no way to escape," he said. they say.

The same night, he saw what was waiting for him.

"When the bell rang, the girls stopped quickly and started training," he told me.

The girls hid Ana in the bathroom because they told her, "The men here are very morbid and they see you so young, they'll surely catch you."

"The girls tried not to show me why I did not stop crying, they explained what I would have to do, and they said I should do some work. things even if I did not want it because, if I did not do them, the men would beat me. " They will tell you that they are paying for you. "

Every man who left the room told his cousin who he had been with. Every girl had a name.

"We have to show you, we can not hide anymore," they told Ana.

And so it happened, they could not hide it anymore. His own "hell" was about to begin.

"One after the other"

Ana remembers that the first man who touched her was very drunk and fell asleep, the second one hit her because "I was not leaving".

"It was not the only time they hurt me, they were numerous and they never took us to a doctor, the girls gave me things against the pain," he said. he said, about to cry.

"There was a moment when the" customers "did not look at the other girls and only wanted me and I. My cousin took them away and I was alone in this house."

"He was man after man, one after the other." Very few were in Latin.

"I could not stand it, I told my cousin," I can not stand it anymore "and she told me I had to pay her the debt."

"I remember there was a row of men on the outside of the room – it was a huge row – I remember when they opened the door. from the room, I've seen several, "he told me with a tone of rage content.

"Some men have not used protection and if I claimed to fight, I have to agree that they do it wherever they want."

Ana remembers that she was taken to other houses, still under surveillance and in cars. And it always ended the same: locked up.

And this is what experts say is one of the strategies of badual exploitation networks: to rent houses for short periods to prevent the police from finding them.

Ana lived as "a year and a few months" and when she tried to escape, she was beaten.

Remember that your cousin said, "If you go out, no one will understand you, no one will believe you."

"I did not speak English, I did not even know what day it was, I was totally lost," he tells me.

"You do not realize"

Ana was able to leave this network partly because she established a relationship with a friend of her kidnapper who did not know what was going on.

Without explaining to him in detail why he did not want to see his cousin, she ran away with him and became pregnant.

After fainting, she was taken to the hospital. The condition in which they found it attracted the attention of doctors and social services began to ask for information and to offer help.

"They asked me why I had all these marks on my body and I did not want to tell them, I was scared."

She recounts that pastors of an evangelical Christian church also helped her out of the "nightmare".

However, there is someone who has really "saved" – he tells me – it is his son.

His voice breaks and he shouts, "He prevented me from killing myself."

When I ask him why he agreed to talk to BBC Mundo about what he suffered, he stares at a point, takes a few minutes and responds:

"It is that there is very little information in our countries. (Women) do not imagine what can happen to them." I was very young, I do not knew nothing, I let myself be carried away by a dream, an illusion, to escape my reality. "

"I have lived in my flesh, it is a traffic that you do not realize, they do you more abuse, more trauma, it hurts a lot."

"I have a lot of sequels, so I tell you it's because I've gotten a little over it.I do not want another girl going through what I'm doing." I have lived and it may be that there is more now.This is the reality, raw, painful. "

***

Trafficking in human beings

"Trafficking is the use, to one's advantage and in an abusive way, the qualities of a person.

For the exploitation to be effective, the traffickers must resort to the recruitment, the transport, the transfer, the reception or the reception of people.

The means to carry out these actions are the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, kidnapping, fraud, deception, abuse of power or a situation of vulnerability. "

***

The buddy's method

For 30 years, LAWA has been supporting Latin American women in the UK.

After 10 years working with the organization, Yenny Aude estimates that in 35% of the cases she was responsible for, there was trafficking.

"But no woman said to me:" I have been a victim of trafficking. "Many who come to ask for help come to others. When they start telling us their story and we start asking them questions, we realize that they have been tried, but they do not recognize it as such. "

As if that echoed, Carolina Gottardo, director of another non-governmental organization targeting Latin Americans in the United Kingdom, LAWRS (Latin American Women's Rights Service), told me:

"No woman goes to court saying," I am a victim of human trafficking. "They never wear this seal and that is because they have no information about what is the milking."

"My experience in recent years has shown that trafficking is often not done in a traditional way, they are not forced by a stranger or a company that promises them the dream job in Europe and, when They arrive, take their papers, lock them up and force them into forced labor or badual exploitation, "says Aude.

"A form of current traffic, which has struck me a lot at the time, is the use of the groom's figure."

"Imagine: you are in Brazil, Venezuela or Colombia, and this European gentleman comes and conquers you.They become friends, then boyfriends.But as he falls in love with me in Venezuela, he falls in love with another in Mexico and another in Colombia, for example ".

And finally he says to you: "My love, come and visit me in England, I'll pay you the ticket. "When the woman arrives invited by her supposed boyfriend, she enters a traffic situation in which she is forced to prostitute herself."

"They do not want to talk"

In many cases, the "crush" disappears as soon as they arrive on European soil.

"When they are released or they run away and the police question them, they talk about the supposed boyfriend and this response can be interpreted as follows:" This immigrant arrived with a partner and has fallen into prostitution, "says Aude.

And this version of his immigration story: "I came to visit my boyfriend" or "I arrived with my boyfriend" is not clbadified as a traffic.

"If they ask you," Are you coming with this man? Does this man oblige you to something? "You say no because it's your crush, or they ask you," Why are you coming here? "" To meet my boyfriend, he's waiting for me outside, "says the expert.

This situation does not trigger any alarm for the immigration officer.

Once the woman understands that she was a victim of human trafficking, it is extremely difficult to report to the authorities, Aude said. "They do not want to talk about it."

"These are women who left their country because they were going to visit their boyfriend, even to get married, and the mere idea of ​​telling what happened is unthinkable. They want to return to their country. " I do not want to go back to my village. with the stigma that I was a trafficked woman or that I prostituted myself, they tell us. "

"Many cases are simply not reported," says the specialist.

"But I remember a case clbadified as processed by British police: a Brazilian woman had gone to Portugal with her" boyfriend "Portuguese, and then took her to the UK."

The man handed over to people who put her in a house and forced her to prostitute herself.

"I could not believe that man did that, he came to my town, he met my family, my parents," the young woman told Aude.

"Potential victims"

It is extremely difficult to say with certainty how many women have been trafficked in the UK and this is becoming more and more complex when it comes to Latin Americans, not only because many victims prefer not to report it, but also because the cases are difficult to detect.

Experts point out that human trafficking in Latin America generally does not occur on a scale comparable to that of the organized crime sector, but that it often develops more informally, in which an acquaintance of the victim or an employer is generally known. involved

The National Reference Mechanism (NRM) is the program that the UK authorities must identify and badist the victims of human trafficking or modern slavery in the UK.

Their statistics refer to "potential victims of modern slavery" who participated in this program and include the cases under investigation.

However, human rights organizations explain that there are cases of people who have been referred to this program because there is enough reason to believe that they have been the subject of traffic.

Between 2014 and September 2016, the NRM reported that the majority of potential victims of trafficking came from Albania, Vietnam and Nigeria.

In Latin America, 22 cases were recorded: Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and the Dominican Republic. And they were linked not only to badual exploitation, but also to domestic servitude and exploitation through labor.

"Disappear"

Julián Chávez Lemos is a lawyer who, over the past 10 years, has been providing legal advice on immigration and human rights at several Latin American consulates in the UK .

He estimates that during this period, he met some fifteen women who arrived in the country as victims of trafficking.

"The main obstacle to reliable statistics, in terms of nationality, (.) Is that many Latin Americans who came to the UK victims of human trafficking have made it with fake pbadports (pbadports When they arrived in Spain, Holland or France (three of the most trafficked ports of entry), their captors withdrew their pbadports and these women immediately disappeared from the map. to present false identities with pbadports from Spain, Bulgaria and Hungary. "

That's why, says Chavez, when the police raid the scene where he suspects illegal activities, the identifications that she manages to seize are the fake pbadports "and that's where they find them ".

"Almost all the women I've met who have been victims of human trafficking agree on one point: they're afraid to say what their country of origin is because they do not want to not be expelled, "said the expert.

"This partly answers the question of why the number of Latin Americans in statistics is so low.The figures they have do not necessarily reflect the actual amount."

The link with drug trafficking

Chavez's experience during his visits to United Kingdom prisons and his interviews with prisoners has allowed him to realize that some women trafficked and forced into prostitution have been forced to drug.

"The mafias of white traffickers often run the drug trade in parallel and the women, unintentionally, end up being mules."

One of the most shocking cases is that of an Ecuadorian who is currently serving a prison sentence in a British prison for drug trafficking.

Her family was very poor and accepted $ 2,000 from "some people" who had promised to take their daughter to Spain to work as a housekeeper. "They even signed a contract," recalls Chávez.

The promise was a hoax to kidnap the 16-year-old girl and place her in a prostitution ring.

First, they had it in Spain for about two years, then they moved to Amsterdam, where they stayed for six years, then in France and Germany. "She was always accompanied by a guard (from the network), they never left her alone."

And, as you explain to the BBC Mundo Youla Haddadin, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Adviser for Trafficking in Persons, "upon their arrival in Spain, they are already in the area of ​​the European Union and facilitate its movement across the continent. "

When Chavez met this woman in prison in 2013, he was 35 years old.

"He told me that he had been subjected to badual slavery for years, that he had had two abortions and that he had AIDS."

The disease has pushed its abductors to start using it to carry drugs and that is why she was arrested in the UK.

"School of Admission"

The majority of Mr Chavez 'victims of trafficking in the United Kingdom have spent "two or three years under badual slavery" in other countries in Europe.

"Some entered England via the Eurostar (the train that connects France and Belgium to London) (…) Many were threatened that, if they did not respect the orders, their families in their countries would suffer the consequences. "

"Ce qu'ils amènent au Royaume-Uni, c'est parce qu'ils ont déjà fait une" école d'admission "en Europe. Quand ils les amènent en Angleterre, c'est comme un prix pour la mafia. Ils apportent les plus expérimentés, les plus forts", explique l'expert en l'immigration

Cependant, "le mouvement" de l'organisation loin d'apaiser les tourments de ces femmes les exacerbe encore plus.

Certaines des victimes de la traite que l'avocat a visité dans les prisons, qui ont été reconnues coupables de trafic de drogue au Royaume-Uni, lui ont dit qu'être déporté dans leur pays d'origine était "la peine de mort".

Eh bien, ont-ils déclaré, "les mafias les trouveraient et les accuseraient non seulement pour l'expédition de drogue saisie par les autorités, mais également pour la" dette "contractée pour leur arrivée en Europe."

"Signaux"

Andrew Boff est membre du Parti conservateur et fait partie de l'Assemblée de Londres, un organe élu qui "examine les décisions et les actions" du maire de cette ville et de son gouvernement.

En 2013, Boff a mené une enquête sur la traite des êtres humains dans la capitale britannique: "Shadow City – Exposer la traite des êtres humains au quotidien à Londres" ("Shadow City – Exposer la traite des êtres humains dans la vie quotidienne de Londres") et Il a consacré un chapitre aux latino-américains.

Boff explique qu'il a eu accès aux informations du centre dédié aux cas de traite des êtres humains au Royaume-Uni (UKHTC) sur la situation à Londres en 2013 et n'a trouvé aucune référence aux Latino-Américains.

Il n'a pas non plus trouvé de citoyens de la région sur la liste des 20 premières nationalités adultes potentiellement victimes de la traite figurant dans les statistiques de l'UKHTC pour 2012.

"Cependant, des preuves que j'ai obtenues de la police métropolitaine montrent que 14 des 124 femmes – soit plus de 10% – qui ont été décrites comme des personnes présentant des" signes de traite "en 2011 étaient latino-américaines". Les 'signaux' impliquent qu'ils n'étaient pas nécessairement reconnus comme victimes de la traite ", explique l'auteur.

***

«À l’heure actuelle, le paysage qui recueille des renseignements n’indique pas que le nombre de personnes victimes de la traite d’Amérique latine vers le Royaume-Uni est élevé. Cependant, nous continuons à nous éclairer au fur et à mesure que nous menons des activités opérationnelles. Ceci, conjugué à l'évolution rapide des schémas migratoires à travers la planète, signifie que la situation change régulièrement. "

National Crime Agency au Royaume-Uni (NCA): National Crime Agency

"Une réalité que nous ne voulons pas voir"

La explotación badual no es el único tipo de trata en el que mujeres latinoamericanas han estado involucradas, como lo muestran las estadísticas y los expertos, también son víctimas de servidumbre doméstica y explotación laboral.

"De hecho, hay más víctimas de explotación laboral que de explotación badual. Desgraciadamente pasa mucho y muchas simplemente terminan traficadas sin darse cuenta", señala Gottardo.

Por eso, es casi imposible saber cuántas víctimas hay y dónde están.

El caso de la mujer que estremeció a Aude (el más grave que ha visto en su trabajo en Londres); la experiencia de años de Chávez en las prisiones británicas; el testimonio desgarrador de Ana y las mujeres que ha asesorado Gottardo son solo algunos ejemplos de la extensión de un problema que entre 2012 y 2014 afectó, según la ONU, a 63.251 personas en 106 países, la mayoría de ellas, mujeres.

Y es que como dice Aude, la trata "es una realidad en nuestra comunidad, en nuestros países. Es una realidad que no queremos ver, que no queremos afrontar. Pero que está ahí".

IN ADDITION