Industry | 2009.07.19
Sex trade clampdown for Olympics
A team of police officers is moving into the five Olympic boroughs to tackle the expected surge in sex trafficking in the run-up to the 2012 games.
The clubs and vice unit of the Metropolitan police has secured £600,000 to pay for the specialist unit which will work over the next three years to rescue young women who have been sold into prostitution to meet the expected demand from more than 25,000 construction workers in the next year alone.
As the games draw closer, police believe there will be a huge surge in the numbers of young women trafficked into the boroughs from eastern Europe and Asia by traffickers keen to make money out of the arrival of millions of visitors in 2012.
According to research carried out at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, about 10,000 sex workers were operating in the area. In Athens in 2004, the ministry of public safety identified a 95% increase in the number of human trafficking victims.
Undercover officers have been gathering intelligence in Hackney, Greenwich, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest for the last year as construction continues on the Olympic site. They have noticed a small increase in women being trafficked into the areas to work in brothels. "Our priority is making sure the victims are rescued and cared for," said Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Martin, head of the clubs and vice unit.
"It is a very lucrative business for the traffickers who are providing what they see as a service industry."
Martin\'s team of officers will work to prosecute traffickers they identify, with or without evidence from their victims. "We do not wait for victims to come forward. We are a proactive unit and 99.9% of our jobs are from our intelligence."
The Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) reported last week that, by the time of the opening ceremony on 27 July 2012, about 100,000 people will be working on the games, 10,500 athletes will be competing, 20,000 press and media will be present and nine million tickets will be held by spectators.
"There is considerable international evidence to suggest that such an increase in population in the context of the games may have an impact on women\'s safety," said Lynne Abrams, who wrote the report for the MPA.
"Evidence from previous games suggests that the large visiting Olympic workforce can lead to an increase in demand for prostitution … and an increase in trafficking."
She said there were concerns that violence against women, including those who have been trafficked, would increase.
Officers are working in countries from which women are trafficked, raising awareness of the dangers to women who are offered trips to the UK by "boyfriends" or employers. Officers are also running training workshops in schools, youth clubs and colleges.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul[...]afficking-2012-olympics-london
