Trafficking 'rife' in Yorkshire

Criminal gangs are continuing to traffic women around the sex industry

Experts in tackling the trafficking of young girls into the sex trade in Yorkshire fear the problem is growing.

Campaigners working to stamp out the trafficking across Europe also said many communities did not appreciate how widespread the problem had become.

Arabinda Kosaraju of the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping (Crop), said "nothing seemed to be improving".

Anti-trafficking expert Nick Kinsella, said the region needed to become a hostile environment for traffickers.

One girl, who had been trafficked into Yorkshire from Spain said she was subjected to violence from the minute she arrived.

"When I first started working in prostitution I found it very difficult to sleep with clients.

"I was crying a lot, and I was therefore beaten a lot."

But the gangs who manipulate the women also find their victims closer to home, grooming them and then forcing them into prostitution.

We've been trying to highlight the growing numbers of children who are being targeted and groomed Arabinda Kosaraju

Specialist police officers working in Sheffield found one criminal gang was targeting 30 girls, all of them under 16 and some as young as 12.

Nick Kinsella, of the National Trafficking Centre, said: "To combat human trafficking and make the UK a hostile environment to traffickers, and to safeguard victims, the public have a role to play."

Police said they had found one girl who was forced to have sex one Christmas Day with 30 different men.

Arabinda Kosaraju, of Crop, said the organisation and the families it supports have been trying to highlight the issue for years.

"We've been trying to highlight the growing numbers of children who are being targeted and groomed, then moved around towns and cities to be sexually exploited.

"Despite the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, trafficking within UK for sex exploitation is a serious offence we have yet to see any evidence of that act being implemented where UK nationals are concerned," she said.

Ms Kosaraju said there were some tell-tale signs families could look out for if they thought youngsters were at risk.

"If children begin truanting to begin with or they tend to be associating with men who might be slightly older or then going missing - these are significant factors. "

She said it was sometimes difficult for girls who had been groomed to speak to police, because of threats to themselves or their families.