Clause 58 - Trafficking into the UK for sexual exploitation
Sexual Offences Bill [Lords]
2:45 pm
Ms Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Citizenship and Immigration), Home Office; Stretford and Urmston, Labour)
My hon. Friend makes another important point. Views have been expressed about the closure of that safe house. There is a range of opinions among child care workers and immigration and police officers about the advisability of putting together in one place children who have experienced trafficking and/or sexual exploitation. One opinion is that when young people have been trafficked from a foreign country and speak a different language, and that is overlaid by the terrible experience of being subjected to enforced sexual exploitation, that increases the level of complexity of dealing with them above even the norm for sexually abused children in this country. On the other hand, there is a view that putting such children together makes them easily identifiable and allows the traffickers who brought them in to the country to keep their hooks into them and to get control of them. As my hon. Friend knows, a number of children absconded or were persuaded to leave that safe house. There is a fear that, at least in some of those cases, they left as a result of contact being made because their location was very visible and became known.