interview: Head of Met Police Human trafficking team

Detective Inspector Steve Wilkinson has been a police officer for 29 years and heads the Metropolitan Police’s Human Trafficking Team, the only dedicated operational trafficking team in the country.

Since its creation in March 2007 the Human Trafficking Team has taken part in over 60 operations, disrupting 22 criminal networks and interviewed over 100 victims of trafficking. The team has arrested 61 people leading to 14 convictions, with a further 23 currently on bail or in custody awaiting trial. 

Human trafficking has provided the biggest challenge in my police career so far. Dealing with drugs and guns was far more straightforward. Trafficking is an incredibly complex issue and is completely global. People of all nationalities are involved in trafficking. No particular nationality dominates the trade and people of all nationalities can become the victims.

There are many ways to force women into prostitution. Many of the women we help have come to the UK with the promise of great pay working in a regular job.  Many of the women trust their trafficker, who in many cases will have pretended to be their friend or their boyfriend to gain their trust. By the time they realise they have been tricked it is too late. Many are gang-raped before they are forced into prostitution.
 
There are just as many ways to prevent a woman from escaping.  As well as simply locking a woman in a room, if the trafficker has the woman's passport and takes all her earnings then it is very hard for someone in a foreign country to know where and how to escape. Also the trafficker will intimidate the woman into staying with threats to petrol bomb her parents’ house or harm her children back home
 
Trauma, embarrassment or cultural pressures often mean that trafficked women lie to the police. They might claim that they are a virgin before we uncover medical evidence to the contrary. In many aspects that could be considered irrelevant but when we are trying to build a criminal case and are using the victim as witness, that lie can leave the prosecution on shaky ground.

This is the reason why suspected victims of trafficking are offered a reflection period before we take forward a criminal case. The 45 days reflection period gives them the time and support they need to begin to recover from the psychological trauma of their situation. Usually the trafficked woman will have medical issues that need attending to, including sexual diseases.

My team is made up of experienced detectives. It is essential to have that investigative background so they know how to put together prosecution cases. Several have previously worked on Sapphire Units that specialise in supporting for the victims of serious sexual assaults and rapes.

Yet the hardest part of the prosecution is dealing with the victim. It can take weeks to get a statement ready, which gives ample time for the suspect to be alerted. If we arrest before we have collected enough evidence then there is the danger that we will have to grant the suspect bail, which would give them the chance to flee the country.

Not all trafficked people can cope with the added trauma of being a witness. Though from a prosecution and law enforcement point of view I always hope I can persuade them to be a witness to stop other victims falling foul of the same criminal network

I wish I could say with certainty that the era of misidentifying trafficked people as criminals is over.  But I think it is better to say that this is work in progress. It was definitely a problem in the past, women would escape their traffickers and seek protection from the police only to be told that they are in the country illegally and get deported.

What I can also say is that we are doing our best to prevent this from happening ever again. The trafficking team delivers training to every new recruit so every five weeks will present the issue to 250 recruits. We explain to officers that this is a human rights issue and that the fact that someone has suffered such abuse must come ahead over their immigration status.

Though sometimes arresting a trafficking victim is the best course of action. If you find a victim who you strongly believe is trafficked and won’t or can’t tell you that they are trafficked then arresting her can be useful tactic to rescue her. Her unofficial immigration status allows the police the opportunity to take her against her will away from the traffickers.

I think we are going in the right direction to beat the traffickers. The National Referral Mechanism that began with the UK’s adoption of the Trafficking Convention is helping in ensuring that the victims are at the centre of our concerns.

Proactively attacking the criminal networks to make sure we are targeting the traffickers is also essential. There is also now a greater understanding of the issue amongst the Criminal Prosecution Service, the legal system and the judiciary, which is helping to make it easier for trafficking cases to be dealt with correctly. 

Though I have been a detective for almost 30 years the reality of human trafficking can still shock me. I always knew that some men are willing to pay more to have sex without using a condom and so I understand that pregnancy is an occupational hazard. But I find it incredible that pimps will force the woman to work on the same day that they have had an abortion.