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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Annie Kelly

‘Stop demonising them’: the trafficking victims left behind by UK’s new illegal migration bill

Journey, an exhibit that traces the ordeal of a woman from her home in eastern Europe, to a brothel where she is enslaved, to her battles with the Home Office for asylum.
Journey, an exhibit that traces how a woman came to the UK from eastern Europe, to a brothel where she is enslaved, to her asylum battles with the Home Office. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi

By the time the police smashed down the door of a brothel in a smart apartment block in Sunbury-on-Thames in September 2019, Julia* had spent more than five years trapped in a life of sexual exploitation and debt bondage in the UK.

The organised criminals who were making £500 a day from her prostitution in a network of brothels across the south-east of England, were the third gang to exploit her since she was trafficked from her village in Ukraine to the UK in the back of a lorry in 2014.

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