Senior police officers have “cosied up” to “pimping websites” that allegedly allow trafficked women to be “raped multiple times a day”, MPs have said.
Dame Diana Johnson, the chair of the home affairs select committee, said it was “disgraceful” that police forces and the National Crime Agency (NCA) were engaging with businesses such as Vivastreet.
Police officers were unable to tell the cross-party committee of MPs whether any prosecutions had resulted from working alongside such sites to gather intelligence of traffickers.
Johnson told Rob Jones, a director at the NCA: “You’re pursuing a strategy that seems to me to be cosying up and enabling adult service websites to carry on allowing trafficked women to be raped multiple times a day. I think it’s disgraceful.”
She also questioned why Home Office officials had attended an online adult services websites (ASWs) industry event, jointly organised with the NCA, last summer. Also in attendance were representatives of eurogirlsescort.com, according to reports.
Johnson said: “There was someone who was convicted as a trafficker, he was given an account by Vivastreet. A representative from that website was invited by the NCA to speak at a conference co-hosted by police … You’re having people that enable trafficking to your conference, and you’re saying that’s OK.”
Johnson and fellow MPs questioned the police’s strategy at a committee meeting investigating modern slavery.
Vivastreet is a classified website with an adult section where users can pay to advertise sexual services.
While it is legal for a sex worker to sell their services in the UK, pimps and people traffickers were accused by MPs of using the same online platform to pose as women and bring in punters.
Johnson claimed sites such as Vivastreet are “pimping websites” known to trade in trafficked women, and questioned why law enforcers are failing to clamp down on them.
She told representatives from the police, the NCA and the Crown Prosecution Service: “Criminal acts are taking place in plain sight. You’re having people from these adult service websites talk to your police officers, attend conferences and give a veneer that they’re working collaboratively with you.
“I’m really concerned that in plain sight their business model is a pimping website.”
She said the fact that multiple adverts on Vivastreet and similar sites are linked to the same phone numbers are “red flags” that pimps are using them to sell sex with victims of trafficking.
The Conservative MP Marco Longhi said Vivastreet should be banned because of the sale of trafficked women for sex.
“My understanding of the law is you can’t just go on to eBay and buy cocaine but through the likes of Vivastreet and others you can buy sex, which we know there are many, many victims,” he said. “So it seems like it’s OK for one criminal act and not the other.”
Jones, the director of threat leadership at the NCA, and director general of the National Economic Crime Centre, said the relationships were vital for harvesting information about traffickers. “It’s not a policy decision to cosy up to any of these companies,” he said.
“We haven’t cosied up to anyone, there’s a real tension and we welcome legislation to bring these companies to justice, that’s what we need,” he said.
In a later statement, Jones said: “Until there is a regulatory framework, law enforcement is forced to rely on voluntary engagement. Alongside partners, the NCA has engaged with a number of these companies in order to drive up reporting and information-sharing, improve standards and encourage better moderation. This has been done with the objectives of investigating offenders and safeguarding the vulnerable.
“Any evidence of involvement or criminality by companies would be rigorously investigated.”
In October 2018, the NCA and the Modern Slavery Police Transformation Unit (MSPTU) co-hosted a conference for police officers on “Investigative opportunities presented by adult services websites”.
One of the speakers invited to present at the conference was described by the MSPTU as a representative of “one of the largest classified advertising sites currently carrying adverts for sexual services”.
The Home Office has met representatives of Vivastreet on 15 occasions since 2017, according to a response to a parliamentary written question.
In 2018, the Paris public prosecutor’s office opened a criminal investigation against Vivastreet on charges of aggravated pimping, the MP Carolyn Harris told the committee last week.
At a previous hearing, Neelam Patankar, Vivastreet’s managing director, told the committee she was not in a position to discuss the status of the investigation. “For France, any interaction was prior to my position in post, I’m afraid. I am aware of the same information that you probably are. I cannot really give you anything more than that, unfortunately,” she said.
A Vivastreet spokesperson said: “Sex work is legal in the UK, and adult services websites like Vivastreet allow sex workers to advertise their services, vet clients, and access support. We work closely with police forces across the country to detect and report potential exploitation, and have helped secure a number of convictions.
“Vivastreet supports calls for better regulation of the sector to compel other sites to provide the same cooperation. As the senior police officers made clear to the committee, banning ASWs would not remove risks of exploitation, but would simply displace it further into encrypted messaging services and social media, where it is much harder to track and disrupt.”
