Is Bristol a trafficking and slavery ‘hub’?

Bristol24/7 today publishes calls for the city to face its slavery past by taking a lead in challenging modern day slavery and human trafficking. Previously labelled a “hub” for the crime, we investigate the growing trend in Bristol and look at what is being done to stop it.

Ash Road, Horfield, 2010. Police kick down their latest front door in a series of raids on an increasing number of makeshift cannabis factories to have sprung up around the city.

Inside, what they find is nothing particularly new. Three Vietnamese ‘gardeners’ are tending to plants worth £1m. Their English is non-existent. They are locked inside the property.

Six months later and the trio stand together in court with an interpreter, facing charges of producing a class C drug with conspiracy to distribute. The inevitable prison sentence falls. An open and shut case. Another successful prosecution in the war on drugs. Or so it seems.

What is initially described, as I sit outside the house in question with the chief executive of local charity Unseen, is the summary of what you will find if you look at the local news reports, sit in on court hearings or read the brief police press releases.

The reality is much darker.

What hit the headlines was only the tip of the iceberg of a grim story far more complex than three more foreign nationals growing drugs for sale on Bristol’s streets.

It now looks  likely that these three men were part of a wide-reaching and ever-growing network of people being trafficked into Bristol and the UK and pushed into forced labour, often – but, crucially, not always – in illicit trades.

These under-the-radar modern-day slaves and victims of human trafficking are surfacing or being discovered ever more frequently – and Bristol, it has been said by the man sitting next to me, Andrew Wallis, is a “hub”.

Aside from the cannabis factories, he tells me that slaves are commonly being identified behind the neon lights of brothels, on the forecourts of the increasing number of hand car washes, in the new breed of nail bars undercutting traditional beauty therapists and on travellers’ sites on the outskirts of the city.

Police and charities struggle to put together accurate numbers, but estimates for the total victims in the UK at any one time is between 10,000 to 13,000.

In Bristol, research by Bristol24/7 shows police discovered an average of ten cannabis factories in the city every week in 2012/13. The numbers had doubled since 2008.

Meanwhile, the number of tip-offs the force received in relation to possible human trafficking and modern day slavery offences more than trebled from 2012 to 2014, from 67 to 252.

The number of victims being identified by front-line policing has also risen, along with the number of victims referred by Avon and Somerset to the National Referral Mechanism.

Recent high-profile cases have included the biggest residential cannabis factory found in the UK at the time in a former bank on North Street opposite Asda in Bedminster. Again, Vietnamese were found tending 2,000 plants.

And in another cannabis-related incident, last year 15-year-old Mang Duc Nong, first discovered at a cannabis farm, went missing from sheltered accommodation in Bedminster, never to be found again.

And if we move away from the seemingly thriving drug networks, across the city in Easton between 2009 and 2013, a Lithuanian gang master made a tidy profit from trafficking mostly Eastern Europeans into the UK, housing them in squalid conditions – sometimes feeding them only potatoes – and forcing them to work picking up charity clothes bags for pittance.

In a typical case of “debt bondage”, victims found that when they arrived, they already owed Jurate Grigelyte thousands of pounds for the trip. They also found that they were charged for their accommodation in homes in Easton and Brislington, where they were locked inside until needed for work. Grigelyte was jailed for three years.

In another case of forced labour, of which little is still known, three men were taken into care, thought to have been victims of slavery on travellers sites around Bristol.

Meanwhile, in Eastville in 2014, another raid revealed an alleged dark web of human trafficking, sexual assault and forced marriage. Eight men were arrested after two women raised the alarm from the property, leading to further raids in Southville and Oldbury Court.

And earlier this year, two women, thought to be victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, were rescued from a flat on the harbourside.

This very brief summary of only the most high-profile cases paints a vague picture of some of the most common examples of human trafficking and modern day slavery.

But awareness about human trafficking and slavery in Bristol is not just about the headlines, says Wallis, keen to show how everyone is never too far removed from the practices.

He argues that in our everyday lives we can have dozens of slaves working for us through the global products we buy like mobile phones. There might be four or five “degrees of separation” between you and a slave, he says.

But on the street, he adds, there is just one.

On a short trip up and down Gloucester Road, he points out all those places where you might commonly be in touch with this dark network.

He chose the street not because it is exceptional, but because it is normal. ”It manifests on the high street because of things like nail bars, or these hand car washes where, because of our desire for a cheap hand wash or a cheap manicure,” he says stressing that Gloucester Road is no more than an example.

“These places have sprung up meeting the demand. But it can be a person that’s in a forced labour exploitative situation that’s serving you so they’re not being paid or they’re being paid little or nothing.

“Sometimes it doesn’t even pay for the rent that’s owned by the business controlling them. That brings us up close and personal to slavery.”

Wallis, who is preparing to launch a pilot in Bristol asking big businesses to share data on their supply chains to eliminate possible contact with modern day slavery, says the problem in the city is undoubtedly growing.

He adds, however, that one explanation for the growing figures is a new approach taken by police working with Unseen and other agencies.

“The trends are that the police are getting more and more information and intelligence about the scale of the problem. As we begin to get a handle on the scale and the diversity I think we’ll see more and more operations taking place.”

Part of the success so far is down to the Bristol Anti-Trafficking Partnership, a joint organisation between Unseen, police and the city council among others.

And in London, Unseen has been instrumental in the Modern Slavery Act this year which tightens the punishments for such crimes, redistributes seized assets to help victims and orders large companies to report on their supply chains.

The act was the culmination of five years of work which has been coupled with a massive change in culture for all the agencies which deal with the crime of trafficking and modern day slavery – and, most importantly, its victims.

Since establishing itself as a leading force in the UK, Unseen now runs safe houses in Bristol for victims, giving them refuge and slowly helping them integrate back into society.

“I think I am 19,” says one victim, known only as Olabisi, who escaped her Nigerian village to the capital Lagos as her family were being killed for being Christians. 

“I met a man who promised to find me work in the UK,” she says. “He gave me a passport and paid for my flight to the UK. A man was waiting for me at the airport. He took me back to his flat and made me have sex with him lots of times.

“I heard him discussing selling me, but in the end he decided to keep me for himself. I was told that if I tried to escape or ruin his reputation he would kill me and sell my body to people who did voodoo for money.”

On arrival at Unseen, Olabisi suffered panic attacks, nightmares and suicidal thoughts. She found support to access health services, prescribed anti-depressants and attended specialist sexual assault counselling.

The final destination on our trip up Gloucester Road is a slight detour onto Ash Road, where we stop in front of that home-come-cannabis factory where the Vietnamese farmers were found.

“The police kicked the door in, they were arrested, they were prosecuted and they went to jail for cannabis cultivation,” Andrew says, shaking his head as he recounts the story.

“At the time that individual never got put through the lens of ‘is this person a victim of trafficking?’

“What it means is you’ve got a victim of a crime who’s then arrested for another crime they’ve been forced to do against their will.

“He has to do a prison sentence and then there is nothing for them when they come out and because they’ve got a prison sentence  they’ll then be deported from the country. So we’ve taken a victim and multiple times re-victimised them in that whole process.”

Fortunately, Andrew considers this case ‘historic’ now, given the sea change in the last five years.

“In terms of recognising who is the victim here and dealing with it appropriately, thankfully I don’t think that would happen now.”

Avon and Somerset Constabulary urge anyone who suspects trafficking or slavery to call the non-emergency number on 101. More information can be found their website. You can sponsor Unseen’s work to help support victims through the charity’s website.