Human-trafficking gang that smuggled prostitutes to Europe - horrific voodoo rituals to break their will

describes crimes

-  Suspected member of European slavery network arrested in Manchester
-  Human-trafficking gang 'that smuggled prostitutes to Europe made women eat raw chicken during horrific voodoo rituals to break their will'

- Grooming gangs abused more than 700 women and girls around Newcastle after police appeared to punish victims

Suspected member of European slavery network arrested in Manchester
21 February 2018

A woman suspected of being a key member of an organised crime group that trafficked women from Nigeria to Europe and forced them into sex work has been arrested by National Crime Agency officers.

The Spanish national was apprehended on 2 February 2018 on a European Arrest Warrant after NCA investigators tracked her down to a house in Miles Platting, Manchester.

With support from Greater Manchester Police, NCA officers also detained two Nigerian men at the address aged 39 and 34 on suspicion of drugs and immigration offences.

A further 11 suspected members of the criminal network were arrested in the same week in Spain and four victims were safeguarded as part of a multi-agency operation led by the Spanish National Police with support from Europol and Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

Spanish authorities believe the network recruited female victims in Benin, Nigeria, under false promises of a better life, before trafficking them to Spain. Once there, they were forced into prostitution to pay off their ‘debt’.

Investigators believe the victims were coerced using voodoo rituals and controlled this way through fear that if they did not comply, they or their family would be killed. As part of the rituals, they would be forced to eat raw chicken hearts and had their fingernails and pubic hair pulled out.

Liam Vernon from the NCA’s Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Unit, said: “Through close cooperation with the Spanish authorities and Greater Manchester Police, we have located and arrested a woman believed to be a key member of a network that trafficked and forced vulnerable women into prostitution against their will.

“Criminals involved in modern slavery seek out and exploit vulnerable individuals. They treat their victims as a commodity that can generate income over and over again....

http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/index.php/news-media/nca-news/1295-suspected-member-of-european-slavery-network-arrested-in-manchester

Human-trafficking gang 'that smuggled prostitutes to Europe made women eat raw chicken during horrific voodoo rituals to break their will'

Spanish police made 11 arrests while National Crime Agency officers made another one in Manchester

By Gerard Couzens 21 FEB 2018
Twelve people have been arrested in Spain and the UK after police smashed a gang accused of trafficking women to work as prostitutes in Europe using horrific voodoo rituals.

The women were made to eat raw chicken hearts in sickening rituals, while some had their nails yanked off and hair pulled out, detectives said.

Spanish police made 11 arrests in Alicante, Cantabria and Vizcaya and National Crime Agency officers made another one in Manchester.

Detectives say the victims were captured in poor parts of Nigeria and terrorised using voodoo rituals to “break their will”, before being smuggled into Europe to work using fake travel documents.

Most ended up in brothels in Spain after time in Italy....

Claiming the network had a “strong structure” in countries like Nigeria, Spain, the UK and Italy, the spokesman added: “The rituals were used to guarantee the submission of the victims and thanks to them, the organisation achieved their aim of control with a simple telephone call without the need for madams in the same place the exploited women were.

“The victims committed through the rituals to paying the debt they’d built up with their journey to Spain and promised not to report the people exploiting them to police.

“They were warned that if they did raise the alarm, they and their families in Nigeria would come to great harm.”

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/human-trafficking-gang-that-smuggled-12062088

Grooming gangs abused more than 700 women and girls around Newcastle after police appeared to punish victims
'Sexual exploitation is happening in towns and cities across the country,' serious case review warns
Lizzie Dearden Home Affairs Correspondent

Grooming gangs abused more than 700 women and girls around Newcastle with “arrogant persistence” after police appeared to punish victims while letting the perpetrators walk free, a case review has found.

The report into the response by authorities to child sexual exploitation found that before a large-scale police operation was launched in 2014, officers’ actions were sending an “unhelpful” message to perpetrators.

It warned that abusers are still preying on girls across the UK, and called for urgent action from the Government....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/grooming-gangs-uk-britain-newcastle-serious-case-review-operation-sanctuary-shelter-muslim-asian-a8225106.html

Knowl View: '40 victims' in Rochdale school abuse probe, MP Cyril Smith

Knowl View: '40 victims' in Rochdale school abuse probe 
15 September 2014

Police investigating historical child abuse in Rochdale say more than 40 men have said they were victims of the former MP Cyril Smith or other men.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said 24 men have alleged they were sexually and physically abused at Knowl View school in Rochdale between 1960 and 1987.

Twenty of those have said they were abused by Smith, who died in 2010.

At least one victim has told detectives he was raped by the man who was Liberal MP for Rochdale from 1972 to 1992.

Police said they had interviewed 21 men aged between 35 and 80 under caution for a variety of offences but there were still a number of other suspects to be traced and interviewed.

A separate investigation is focusing on Smith, who is alleged to have preyed on youngsters both at Knowl View, where five complainants have come forward, and another school in Rochdale for "difficult children", Cambridge House, from where 10 complainants have spoken to police.

Another five have said they were abused by Smith at various other locations, all in the Greater Manchester area....
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-29207921


Double child abuse agony for Rochdale family
By Jane Deith  16 September 2014

Two children from one family were sexually abused in separate paedophile scandals in Rochdale the BBC has found.

A boy was sexually assaulted at Knowl View School and a decade later his sister was groomed for sex by a gang of Asian men in the town.

Their mother only learned from the BBC that her son, who died recently, had been a victim.

She said she did not think it was a coincidence that both abuse scandals happened in the same town.

BBC Radio 4's File on 4 programme discovered the link while investigating Knowl View, a school for boys with special educational needs.

The former Rochdale MP Cyril Smith sexually assaulted young boys at the residential school.

The programme was shown a list of children who were at Knowl View during the 1990s....

Failure to end abuse

In the early 1990s, three official reports were written about sexual abuse at the school but they were not made public.

Greater Manchester Police is investigating whether there was a criminal cover-up.

Current MP for Rochdale Simon Danczuk is now questioning whether the failure to end the abuse at Knowl View led to a climate in which the subsequent child sex ring in Rochdale was allowed to emerge.

"I've often wondered whether there's a connection between the two and whether the culture was influenced by the fact that Smith's abuse had been ignored by people in the town and whether that impacted on the Rochdale grooming scandal.

"Knowl View links the historic to the recent is the point I'm making... it's a continuum of abuse by individuals, but also by groups because Knowl View is about groups of abusers coming together just like the grooming gangs that have been involved with the girls."....
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29159427