The Perfect Crime

By Dan McCurry

In the annals of The Perfect Crime, under the section “Sex Industry Traffickers”, would be a description of the offence: “Go to Eastern Europe. Kidnap your girl. Force her to have sex with 10 men a day for 365 days a year and keep the money for yourself.”

If there was such an entry, the question that may arise for any self-respecting criminal is this: What flaw may possibly exist in a crime that involves 3,650 witnesses per year? The answer is this: None. To be a witness in this circumstance has just been made illegal by the British government. This truly is the perfect crime.

It’s difficult to imagine just how poor the people in Eastern Europe often are. For most, the idea of meat on the table is a luxury, while in this country you can buy a lb of mince and a can of tomatoes for less than £1 and make spaghetti bolognaise for 4 people. At 25p each, those on the dole will have enough change to buy cigarettes and laugh it up on the doorstep in their nicotine induced high. People in Estonia think of this as wealth; they dream of the day they get to eat spaghetti bolognaise, rather than a Sunday lunch of a boiled corn on the cob, flavoured with vinegar. From this poverty, an eastern European girl (who was that way inclined) might consider that having sex with a teenage virgin in West London for £200 cash doesn’t seem such a bad proposition. She wouldn’t need to be kidnapped; she’d pay her passage willingly.

My job is to defend people who’ve been arrested by the police, so I’ve met many prostitutes in my time. Every single time I’ve had a conversation with an eastern European prostitute she’s always had a child back home, being looked after by mum. This may be an extraordinary coincidence, but every single time it has only been one child. Never two, never three, never none. Always there is a single child at home with mum. And this is where persuasion to go west and make money comes from. Not from an evil trafficker but from a disappointed mum whose only beautiful daughter got herself pregnant raher than make something of her life. Go and speak to these girls and you’ll discover it’s the mum’s who persuaded them to go west. Why? Because it’s the mum’s who receive the remittance and the escape from the most desperate poverty. I’m not saying this makes anything right, I’m just saying that it is often the very sad fact of the matter.

So let’s deal with the issue of the trafficker’s debt becoming a bond of slavery for the sex industry girl. OK. If it costs £2,000 to transport into the EU a girl who has in her handbag a lipstick and a pair of high heels, then how much less would it cost to transport a girl who has in her handbag a feather duster and a bottle of Pledge? Why should a person who earns £100 per hour be a victim of trafficking debt, while a person who earns £5 per hour is not? If the girl with the lipstick is a slave until her debt is paid off, then what of the girl with the feather duster? Surely at a 20th of the wage the bondage is twenty times greater? Yet, there is no concern for the girl with the feather duster, but the girl with the lipstick must be a victim of terrible slavery.

I’m not saying that the sex trade is anything other than a seedy business, but I’ve met girls who left school with nothing more than a single GCSE and would have achieved nothing more than being a barmaid in the local pub, yet in the period of their twenties they’ve accumulated enough wealth that they own 6 or 7 flats in Canary Wharf and have given themselves and their family security unimagined by the prospects of their education. Is that man’s oppression upon women? I’m not offended by members of the women’s Institute cooing over the back pages of a local newspaper with remarks such as “Thailand, disgusting!” but I am offended by well educated socialists claiming altruism but in fact having exactly the same motive for their disgust as the WI.

We do need to ensure that young women who travel away from their homes are protected from those who wish to profit on the misery of others. But if you go to the Old Bailey and look at the lists, you’ll find that all the Kidnappings and False Imprisonments are to do with the drugs business. There seems to be an almost complete absence of any complaints being made of this forced labour. Yet the Daily Mail would have you believe it’s everywhere.

So where are these complainants? There is no line of working girls joining hands from Shoreditch to Soho in protest, whilst singing in unison “All we are saying is give anti-liberalism a chance!” There is no scattered cry criss-crossing the landscape as each working girl stands up and chants, “I’m Roxanne!” “No, I’m Roxanne!” “No! I’m Roxanne!”

I’m not offended if you have genuine opinions against the sex industry, but I am offended if you try present your morals as altruism, because whatever your view on this issue, the one simple fact is this, the slaves are not revolting!