Scots justice branded too slow to safeguard trafficked children

VULNERABLE children and adults being trafficked into Scotland for abuse and exploitation are being failed by a criminal justice system that is too slow, a key figure has warned.

The head of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) in Scotland has hit out at a “collective inability to bring these cases to trial,” because investigations take years to build.

Phil Taylor said: “Foreign nationals are not going to hang about for three years to give evidence against traffickers. We have to be more robust, more determined and more flexible.”

Latest figures show there have been 55 adults and 19 children suspected of being trafficked into Scotland since April 2009.

Investigators found “conclusive grounds” to believe 11 of the children were trafficked, but still no-one has been convicted of trafficking offences in Scotland.

Some of the children brought to Scotland work in slavery. Many Vietnamese and Chinese are made to work in cannabis factories – houses that are gutted, fitted with power generators to provide heat and lighting, and filled with hundreds of plants.

None of the children the UKBA knows about have been trafficked into Scotland for sexual exploitation. However, the agency works only with children from outside the European Union and not those from accession countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria.

Mr Taylor admitted he fears four ongoing investigations into a number of traffickers, and dozens of victims, will not lead to convictions because they are taking too long.

He said: “The real worry is if you never take a case to trial, you will never get a conviction.”

He wants a taskforce to be established, which would include the UKBA, the Crown Office, the Serious Crime and Drugs Enforcement Agency and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, to look at trafficking as a whole in Scotland.

“It is something we should definitely consider,” he added. “I’m not talking about 50 or 60 people, just five or six, working across boundaries, building up a degree of expertise.”

Mr Taylor, who was speaking at a Child Trafficking Conference in Edinburgh yesterday, said this was being discussed by the Helena Kennedy inquiry, which is due to report on trafficking to the Scottish Government.

Christine Beddoe, of the charity End Child Prostitution, Pornography and the Trafficking of all children UK, called for the burden of proof to be changed when investigating potential trafficking cases.

“The burden should not be on the child to prove they’ve been trafficked, it should be whether you can conclusively see the child has not been,” she said.

Children’s Commissioner Tam Baillie, who hosted the conference, said: “Child trafficking happens here in Scotland, right here, today.

“We have to have sufficient information and intelligence so we can start to target the people who are the perpetrators of these offences against children.”