Trafficking: the operation – third part | podcasting | News

When Julia is found in a brothel by the Surrey Police detective Martin, she tells him where to find the leader of the gang, Aleksander. Three days later, Martyn and his team get a warrant and go to the address.

“There was a map. He had in fact surrounded the location of the brothels…”, Martyn tells the journalist. Annie Kelly, editor of the Guardian’s Rights and Freedom project. “He had written down the driving distance and travel time between each of them.”

In this four-part series, we hear Julia recount how she was taken from life as a young mother in Ukraine and found herself in a very different life here in the UK; a life defined by exploitation and human trafficking. After five years trapped in debt bondage in hotels and brothels, she was discovered by Surrey Police in 2019. With the backing of anti-slavery charity Justice and Care, she prosecuted her exploiters in court and won.

In episode three, Martyn investigates the gang and realizes that everything is much bigger than he originally thought. We hear about how difficult it is to bring modern slavery charges to court and what it’s like to speak out at trial for victims like Julia as she fights for justice.

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