More and more women are luring victims into prostitution, with the UK considered fertile ground. So what can be done?

Ever since Cynthia Payne became famous for accepting Luncheon Vouchers in lieu of sexual services in the 1987 hit film Personal Services, the female pimp has been glamorised and made to seem benign. But women who trade in women can be as brutal and cruel as their male counterparts and their numbers across Europe are increasing.

Banjit* has horrific first-hand experience of being controlled by a female trafficker. Arriving in the UK from Thailand in 2005 to support her impoverished family by working in a brothel, she says: "I knew I would be provided with food and accommodation in the UK, and would have to repay £27,000 to a Thai woman, but I was unsure as to how much that actually was."

On her arrival in the UK, Banjit was introduced to Atchara Nualpenyai, who housed her in a flat in east London before taking away her passport to stop her running away. She then told Banjit that she would be able to pay off the debt within two to three months by providing "services" to buyers such as anal sex and sex without a condom.

Banjit was sent to work in brothels all over London and made to work seven days a week, even while menstruating. All her money went to Nualpenyai. Realising she would never be able to repay the debt, Banjit eventually ran away without her passport and turned to the police for help. They subsequently discovered that Nualpenyai had been exploiting a number of other women in brothels around London. In 2011 Nualpenyai was imprisoned for six and a half years for trafficking for sexual exploitation, and controlling prostitution.

The UK is considered fertile ground for traffickers. Police admit there is little scrutiny of the off-street sex industry, and that detecting the crime is difficult and costly. A report by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), published in 2010, revealed that at the very minimum, 2,600 women were confirmed to have been trafficked into England and Wales and forced to work as prostitutes, and that an additional 9,200 women in brothels and other premises were considered to be "vulnerable migrants" who had possibly been trafficked. There are an estimated 5,890 brothels in England and Wales.

John O'Brien, Detective Sergeant at the Metropolitan Police Trafficking and Prostitution Unit, says that women often commit trafficking offences. "On many occasions the [perpetrators] have previously been sex workers themselves who have realised the financial gains that can be made from these criminal enterprises."

The idea of victim turned perpetrator is backed up by the prevalence of women as sex traffickers suggested by a study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which revealed that women make up the largest proportion of such criminals in about a third of the countries that provided information on the gender of traffickers. "In some parts of the world, women trafficking women is the norm," it said. There is also anecdotal evidence that increasing numbers of female traffickers are involved in the trafficking of the most vulnerable victims, the under 18s, as well as low-ranking activities that have a higher risk of detection by police.

One Albanian woman told me that the only way she could escape her own trafficker after five years in a London brothel was to agree to return home and bring back fresh victims. "I had to go to my town and tell the girls there that I knew from school that there were great opportunities in the UK for them, you know, as waitresses and even as dancers," says Elda*. "They were poor and desperate like me, so they wanted to get away. I felt like I had stuck a knife in my own stomach, knowing what I was taking them to, but I could not stand one more day [in the brothel]."

Leigh Ivens, anti-trafficking advocate for the Poppy Project, has supported a number of victims who were trafficked by other women. "From my experience, the control mechanisms used by the female traffickers have been particularly brutal."

Ivens says that victims often describe how much they trusted the women and how shocked and betrayed they felt when they were subsequently deceived and exploited. "Even when the main trafficker is male, they often use other women during the recruitment stage to lure women into a sense of security."

Sally Montier, who has worked with trafficked women for a decade as a senior support worker at the Poppy Project says: "I have also supported victims who have been told that the only way they can get free is to recruit another woman to 'replace' themselves."

Another case dealt with by the Poppy Project involved Abagbe*, a young woman who was recruited by an old school friend in a Nigerian village. Her friend had become a key player in a trafficking gang. "One minute I was coming to London to work as a model and the next I was told I had to pay back £30,000 to the woman who told me she was an employment agent," says Niele*, who was 18 when offered work by a woman she met in a café. "She told me she could get me a passport and book my flight, and that a job in a hotel would be waiting for me in the West End. It was my dream come true."

On arriving in London she discovered that the passport was fake, and that the job was not in a West End hotel but a brothel in Enfield. "She told me if I went to the police I would be arrested, and that if I did not pay her back what I owed that she would tell my father I was a prostitute."

Niele eventually escaped from her trafficker, but the brothel in which she was made to service up to 10 men a day is still open for business. Many of the women and girls who are vulnerable to trafficking rarely believe another woman would abuse them. Yet, without such awareness their vulnerability is only likely to increase.

* Names have been changed.