Perhaps some of those who watched the graphic film telling the story of Abike, a Nigerian woman trafficked and sexually exploited in the UK, thought they were seeing a work of fiction. People are still shocked to think slavery exists right here under our noses. Yet Abike’s story is true and sadly, in the experience of those at the Poppy Project, all too familiar.

The Poppy Project is part of Eaves for Women, an organisation that has been assisting, supporting and advocating for female victims of human trafficking since 2003. Abike was one of our clients and her story was like so many that come to us every day, where truth is stranger and far more disturbing than fiction.

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Some of the women we support have found themselves in situations of extreme exploitation or torture, often following a desperate attempt to escape abuse, destitution, and gender-based violence in their country. Sometimes their stories arise from the very human instinct of wanting to improve their lives. They trusted a friend, a friend of a friend, a boyfriend or a relative. They believed they were travelling somewhere where they would find honest and meaningful employment. What began as a dream of a better life often ended up as a living nightmare.

For clients like Abike, betrayal will quickly be followed by fear, entrapment, torture, helplessness, rape and various other forms of physical and psychological abuse. They lose all hope and self-worth. They become slaves.

Somehow, eventually they will escape. Only very rarely will they be rescued. When they encounter the authorities, the likelihood of being believed is balanced against their immigration status. As a result, their cases are often received with at best scepticism and at worst a strong rebuke that they should not have come here to scrounge off our benefits. The strong message is: you are an illegal immigrant first and a human being last; not our citizen, not our problem.

The process these women then have to go through is a slow dehumanisation.

To have been positively recognised as a victim of trafficking in the eyes of the law, Abike, like every woman we work with, first had to pass a tick-list of official indicators. Did someone else arrange your travel? Did you earn any money from the work you did? Are you traumatised? How can you prove you are traumatised? Which expert can substantiate your claims? It goes on and on and on. And unsurprisingly, many fail a tick or two. The majority of women who face this do so without a professional advocate and have no means of challenging their exclusion from identification as a victim of trafficking and therefore from any support.

So how should we be identifying victims of trafficking? My answer is by providing the care and compassion they need to enable disclosure; yes, it is that simple! Think in the context of a British rape victim; in such cases there are clear guidelines on procedure, on access to counselling and reporting and recording the crime.

The police officer responded: 'If you really had been raped, you should have run out and asked a white person for help.'

A woman I recently supported was brave enough to go to the police to report she was being sexually exploited and had experienced rape. The response from a police officer was: “Well, you left it too late to report this. There is no proof to substantiate your claims. If you really had been raped you should have run out and asked a white person for help.”

Fortunately some police forces in the UK are trained and equipped to support victims of trafficking. The Metropolitan police, for instance, have a dedicated unit made up of specialist officers who are able to identify victims and support them during investigations. We work closely with this unit and have successfully assisted with a number of prosecutions against traffickers. But what we need is a national approach, where every regional force is trained to identify and provide a high level of victim care. There needs to be a national, indeed a global collective criminal and social justice response to trafficking and modern day slavery.

Even when someone has been identified as a victim of trafficking, our work with them does not end. Cuts to the legal aid system have left us struggling to find representatives who can give our women the advice that they need, or put together an asylum case for them.

In Abike’s case, she was able to bring her family to the UK to be reunited with them in safety. Yet there was no legal aid to pay a lawyer to assist her with this complicated application. She was only able to be together with her children thanks to generous donations.

The Modern Slavery Act will come into force on 31 July. We welcome the act, which should prove to be landmark legislation addressing slavery and trafficking in the 21st century. On paper it appears the act will, as Theresa May asserted, “send a strong message to traffickers and will encourage prosecutions”.

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However the Poppy Project, and other organisations working in the sector, feel the act does not go far enough in ensuring victim care. The government must strongly commit to providing victims with care beyond the 45 days of support provision.

When a victim of trafficking is detained by police or immigration authorities, the attitude of officials often plays directly into the hands of the traffickers. Victims we support are frequently told by their traffickers that no one will believe them, or that if they seek assistance they will be detained and removed. Our government reinforces this message. These actions undermine any trust between authorities and the women we work with, and it is detrimental to a successful prosecution.

The government cannot expect an increase in prosecutions, or that the Modern Slavery Act will be at the forefront of global anti-trafficking initiatives, unless it is also prepared to address the protection needs of victims and to understand its own obligations to identify potential victims.

Abike’s story is shocking, but what is more shocking to me and my organisation is the existence of a lukewarm identification and support system which denies victims a real chance of recovery.

Although Abike’s story ended on a hopeful note, this is not the case for many of the women we support. Their stories, which so often remain untold, are blemishes on our collective conscience.