From the New York Times:

By CEYLAN YEGINSU NOV. 18, 2017

… A report by a British government commission on modern slavery and human trafficking, released last month, described a sprawling practice that ensnares tens of thousands of people in Britain.

Many are immigrants. But the high number of victims from Britain was an unexpected shock — cases involving British citizens like the teenage girl were the third-largest grouping, after those involving Albanians or Vietnamese.

A majority of child-trafficking victims were also found to be British. …

“We kind of let it slip that we have vulnerable people in our own communities,” Kevin Hyland, Britain’s first independent antislavery commissioner, said in an interview. …

Then, during the school holidays in July last year, the teenager disappeared. It was not until seven months later, after her mother said she had resigned herself to the fact that her daughter might be dead, that a detective told her that she had been kidnapped and enslaved.

“Enslaved?” the mother, whose identity is also being concealed to protect her daughter, recalled asking the officer. “I just kept repeating that word. I didn’t understand it,” she said in a London park where she often goes to try to manage a panic disorder that developed after her daughter’s disappearance.

During the months when her daughter was missing, “I thought about every possible scenario that could have happened to her,” her mother said. “But slavery? I didn’t even know that happened in England.”

Britain recorded 2,255 modern slavery offenses across England and Wales last year, a 159 percent increase from the previous year. According to the government commission, the rise suggests that, while slavery might be increasing, so is awareness among the police and public. …