Human Trafficking and the LGBT sex trade

 

 

Since 2005 Aurora has heard several rumours of gay sex trafficking in the Croydon area.

They were all based on assumptions that were patently untrue or that could easily have been checked and been denied definitively.

There are charities that work in the London area and provide admirable and much needed services to gay and transgendered sex workers. We ask those organisations but they have no evidence of human trafficking in the LGBT sex trade. We enquire of other local bodies* involved in the topic and we actively seek out information from our own LGBT contacts. But to date (25th October 2008) the various rumours have been nothing but exaggeration or misunderstandings.

No-one is pretending that human trafficking never happens in the gay sex trade. On the contrary, we know it is going on elsewhere, and in recent years one outfit was cracked by the police.

However we continue to follow up any information about anyone being forced to offer sex services to LGBT people in any circumstances, and we shall continue to be active in tracking them down.

If you can help, please see the Contact Us page.


In one instance, the Croydon Community Against Trafficking began to report a story in 2008 about possible male sex trafficking. This referred to a "male sauna", which turned out to be a gay male sauna, not in Croydon, but well patronised by many Croydon people. There were many reasons to discount this report. Frequent patrons who were looking out for it, had not picked up any suggestion of such activity, and some would have reported it. And the sauna, which is run to high standards, worked with the NHS, THT and other public and charitable bodies, not least with the local police. The local police even run police "surgeries" in the sauna.

By contrast, the strength of the allegation, which was very serious, was that "someone who had frequented there" had been "wondering whether some of the young men from Europe could be trafficked".

 

Web design by Foxearth IT Solutions           Updated18 Apr 2022            Valid HTML5