Adult Exploitation

Activities that involve one person keeping another person in compelled service (Home Office 2016). The Modern Slavery Act (2015) includes: forced labour, forced criminality, sexual exploitation, forced marriage and domestic servitude.

Someone is in slavery if they are:

• Forced to work through mental or physical threat
• Owned or controlled by an “employer”, usually through mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse, often with perceptions of “debt bondage”
• Dehumanised, treated like a commodity or bought and sold as “property”
• Physically constrained or have restrictions placed on his/her freedom.

More information on Modern Slavery can be found on the Safe and Sound website.

DSPP have produced an eLearning package on Modern Slavery.

Human trafficking involves recruitment, harbouring or transporting people into a situation of exploitation through the use of violence, deception or coercion and forced to work against their will (antislavery.org).

The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children is the internationally accepted definition of human trafficking. This Protocol (which is in force) was signed by the United Kingdom on 14 December 2000 and ratified on 9 February 2006. It provides a definition of trafficking which has since become a widely accepted standard and used in other international instruments. It also outlines protection for victims.

Adult Sexual Exploitation is a form of sexual abuse that involves someone taking advantage of an adult, sexually, for their own benefit through threats, bribes, and violence.

Perpetrators usually hold power over their victims, due to age, gender, sexual identity, physical strength or status.

Adults can be sexually exploited in many ways. Examples include:

• rape
• sexual assault
• being tricked or manipulated into having sex or performing a sexual act
• being trafficked into, out of, or around the UK for the purpose of sexual exploitation (i.e. prostitution)
• being forced to take part in or watch pornography
• being victim to revenge porn (when a previously taken video or photograph, which was taken with or without consent, is shared online).

This refers to organised crime gangs / groups who operate in urban areas who supply drugs to suburbs, market and coastal towns; often crossing county borders. The gangs use dedicated mobile phone lines, sometimes known as “deal lines”. They use adults (and children) to move drugs and money.

Organised crime gangs create a base in their chosen target area, usually by taking over the homes of local adults who gang members have identified as vulnerable. They do this either by force or coercion (known as ‘cuckooing’).

Criminal exploitation is widespread, with gangs from big cities including London, Manchester and Liverpool operating throughout England, Wales and Scotland.

This involves children, men and women being forced to work in private households performing tasks such as childcare and housekeeping for little or no pay and often in abusive conditions.