[Harry!]

from channel 4 news

Police have launched a new campaign which targets criminals who traffick women and force them into the sex trade.

All 55 police forces in the UK and Ireland will take part in Operation Pentameter 2, designed to build on a similar project last year which rescued more than 80 women from brothels and massage parlours.

'Modern slave trade'
It has been called the 'modern slave trade' and its victims, sometimes as young as 14, are sometimes threatened with violence if they try and get help.

The first Operation Pentameter made 232 arrests and found women sold for anything between £500 and £8,000.

Rapid results
Three women have already been rescued by officers in Operation Pentameter since work began on Monday, said Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) spokesman and Gloucestershire Chief Constable Dr Tim Brain.

He urged the public to phone their local police or Crimestoppers if they had information about women they suspected had been trafficked.

Suburban traffic
He also repeated concerns raised last June at the close of the first Pentameter operation that prostitution was growing in suburbia with large numbers of women being forced to work in ordinary houses and flats in cities, towns and even villages.

This time, the project is also focusing on ordinary locations as well as traditional city centre red light areas and massage parlours.

Thousands of women and girls are believed to have been trafficked into the UK to work as prostitutes.

The most recent estimate said there were 4,000 involved in the sex trade against their will, but Denise Marshall, chief executive of Poppy Project, a charity which helps victims, said she feared the figure was far higher.

'I'm not going to give an across-the-board guarantee that nobody who is a victim of trafficking would be removed back to their source country. I believe that would be likely to act more generally as a pull back.'
Home Secretary Jacqui SmithDeportation risk remains
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said today that some of the women rescued from sex slavery by a new police operation will still face the risk of deportation.

She insisted the Government was unable to give a guarantee that none of the illegally smuggled victims would be removed, but she renewed a pledge to give them a reflection period of 30 days.

'Operation Pentameter will send out a clear message that as a society we won't tolerate the exploitation and brutality perpetrated by these 21st-century slave traders.'
Home Secretary Jacqui SmithA clear message
The Home Secretary hoped that Government officials who decide asylum cases would fully take into account any traumatic experiences that women rescued by Pentameter or other police operations might have suffered in forced prostitution.

She also shared concerns that British men who use prostitutes have helped to drive demand for criminal smuggling of women and girls, but added that she did not currently support a change in the law to criminalise prostitutes' punters.

'It is 200 years since the British abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and it is a shame that we are still talking about slaves within this country.'
Aidan McQuade, Director of Anti-Slavery InternationalLaunch welcomed
Director of Anti-Slavery International, Aidan McQuade, welcomed the launch but said it was unfortunate that a law change from three years ago which allows people to be prosecuted for forcing others to work as slaves in non-sexual tasks has still not led to a conviction.

Denise Marshall of the Poppy Project said women and girls were forced to have sex with between five and 30 customers a day.

The group had encountered one woman who was bullied into sleeping with 50 men during one Christmas Day. She said, 'We support any police activity that gives women who have been trafficked a lifeline.'

The Poppy Project will receive an extra £100,000 from the Government to deal with victims rescued during the campaign