Couple who forced girl of 14 into life of prostitution
A ROMANIAN couple who trafficked a 14-year-old girl into the UK to work as a prostitute were jailed for 14 years following the first prosecution for child sex trafficking under the 2015 Modern Slavery Act.
Petre Niculescu, 39, and Romelia Florentina Radu, 32, were sentenced in May after they pleaded guilty to trafficking the child and eight other women from impoverished backgrounds in their homeland. A third Romanian, George Maracineanu, 47, who brought one of the victims to the UK before handing her over to the couple, was jailed for two years and eight months.
They had operated in the UK since 2013 and lured the 14-year-old here in 2016 after promising her a job as a waitress. One of nine siblings from a poor family, she was promised decent wages and housing but on the night she arrived in the UK she was told to change into ‘sexy’ clothes and put on heavy make-up.
The girl was forced to have sex with men every day for four months. In a vic-
tim impact statement read out at Kingston Crown Court, she said: ‘I was forced to have sex continuously. Many times it was painful and I was disgusted.’
She lived in fear of her captors and was told not to tell anyone her age or her real name. ‘They would swear at me and threaten me with violence,’ she said.
‘They would tell me that they are going to hurt my family.’
The couple also recruited other women through friends and family with the promise of work in shops and restau- rants. But when the women arrived in the UK, they were told to pay for their travel costs, as well as their ‘patch’ of the street and rent in the flats they used in Paddington, west London.
The women were paid a pittance and often beaten by their captors. All were threatened that their families would be harmed, their houses would be burned down, or they would be beaten up.
The gang were finally caught when one of their victims, a 41-year-old woman, went to police.