What kind of men pay for trafficked victims?

AS the traffickers are taken off the streets and the women who suffered abuse given justice, a question still remains.

Where are the men who took advantage of these vulnerable women and teenage girls?

Bronagh Andrew, Operations Manager for TARA, the Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance in Glasgow, said: “It’s increasingly frustrating –everyone wants to hear about the women and what they’ve been through.

“Nobody is going after the guys and saying ‘What attracts you to doing this? Why did you do this? What did you know?’

“It’s all on the women who have been through terrible things, things that have a lasting impact on the rest of their lives.”

During the Govanhill trafficking trial at Glasgow’s High Court, women described being sold to Asian men for sham marriages with a view to securing visas.

Other victims of the Slovakian and Nepalese gang said they were forced into prostitution by the traffickers.

In some cases, the men who bought the women are named. The Evening Times visited the address of one of the men believed to have been involved in the purchase of a teenager.

He has since moved on but a neighbour described him as a polite, friendly and helpful man who lived quietly.

Detective Constable Kirsty Lee, of Police Scotland, said that one of the men involved had been deported. She added: “We identified who the potential husbands were but there was an insufficiency of evidence to charge them in this case.”

Bronagh believes there is no way a man would not know a woman he was purchasing sex from was vulnerable.

She said: “If you go on websites [where men rate sex workers] you can see punters quite clearly describing trafficked woman and they don’t care.

“[The police] will get phone calls from punters with concerns but they’ll still have had their money’s worth before they make that call.

“So there’s no such thing as an ‘ethical John’.”