UK Human Trafficker Controlled Victims With Threats of Witchcraft
A London council caretaker who headed a Nigerian people-smuggling gang that forced children into Juju voodoo rites and prostitution was jailed for 20 years today after a landmark trial.
The two teenage girls involved are believed to be the first Juju victims to give evidence in a European court.
Until now every victim has refused to give evidence because of their belief that a curse would kill them.
The girls in this case, who cannot be named for legal reasons, described rituals including being shut in a coffin and forced to eat a raw chicken heart. These were to ensure the victims were “bound” to a medicine man and would not reveal the truth.
Anthony Harrison, 32, who worked for Newham council under the name Charles Pepple, was today convicted by Woolwich crown court of conspiracy to traffick people for sexual exploitation, conspiracy to breach immigration law and false imprisonment. He will be sentenced later.
Harrison, of Stratford, was cleared on two counts of raping the girls.
The case is the first where children were illegally brought to the UK to be shipped off to work in the sex industries of Spain and Greece.
Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones told jurors the girls were 14 and 16 when brought to Britain in 2009.
Both were from Edo state in Nigeria where Juju “exists in conjunction with other religions such as Christianity”, she said. “They are vulnerable girls from small villages in Nigeria, with limited educations and little exposure to the outside world.”