i can take it to one place you can
choose one girl out of ten of them
and we can go to another place and
choose two to three girls basically
choose the best ones
and that is that we know that there are
sex workers in london what made this the
story
was really the fact that they were being
trafficked and held against their will
the customer base for these women
stretches to famous footballers
politicians
and serious business tycoons in this
country these women have to service men
and we're talking sometimes you know 30
men tonight
that's a lot of guys you know 230 a week
these aren't just
small operations we're talking hundreds
of millions of pounds being made
in these affluent areas and these women
aren't seeing
any of it
[Music]
i'm lucy watson i am a correspondent for
itv news
exposing the dark underbelly of society
is something i feel very strongly about
i'm tam hussein
i'm an investigative journalist for itv
news the night i got the story we'd been
out on an awards night and we stepped
out of the
taxi and the first thing that happens is
one of these guys comes up and says to
me look man do you want something
free free drinks two minutes from here
this guy of course
offered me drugs and sex so i said to
him listen what are you doing
what are you doing why are you doing
this turns out that he was very very
well educated
and he was just caught in this situation
and i said look man why don't we expose
this
i remember getting the call from time i
was sitting in my kitchen and he told me
all about
this meeting this guy and what he
thought the story was
i went to lucy and said look what would
you think and i was instantly
excited by it i wanted to expose it i
wanted to know more after the guy
approached tam tam took his number
and carried on chatting to him over a
number of weeks so i started to just
start digging and i started just map
out these houses to get the footage in
the brothel
we had to of course go into one the area
where we discovered these brothels
is probably one of the most affluent
areas in london
it's one of the most expensive postcodes
in the country
i mean you only need to drive down the
street on any nights of the week and
there are ferraris it's the playground
for the rich
the famous and royalty we discovered in
a very
small area 15 to 20 brothels and at
least
five to ten women in these brothels
every single night
this is a very very sophisticated
network that goes all the way
all the way back to eastern europe now
and albania
we all know that prostitution exists
and many women do it out of choice we
were not
exposing that what we wanted to expose
was the fact that
so many women in this country are used
in this industry
against their will and are living in
fear they train them
until they are 18 in romania and then
they sell them in the western countries
and it's very difficult to help them
when they are
in your countries because they've been
in this situation for four or five years
there is no other life they know these
girls
were groomed from a very very young age
they think
they're gonna have a great job they'll
send them to places like amsterdam
london
but actually you know they go into
prostitution because they have to pay
this
debt off they're quite often held here
under a debt
bondage which is basically anything that
the trafficker
has spent a plane ticket a ferry ticket
petrol to get them here chewing gum
a cigarette makeup all of these costs
mount up
and there's interest they can never pay
this off
and then that threat goes back to their
family you could
even give them their passport it's fine
because all
this gang member needs to do is just
show a picture of her mom
and say look we're 10 minutes away
that's it she's not going to go anywhere
when you're in
the area of mayfair it's not as simple
as just going out with a secret camera
and filming
this activity quite often street sellers
beggars are the eyes and the ears
of these organized crime groups they are
clocking your behavior
i don't think anyone wants to get
involved with albanian gangs
i think that was the risk we went to a
place
where this centric man comes up with
these different cameras
something out of james bond you know and
you'd give your shirt and he'd rig it up
or he'd put a little camera on your
button
and he'll talk you through what you have
to do so we had
my colleague who you see filming with me
and their story was
i was showing my northern friend what
london
life was like they were on a night out
the businessman from the north
wanted a prostitute and wanted to pay
for it
tam was going to facilitate that because
he had contacts he knew pimps
in this area i built up a relationship
with one of the drivers
who we see in the film who then took us
the questions of the driver's euphemism
for pimp when you go in it's not
it's not like a luxury flat with really
really nice furniture you go in
and there's 10 to 15 girls just sitting
in front of you and
it's quite it's a bizarre thing when you
know the girls come in and they're
sitting there and you have to choose
it's quite dehumanizing
the people who are paying for sex are
paying around 300 pounds an
hour politicians footballers that you
and i know of
you know you know instantly are using
this
often these men are drunk and then when
they're taken to
the brothels they are offered drugs for
free if they're paying for the women
these men aren't just handing over cash
either they are handing over credit
cards
sometimes these men can be there for
days because they are so drugged up
but they're paying an hourly rate so
they can come out of their days later
having spent tens of thousands of pounds
and they can't exactly go and explain to
the police or their loved ones
oh this is where all the money's gone i
suppose the brazenness of the whole
thing so we've got you know
being offered the girls being offered
the coke and then
when we go there you've got to go all
lined up
we had the footage analyzed and there
were clear indicators that these women
were being
held against their will there was a
woman
who would sit in the corner of the room
and she would be monitoring
the women's behavior out of the five we
managed to determine that probably at
least three maybe four
were from romania that seems to be
where the vast majority of women who
were used in brothels
are coming from romanians are the main
european population that is being
exploited in the uk
the promise of a better life turns into
a nightmare there's no way that they can
go back home because there's this
pressure and this shame
then not only are you a failure in your
eyes but you're a failure in the
community's eyes and the family's eyes
this investigation didn't just happen
overnight it took nearly
six months from when we first had that
conversation
so this story came out at news at 10 in
september the purpose of doing an
investigation like this is about
increasing the public the authorities
understanding of the situations that
these women
find themselves in and why they're in
those situations
you can't look at them as criminals you
know you have to look at them as
as victims they have to be believed as a
result of our investigation
it empowered the all party parliamentary
group
to once again push the home secretary
into the idea of criminalizing
the purchasing of sex and
decriminalizing
the victims the recent figures came out
you know
talking about the situation it remains
dire even to this day
i'm still getting messages saying that
you know
we moved to a different address and that
there's a party happening
in mayfair so that's why when people say
has things changed
i think well maybe not because i'm still
getting these texts
[Music]
you