JAMMED LIBRARY & RESOURCES BLOG:

This blog is designed to be a one stop portal of updated news, links & media relating to human trafficking both in Australia and Across the Globe.

THE JAMMED is a feature film inspired by court transcripts and is about slavery and deportation in Australia - and a Melbourne woman who tries to rescue three girls from a trafficking syndicate. (www.thejammed.com)

Monday, October 6, 2008

Some Traffickers get Caught

Dominic Woo
A businessman who ran a brothel from a sauna in Glasgow’s west end has been jailed for nine months.Dominic Woo was arrested after police raided the Venus Sauna in 2004 after several weeks of surveillance.
Officers secured a prosecution after questioning prostituted women whom Woo had coerced into the sex industry.
Woo admitted running a brothel and living off immoral earnings when he appeared at Glasgow Sheriff Court.
As he was sentenced, he described the charges as a “stitch-up.”
Police acted after keeping the sauna in the city’s Sandyford Place Lane under surveillance for several days in July 2004. A number of men were seen visiting the premises and were later traced and interviewed. Most admitted knowing sex was for sale there.
Police raided the sauna and seized pornographic magazines, videos and DVDs as well lubricant, sex aids,condoms and underwear. A member of staff admitted she had been engaged in prostitution.
Adele MacDonald, prosecuting, told the court: “She said for each customer, irrespective of the sexual service,she would give £15 to reception. She was able to say that Dominic Woo would attend and check the takings. As far as she was aware, he would take the money as it would not be there afterwards.”
Luan Plakici
In December 2003, Albanian immigrant Plakici received a prison sentence of 23 years for trafficking Eastern European women into the UK and forcing them into prostitution. Plakici was convicted of several offences including kidnap, incitement to rape and living off the earnings of prostitution. He admitted smuggling up to
60 people into the UK, including seven counts of human trafficking.
Seven of his victims gave evidence in the trial, describing how they were tricked into leaving their loved ones behind for a brighter future. Instead the women were imprisoned, bought, sold and raped during their journey to the UK.
All the victims were beaten, raped and forced to have sex with up to 20 men a day in UK brothels. Plakici married one teenage victim for her earning potential, who then spent her wedding night being prostituted.
She was forced to undergo two abortions, returning to prostitution just hours later.
It was the biggest UK case of human traffi cking for prostitution, with a turnover of £1 million, supplying brothels in London, Reading, Luton and Bedford. Before leading his Albanian traffi cking ring, Plakici worked as a legal interpreter specialising in immigration. He attempted to deny his crimes by saying he had merely flouted immigration laws.
Ron and Angela Miller
A brothel owner was jailed for three and a half years after police raids on her Northampton massage parlours.
The raids ended with the discovery of then Labour MP Joe Ashton in one of the properties with a 21-year-old Thai woman. Along with three family members including ex-husband Ron and their son Don, Miller used false passports to bring up to 18 women from Thailand into her two brothels. She fled the country on September
15, 2000, the day she was given bail after admitting involvement in the £1 million prostitution racket.
Northamptonshire Police, working with Interpol, tracked Miller, who had duel citizenship, to Thailand where she was hiding in the beachside resort of Pattaya.
Miller’s prostitution gang was masterminded by her husband Ron Miller, who used agents in Thailand to find “suitable peasant girls.” He would make regular trips to the Far East to buy the women for £5,000 each at sales in Bangkok hotels.
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