A parliamentary committee will next week debate amendments to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. These include proposals submitted by Dr Carrie Pemberton, the dynamic founder of CHASTE, to stamp out sex trafficking.

Carrie is concerned that those who support licencing brothels, like the WI and Bishop Crispian Hollis, do not understand the full implications of this, that 98% of female trafficking victims end up forced into sexual exploitation and prostitution.

Carrie desperately wants more protection for victims and, although CHASTE provides safe housing for up to a third of trafficked women, it receives no govenment funding. Is it because they are a church organisation? If so, how can that be justified? How can they persuade government to be financially supportive?

Carrie is a truly inspirational woman. She first met trafficked women when she worked as an immigration chaplain at Yarls Wood Detention Centre which burnt down in 2002. She is now totally devoted to helping stamp out trafficking after hearing their devastating and humiliating personal stories.

This is a press release we have just issued:

A leading UK charity aimed at abolishing sex trafficking is strongly urging the Government to amend its legislation on prostitution and provide more protection to victims of trafficking.

CHASTE (Churches Alert to Sex Trafficking across Europe) has outlined its views in a letter to Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker in response to the Government’s consultation paper entitled: ‘Tackling Human Trafficking – Consultation on Proposals for a UK Action Plan’. They will be considered by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill Committee which meets to consider amendments next week.

Dr Carrie Pemberton, Chief Executive of CHASTE, believes that the most successful solution would be to reduce the demand of prostitution by penalising those who use it. She is concerned that the Government’s proposals will encourage hundreds of new mini-brothels to open their doors and force more women into sex slavery.

She also challenged the views of Bishop Crispian Hollis, who has supported a campaign by Hampshire WI to licence brothels.

CHASTE’s proposed amendments are supported by CARE, Christian Action Research and Education. The CHASTE letter states:

• Present statistics lead us to understand that 98% of female trafficking victims end up forced into sexual exploitation and prostitution. This raises some questions around the small ‘mini’ brothels which will come into existence as a result of the Coordinated Strategy on Prostitution published January 2006.

• Government should look at the pull of client demand for paid sex in this country into which trafficked persons are drawn, it should actively be reducing the market for prostitution.

• I urge the Government to follow Canada’s lead by supporting victims of sex trafficking for four months as studies suggest this as the minimum time for a woman to begin to recover from the shock and initial trauma of her trafficking experience. This is one of the issues under debate in The Council of Europe’s Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which is still waiting to be ratified by the UK, despite the Government introducing the idea during its presidency of the EU.

• There is an urgent need to provide better and more extensive care and support to the victims of trafficking. The Government’s initiative of the Poppy Project is to be commended. However, faith-based organisations, including the Salvation Army and the Medaille Trust networked through the CHASTE round table of safe house providers, currently provides one third of safe housing support for survivors of trafficking for sexual exploitation, with no contribution from the Government. I strongly urge the Government to address this absence of funding support as a matter of the highest priority.

Dr Pemberton said:

“We have to be very careful about simply thinking that the legalisation of brothels is a modern and pragmatic response to the abuse and health impacts which are incurred by prostitution.

“What we have discovered with CHASTE and our work with trafficked women over the last three years is that countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, which have legalised brothels, have rates of trafficking for sexual exploitation way in excess of the UK, so it isn’t a solution to that challenge.

“We need to end the practice of recruitment into prostitution, and the demand for pay-as-you-go sex which drives the market. The only way to do that is to start to bring the clients of prostituted sex into the legislative frame and see legislation put in place to prosecute those who purchase, as well as those who groom and pimp, and bring new money to the table for the resourcing of properly-budgeted exit strategies for women who for one reason or another are caught in this trade.

“It is really not good enough to say, as Bishop Hollis has done, that we need to be realistic as prostitution has been with us from time immemorial, and will continue to be with us long into the future. If the abolitionists had had that attitude 200 years ago, we could still have had some form of a transatlantic slave trade present today into the sugar cane plantations of the West Indies.

“The church, of course, needs to be realistic, non-moralistic, and pragmatic – but also prophetic. We should be looking to change the law in Britain to align with that of Sweden where legislation has been passed to prosecute the client and support to the hilt exit strategies for women caught in prostitution, so that they can start to move on and find less abusive and dangerous forms of employment away from dependency on drugs and their pimps.

“We are launching on the Love’s Not for Sale tour this week, as part of our new Not for Sale campaign to ask the Government to pay urgent attention to demand, without which the appalling number of women trafficked into prostitution in this country (4,000), and the 80,000 estimated by a Government report of those involved in some way in prostitution in this country is sure to rise.�