First person prosecuted for human trafficking faces court

THE first person to be prosecuted for human trafficking will appear in court next week, two years after the Government introduced the legislation.

No one has been charged under the Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act 2008 despite 66 allegations of trafficking in 2009 alone.

Only 13 of those 66 were found not to involve human trafficking.

Over the two years since the law was enacted, the Department of Justice’s Anti-Human Trafficking Unit points out that 10 people have been prosecuted for offences related to human trafficking.

However of those, five relate to authorities here contributing information to prosecutions taken outside the state. Three others relate to the Carroll gang which was found guilty earlier this year of organising prostitution in Britain and Ireland. In the case which was prosecuted in Wales, it did emerge that women under TJ Carroll’s gang were trafficked and that he knew about this, but the traffickers themselves were not collared.

In another case, the trafficking link was tenuous. A former garda sergeant tried twice to source a child for sex from a prostitute. In both cases he failed, so no one was actually trafficked.

“In the two years since this law has existed there have been no convictions,” said Catherine Dunne, chair of the Labour Party’s women’s section, which has been vocal on the need to crack down on organisers of prostitution and traffickers. “Ten prosecution cases have been initiated but we wait for a conviction. While this is not a criticism, we do want to note the fact that this is the case.

“We know from studies that trafficked girls and women have been identified in Ireland,” said Ms Dunne.

“In June 2008, the US Trafficking in Persons Report classified Ireland for the first time as a destination country for women, men, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labour.

“We do not want this piece of legislation to be like the law against marital rape, which was enacted in 1990 but only secured the first conviction in 2002.”