The spectre of the overcoated Fagin looming large over the lives of dependent children is one of the most enduring characters of children’s fiction.
A schemer who trains children to be pickpockets, while providing them with food and somewhere to stay, has become synonymous with exploitation since Oliver Twist was published almost two centuries ago.
The moral dilemma for some children in such a situation is painted through the eyes of the young Oliver Twist in the Charles Dickens novel.
The orphaned Oliver sees only the good in Fagin at first, not realising the modus operandi being employed by him in his dealings with children like Oliver.
In recent weeks, the passing of legislation dubbed Fagin’s Law is aimed at criminalising adults who use children for the purpose of engaging in criminal activity.
The Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023 has a penalty of a fine of up to €5,000 or imprisonment of up to 12 months on summary conviction, or an unlimited fine or up to five years imprisonment on indictment for adults convicted under the legislation.
According to the Department of Justice, a child who influences another child to commit a crime cannot be charged under this legislation — so as to avoid further criminalisation of children.
The networks and communications manager of MECPATHS, JP O’Sullivan, works with the hospitality industry to prevent child trafficking.
Mr O’Sullivan has concerns about the new legislation, because children will be expected to give evidence against their groomer in order to secure a conviction.
He says: “We primarily see the sexual and the criminal exploitation here in Ireland.
“For the criminal piece, it would be young lads getting a Canada Goose jacket, a voucher for Brown Thomas, a bottle of beer, a box of fags, and then they believe they are buddy-buddy with this person.
“Then the requests start: ‘Take this package in for me, I bought you that, this is what friends do for each other,’ or ‘we’re in a relationship, this is what partners do’.
“Where we would see this a lot is with children living in care and that tactic is used. They might have no familial connections, the piece that is missing for them is the affection.
“The trafficker will see that and will shower them with the gifts, the emotions, the connection, and then they believe they are in a relationship with the person — be it familial or sexual — and the exploitation begins.
They would have been brought into their trust and they 100% believe they are in a relationship with them.
“We are seeing untold numbers of kids caught in criminal exploitation.
“The recent legislation was passed amid much applause, but my concern is that — at the centre of it — this piece of legislation requires the child to give evidence against the accused, in order to secure a conviction.
“70% of children caught in these worlds are brought in by a familial connection, so what child is going to stand up against their aunt, their mum, or their dad and say ‘they did this to me’ when they are not even self-identifying [as a victim]?
“They have got the Canada Goose jacket, they don’t think anything has happened to them.”
According to Europol, this so-called “lover boy” technique is widely used by criminals to recruit victims confronted with economic and social hardship for labour exploitation and the sex trade.
Labour exploitation can present in various forms, including in the beauty industry, in agriculture, and in organised begging.
The agency said: “The suspects target their victims’ vulnerabilities, and seduce them with expensive gifts and promises of a better life abroad. This is how many women leave their families in search of love and new opportunities in other countries.
“However, once they find themselves in their new home, they are forced into prostitution to earn money for their handler.
“The victims are lured with affection, violence, and threats against them and their families back home.”
In Ireland, two Nigerian women were the first to be convicted of human trafficking here.
Their case came before Mullingar District Court in 2021, and the women — Alicia Edosa and Edith Enoghaghase — were convicted on two counts of trafficking women around Ireland on dates between September 2016 and June 2018.
They were also convicted on one charge of organising prostitution, as well as a series of money laundering offences.
Their trial heard evidence of four women who claimed they were forced into prostitution in Ireland after undergoing a voodoo ceremony in Nigeria.
One woman said she was forced to pull the heart out of a chicken as part of the ritual.
The women had been forced to swear they would not try to escape or speak to gardaí once in Ireland, the trial heard.
The women had believed they were coming to Ireland to work as shop assistants. Instead, they were forced to work as prostitutes across the country, including in Limerick, Cork, and Galway.
They were also told that they owed the defendants sums, ranging from €35,000 to €60,000, for having arranged their travel to Ireland.
Last year, police forces in Britain and Bulgaria combined in an operation called Motley, which resulted in nine arrests and the seizure of more than €1m of assets — including cash.
The suspects were alleged to have targeted women on social media and used the “lover boy” method to lure them to Britain, where they were advertised online for provision of adult services.
Associate researcher Ruth Breslin, who works on the Sexual Exploitation Research Programme at UCD, describes the “lover boy” method as insidious.
She said that many of the cases reviewed by the programme involved deception in attracting women to Ireland.
Ms Breslin says, in many cases, the women end up in Ireland’s sex industry.
She adds: “One trend we have noticed is that the ‘lover boy’ method is something that is quite a common experience for women from central and eastern Europe.”
She explains that women lured into the sex trade with the “lover boy” method are persuaded by men, who they believe they are in a relationship with, that working in the sex industry is something they are doing because they love their boyfriend.
They are being persuaded that the money they earn is something they can both benefit from.
However, she points to one case she recalls where a woman who managed to escape realised afterwards that she was wearing cheap clothes while the trafficker — the man she believed to be her boyfriend — was dressed in designer gear.
She also came to realise that, while she and other women in this position felt safe and protected by their boyfriends, those men were profiting from their prostitution.
Ms Breslin says: “At the end of the day, he is the one calling the shots and keeping the chunks of the profits.”
She points out that such relationships are often controlling and abusive, and adds: “It is very insidious because the girl is being controlled”.
“It is an intersection of trafficking and domestic violence. It is very complicated.”
Ms Breslin believes that women and girls in “lover boy” relationships are much harder to identify and, as a result, they cannot benefit from services for people in their position, because they typically do not realise they are victims.
During a recent court case in Ireland, Detective Sergeant Alan Lynch, from the Garda National Protective Services Bureau’s Human Trafficking Investigation and Co-ordination Unit, referenced the “lover boy” method in human trafficking.
He told the court he has been working in the area of human trafficking for the past three years, assisting investigations and assessing prospective victims.
Suspected victims are assessed through three pillars: mobilisation, means, and exploitation.
Det Sgt Lynch explained: “We must form one part from each pillar for someone to be deemed a victim.
“Under mobilisation is recruitment, transport, and transfer.
“Transport not only means into the country, but transport throughout the country and collection from an airport is a massive part of trafficking.
“It plays into the vulnerability of people coming into the country who have no English, they don’t know where they are and have limited means.
“The means then is the middle pillar — there is force, deception and coercion, abduction, abuse of power, and abuse of vulnerability. We see that a lot with victims. The last part is exploitation – sexual, labour, criminal, forced begging and forced criminality.
'A heinous crime'
“Human trafficking is a heinous crime and it is committed by transnational poly-criminals.
“In trafficking cases, typically, there are a number of different methods that are used. It is sometimes physical, sometimes emotional, sometimes financial.
“It is a phenomenon called the ‘lover boy’ phenomenon. It is used to coerce victims.
“Victims then submit to trafficking, as they have no acceptable alternative. It is akin to a coercive control situation. They believe that they have no alternative and nothing is wrong.”
While Det Sgt Lynch said it can occur in a number of different trafficking scenarios, it is most common in sexual exploitation.
Romanian prosecutors claimed that the “lover boy” method was employed by social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Christian, who were charged with rape, human trafficking, and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women in Romania after being arrested in December 2022 with two Romanian women.
All four deny the allegations.
According to Det Sgt Lynch, securing complaints from possible victims of trafficking and exploitation can be a protracted process.
“To take a statement of complaint from these victims would take over the course of five or six visits, to avoid re-traumatising victims,” he told the court.
“It generally takes a long long time for people to realise the situation that they are in.”
He outlined that in cases of labour exploitation, victims typically have no access to money, have no PPS numbers, and don’t have access to their own documents or identification papers.
He also said that “lover boy” situations typically refer to areas of sexual exploitation.
However, in labour exploitation, people in bad circumstances in their home country are taken under the wing of senior operators in a trafficking organisation and given good clothing, jewellery, and other items which they would not have had access to previously.
Mr O’Sullivan says of such instances: “It needs to be taken into account too where some of these people come from."
The experience they are having in Ireland, be it exploitative, may be 10 times better than where they actually began their life and they think there is nothing wrong.
For those that do, they often fear speaking out or seeking help because of the intimidation they have suffered and the threats that they would be prosecuted for activities they carried out while in the grip of their traffickers.
Another strand of legislation which will have an impact on victims of human traffickers is the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Human Trafficking) Bill 2023, which passed committee stage in the Dail last November and is set to go to report stage in the coming weeks.
In its submission on the legislation, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission called for recognition of the difficulties faced by victims in coming forward.
The submission said: “As traffickers often use the threat of prosecution as a means of control, victims are afraid to come forward. We recommend that the bill be amended to include a statutory defence for victims of trafficking where they have committed crimes as a direct consequence of them being trafficked.”
In the days of Oliver Twist, the grooming of children by Fagin was less complex than the means used by those engaged in trafficking and exploitation today.
This has been highlighted in by the commission in a submission to the European Commission 5th Progress Report on the Fight against Trafficking in Human Beings in the European Union.
“Technology provides groomers and recruiters with highly accessible, but also relatively discreet, means to build a relationship of trust with their victims, to tap into their vulnerabilities, and offer them what appears to be a way out of a difficult situation in their lives,” the commission warns.
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