Sex trafficker used witchcraft to smuggle children

A sex trafficker who used African witchcraft rituals to silence young girls smuggled into Britain to be sold on as prostitutes has been jailed for 20 years.

Osezua Osolase, 42, a recycling worker from Beaumont Drive, Gravesend, Kent, preyed on poverty-stricken Nigerian orphans and tricked them into travelling to Britain with the promise of a better life.

Instead the Nigerian treated the victims as “commodities” to be used in a form of “modern-day slavery” by attempting to send them on to mainland Europe to be sexually assaulted by gangs. West African juju rituals were used to instil terror into Osolase’s three vulnerable victims, one aged 14.

At Canterbury Crown Court, he was found guilty of five counts of trafficking for sexual exploitation, and one each of rape and sexual activity with a child.

Detectives revealed one 16-year-old girl described how a juju ceremony performed on her involved having samples of blood extracted. Hair from her head and intimate parts were cut and she was made to swear an oath of silence and smuggled into Britain.