When Julia is found in a brothel by the Surrey police detective Martyn, she tells him where to find the gang’s boss, Aleksander. Three days later, Martyn and his team get a warrant and go to the address.
“There was a map. He’d actually circled the location of brothels … ” Martyn tells the journalist Annie Kelly, editor of the Guardian’s Rights and Freedom project. “He’d written the driving distance and the travel time between all of them.”
In this four-part series, we hear from Julia on how she was taken from one life as a young mother in Ukraine and ended up in a very different one here in the UK; a life defined by exploitation and human trafficking. After five years trapped in debt bondage working in hotels and brothels, she was discovered by Surrey police in 2019. With the support of the anti-slavery charity Justice and Care, she took on her exploiters in court and won.
In episode three, Martyn investigates the gang and realises it’s all much bigger than he originally thought. We hear how difficult it is to get modern slavery charges to court and what the experience of speaking at trials is like for victims such as Julia as she battles for justice.
Composite: Guardian Design/Alamy/PA/Getty Images
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