Migrants sex traffickers are using car washes as brothels, according to several reports made to local police forces in Wales, it has emerged. Police are investigating the complaints that customers attempting to get their cars washed are also being offered young girls who are believed to be trafficked into the UK and sold for sex.
Wales’ Daily Post reports that the incidents have been reported at at least three different car wash garages in North Wales, and the local task force set to crack down on sex trafficking and modern slavery is on alert.
James Coy, the North Wales Anti-Slavery Co-ordinator, said: “We don’t have a red light district in North Wales but we do have sexual exploitation.
“We are seeing a trend across North Wales and the UK where single male customers are going to hand car washes and are being offered sex.
“A migrant worker or a group of migrant workers will clean a car and ask, ‘Do you want to go inside? There are two ladies.’
“It’s prostitution. They are often eastern Europeans but very vulnerable people.”
He added: “There is a real danger with this mass movement of vulnerable people, from places like Syria … we are concerned that, while there is a consensual agreement with the trafficker, at the other end of the journey the bad guy gets hold of them and they become a commodity.”
The origin of the migrant criminals appears to be Ireland, which connects to Wales through the port of Holyhead. Earlier this year Ireland committed to taking 4000 more migrants, and operates a less strict immigration system than the United Kingdom.
In September, a former Sinn Fein councillor said migrants were better off in Syria than Ireland due to hostility towards them.
The Daily Post notes: “advertising, kerb crawling, or more than one person together offering sex are all unlawful [in Wales]”.
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