CAGED women and “pimps” dressed in black and pink staged a protest against sex trafficking and human slavery yesterday, urging the public to open their eyes to the problem.
Scores of Oxford Community Against Trafficking (OXCAT) volunteers and students stood in Cornmarket at 1pm wearing pink blindfolds, to confront shoppers with what they said was “the sordid truth”.
The event was organised by OXCAT, the Oxford Safer Communities Partnership, the police and students from Oxford’s two universities.
Det Insp Simon Morton said: “There are between 10 and 15 street prostitutes working in Oxford, then there are women who work through escort agencies and then there are those who have been trafficked.”
In order to make life more difficult for traffickers like Papas and Cochrane, OXCAT volunteers collected 212 signatures in a petition demanding newspapers drop advertising for escort agencies. The Oxford Mail does not carry them.
Linda Ludlow, chairman of the Oxford Human Trafficking Group, said: “We’ve written to all the hotels, B&Bs and guest houses in Oxford and their corporate partners asking them what they are doing in their training and corporate strategy to make their staff aware of the issue.”
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