Swindon Safeguarding Partnership

Adult Sexual Exploitation is a form of sexual abuse that involves someone taking advantage of an adult, sexually, for their own benefit through threats, bribes, and violence.

Perpetrators usually hold power over their victims, due to age, gender, sexual identity, physical strength or status. Adults can be sexually exploited in many ways.

Examples include:

• rape and sexual assault
• being tricked or manipulated into having sex or performing a sexual act
• being trafficked into, out of, or around the UK for the purpose of sexual exploitation
• sex working (on or off street)
• being forced to take part in or watch pornography
• being victim to revenge porn (when a previously taken video or photograph, which was taken with or without consent, is shared online)

Activities that involve one person keeping another person in compelled service (Home Office 2016). The Modern Slavery Act (2015) includes: forced labour, forced criminality, sexual exploitation, forced marriage and domestic servitude.

Someone is in slavery if they are:

• forced to work through mental or physical threat
• owned or controlled by an “employer”, usually through mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse, often with perceptions of “debt bondage”
• dehumanised, treated like a commodity or bought and sold as “property”
• physically constrained or have restrictions placed on his/her freedom.

Servitude and forced/compulsory labour are forms of ‘modern slavery’. 

Work that is performed involuntarily and under the menace of any penalty. It refers to situations in which persons are coerced to work through the use of violence or intimidation, or by more subtle means such as manipulated debt, retention of identity papers or threats of denunciation to immigration authorities.

This involves children, men and women being forced to work in private households performing tasks such as childcare and housekeeping for little or no pay and often in abusive conditions.

This refers to organised crime gangs and groups who operate in urban areas who supply drugs to suburbs, market and coastal towns; often crossing county borders. The gangs use dedicated mobile phone lines, sometimes known as “deal lines”. They use adults (and children) to move drugs and money.

Organised crime gangs create a base in their chosen target area, usually by taking over the homes of local adults who gang members have identified as vulnerable. They do this either by force or coercion (known as ‘cuckooing’).

Criminal exploitation is widespread, with gangs from big cities including London, Manchester and Liverpool operating throughout England, Wales and Scotland.

A form of crime in which exploiters take over the home of a vulnerable person, in order to use it as a base for a number of areas of criminality. This may also be referred to as ‘cuckooing’.

Human trafficking involves recruitment, harbouring or transporting people into a situation of exploitation through the use of violence, deception or coercion and forced to work against their will.

The Palermo Protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, is the internationally accepted definition of human trafficking. This Protocol (which is in force) was signed by the United Kingdom on 14 December 2000 and ratified on 9 February 2006. It provides a definition of trafficking which has since become a widely accepted standard and used in other international instruments.

It also outlines protection for victims.

Victims may be forced into criminal activities by gangs such as drug cultivation, organised begging or benefit fraud, for example, extra tax credits, housing benefit. 

A forced marriage is where one or both people do not, or cannot, consent to the marriage and pressure or abuse is used. A sham marriage is where the marriage or civil partnership is contracted for immigration advantage by a couple who are not in a genuine relationship. 

Predatory Marriage is the practice of intentionally targeting and marrying a vulnerable (often older) person in order to gain access to their estate and assets upon their death. Predatory Marriage relies on grooming and coercion to exert control over another person to persuade them to marry for financial, material or other gain.

Mate Crime is defined as the exploitation, abuse or theft from any person at risk from those they consider to be their friends. Those that commit such abuse or theft are often referred to as ‘fake friends’.

People with disabilities, particularly those with learning disabilities, are often the targets of this type of crime. In some cases victims of mate crime have been badly harmed or even killed.

A practice where people take over a person’s home and use the property to facilitate exploitation. It takes the name from cuckoos who take over the nests of other birds.

There are different types of cuckooing:

• Using the property to deal, store or take drugs
• Using the property to sex work
• Taking over the property as a place for them to live
• Taking over the property to financially abuse the tenant
• The most common form of cuckooing is where drug dealers take over a person’s home and use it to store or distribute drugs

People who choose to exploit will often target the most vulnerable in society. They establish a relationship with the vulnerable person to access their home. Once they gain control over the victim - whether through drug dependency, debt or as part of their relationship – larger groups will sometimes move in. Threats are often used to control the victim.

You can find out more on the County Lines video.