Latest news with #exploitation
BBC News
10 hours ago
- BBC News
French trial exposes human trafficking among champagne workers
Aged between 16 and 65 at the time, the 48 men and nine women came from Mali, Mauritania, Ivory Coast and Senegal. Many are attending Thursday's trial. "They shouted at us in Russian and crammed us into this broken-down house, with mattresses on the floor," Kanouitié Djakariayou, 44, told La Croix newspaper. "There was no clean water, and the only food was a bowl of rice and rotten sandwiches. "I never thought the people who made champagne would put us up in a place which even animals would not accept." "What we lived through there was truly terrible. We were traumatised by the experience. And we have had no psychological support, because when you have no papers, you have no rights either," Doumbia Mamadou, 45, told the local newspaper L'Union. Tipped off a week later by a local resident, labour inspectors visited the scene and documented conditions which "were a serious breach of the occupants' safety, health and dignity," in the words of state prosecutor Annick Browne. The prosecution says living and eating areas were outside, unprotected from the elements; toilets were filthy; showers were inadequate with only intermittent hot water; and the electrics were a safety hazard. In addition the migrants were working ten hours a day with only 30 minutes for lunch, having been transported to the vineyards squatting in the back of trucks. They had no written contract, and the pay they received bore "no relation to the work performed," according to the prosecution. "The accused had a total disregard for human dignity," said Maxime Cessieux, who represents some of the migrants. The 44 year-old female suspect, named Svetlana G., ran a recruitment agency called Anavim, which specialised in finding labour for the wine industry. The two others were her associates. In addition to the charge of human trafficking, the woman is also accused of undeclared labour, employing foreigners without permits, inadequate pay, and lodging vulnerable people in unfit conditions. All three face jail terms of up to seven years and large fines if they are convicted. The case has raised questions about the extent of worker exploitation in the €6bn (£5.1bn) champagne industry. With every grape having to be picked by hand, producers rely on some 120,000 seasonal labourers every autumn, many of whom are recruited via agencies. In 2023 six grape pickers died from suspected heatstroke during the harvest in the Champagne and Beaujolais regions - and in recent years there have been two other criminal cases in which agents have been found guilty of maltreatment of migrant vendangeurs. Trade unions have said some champagne houses hide behind middlemen, and they want the law changed so that producers can lose the "champagne" label if they are found to have used illegal labour – even indirectly. "It should not be possible to harvest the grapes of champagne using human misery," said Jose Blanco of the CGT union. But the main body representing champagne producers – the Comité Champagne -- said mistreatment of workers happened very rarely and when discovered was immediately stopped. The Comité is represented at the trial as a civil plaintiff, in recognition of the "damage done to the brand" by these "unacceptable practices."
CTV News
16 hours ago
- CTV News
Notorious B.C. pimp, trafficker has sentence reduced on appeal
Reza Moazami is seen exiting Vancouver provincial court in this file photo from December 2011. (CTV News) Reza Moazami, a B.C. man who was convicted of 30 crimes involving the trafficking, pimping, sexual assault and exploitation of 11 young female victims, has had his prison sentence reduced. Moazami's 23-year-sentence – originally handed down in 2015 – was reduced to 20 years and eight months by B.C.'s Court of Appeal Thursday. Moazami was the first person ever convicted of human trafficking in B.C. His victims ranged from 14 to 19 years old, his crimes spanning a two-and-a-half-year period. 'It is important to point out, and indeed to stress, that the appellant's criminal conduct was grave and morally reprehensible. He engaged in predatory and exploitative criminal behaviour toward a large number of vulnerable young victims. His conduct was punctuated by coercion and sexual violence toward a number of them,' Justice Janet Winteringham wrote in a unanimous decision of the three-judge panel. 'Every one of the appellant's victims was an individual who suffered indignity at the hands of the appellant. All were traumatized, some severely, to the point that they continued to struggle years afterward.' Moazami appealed his sentence on multiple grounds and sought to introduce 'fresh evidence' about the misconduct of the lead detective on the case, Jim Fisher – who pleaded guilty of breach of trust and sexual exploitation involving one of the victims. The application to introduce this evidence was dismissed, as was Moazami's bid for a 'sentencing remedy' on constitutional grounds due to 'egregious misconduct by state agents,' according to the decision. Moazami claimed the sentencing judge made a number of legal errors, citing six grounds for appeal – all but one of which was rejected. The high court found an 'error in principle' made by the sentencing judge when weighing the aggravating factors in the case and imposing a sentence longer than the one proposed by Crown counsel. 'The judge justified this position, in part, because the appellant 'subjected these young, marginalized young women to the fear, stress, and aggravation of a long trial; he re-victimized the complainants and he lied to the court under oath,'' the appeal decision says, quoting in part from the sentencing decision. 'In my respectful view, when the judge explained the higher sentence, she linked it, in error, to the appellant's decision to proceed with a trial, and in some respects, to the manner in which the trial was conducted. I have concluded the error directly impacted the sentence,' Winteringham wrote, explaining that the court can consider a guilty plea as mitigating but should not treat the exercise of one's right to trial as aggravating. Given that error, the court found the judge did not have a legally sound reason to impose a sentence beyond the 20 years and eight months Crown proposed. 'The trial judge found a pressing need for denunciation and deterrence, a conclusion that has not been disturbed on appeal and is fully supported by the evidence at trial and sentencing,' Winteringham wrote. 'Clearly, the appellant's offending conduct called for a very lengthy penitentiary sentence.' Moazami also appealed a three-year sentence for attempting to obstruct justice and breaching court-ordered conditions, which was dismissed Thursday. That conviction stemmed from his violation of a no-contact order when he 'conspired with a cellmate' to try to prevent one of the complainants from testifying in the trafficking case.
Times
20 hours ago
- Times
Champagne ‘harvest of shame treated workers like slaves'
At least 14 champagne houses used grapes picked by illegal immigrants deprived of food, housed in insalubrious conditions and treated like slaves, a court has heard. One of the pickers said that even animals enjoyed better conditions. The claims aired at a trial which revealed what critics claim are the sordid secrets of the eastern French region that produces the world's most famous sparkling wine. Behind the glamorous image of champagne lies a widespread reality of exploitation and misery, unions said, as they held a protest outside the criminal court in Châlons-en-Champagne. The court heard the cases of the manager and two deputies at an agency that employed pickers and supplied grapes to firms in the Champagne region. They are accused of human trafficking in connection with 57 African migrants and face up to seven years in prison if found guilty. A French firm that used the agency's services and which itself supplied grapes to champagne houses was also on trial for having recourse to unauthorised workers. The 'harvest of shame', as it has been called, was revealed in 2023 when work inspectors were called to a shed that was housing dozens of grape pickers. Almost all were illegal immigrants from west Africa, living in makeshift camps in Paris, when they were recruited by the Anavim agency with a promise of earning €250 a week, the court heard. In practice none earned that amount and many were not paid anything at all. They were forced to sleep between ten and 15 to a room, using inflatable mattresses on gravel-covered ground. There were no showers and three toilets for them, which were blocked when inspectors arrived. They worked from 6am to 8pm, received little water and only two meals a day — sandwiches — and were so hungry that some ate the grapes off the vines or potatoes found in neighbouring fields for sustenance, the court heard. When they complained, foremen threatened them with knives and tear gas. Djakaniyaou Kanoute, 44, said: 'I never thought that the people who make champagne would house us in a place where animals would not feel good. Everything was dirty. We couldn't wash and when we wanted to cook rice, we had to start a fire with wood because there was not even a camping stove.' Doumbia Mamadou, 45, from the Ivory Coast, said: 'We were badly treated, we didn't eat. We couldn't say anything. In short, we were treated like slaves.' In an interview with L'Est Éclair, the regional newspaper, he said: 'We still haven't received a single cent for all the work we did. What we experienced was really horrible. Frankly, it traumatised us. Now we want justice.' The court heard that illustrious champagne houses used subcontractors to provide grapes from the region's vineyards. The subcontractors in turn used agencies like Anavim which offered cut-price picking services. A representative of Cerseuillat de la Gravelle, the subcontractor, told the court it picked grapes for local vineyard owners but also for merchants and champagne houses. He said 14 champagne houses were among its clients. Cerseuillat de la Gravelle is on trial as a legal entity, but not its directors or employees as individual defendants. It denies wrongdoing. Svetlana Goumina, 44, from Kyrgyzstan, the manager of Anavim, said she did not know which champagne houses had used grapes picked by the migrants she employed. Goumina denies the charge of human trafficking, as do the two co-defendants. Prosecutors said that Anavim sold grapes for €0.45 per kilo to Cerseuillat de la Gravelle, which sold them on for up to €0.60 per kilo. The standard market price in the region in 2023 was €6.35 per kilo. Maître Maxime Cessieux, a lawyer for the migrant workers, said they had been treated with 'total scorn for human dignity'. He called on champagne houses to stop 'pretending they did not know' of the conditions inflicted on pickers. The trial continues. It was scheduled to end late on Thursday.
Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Times
Grooming gangs ‘still at large, and the victims aren't believed'
Teenage girls are still being sexually abused by gangs of men across the country, according to a whistleblower who helped to expose the grooming scandal, and the crime is becoming harder to spot. Maggie Oliver, who quit the police to expose the Rochdale grooming scandal, said that her warnings about the systemic abuse of young girls had been consistently ignored for 15 years by police, councils and other authorities. 'This isn't historical failing. It's still going on today. They still don't get believed,' Oliver said after a report by Baroness Casey of Blackstock concluded that disproportionate numbers of Asian men had been engaged in grooming but that successive governments and the authorities had turned a blind eye. It came 14 years after The Times revealed how predominantly Pakistani men were responsible for an organised campaign of abuse. Casey said on Tuesday it was 'clear' that children were still being exploited. She said the crime was becoming harder to detect because children were being groomed on social media and exploited through drug 'county lines'. Casey also said that the lack of complete ethnicity data for the perpetrators of grooming was a 'bloody disaster' and blamed officials at local authorities for 'a different level of irresponsibility' in their failure to record accurate information. The Times can reveal that the number of child sex abusers whose ethnicity is not being recorded has risen fourfold despite warnings that the failure will fuel another grooming gang scandal. The political fallout from Casey's devastating review escalated as Sir Keir Starmer accused Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, of destroying the cross-party consensus on tackling child sex abuse. STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA The prime minister revived his claims that his political opponents were jumping on a 'far-right bandwagon' and cited his own record in tackling grooming gangs. Badenoch had renewed her attacks on Starmer for changing his mind about the need for a national inquiry. She also accused him of having politicised the issue earlier this year when he said that those calling for an inquiry were 'jumping on a far-right bandwagon'. In a furious response, Starmer accused Badenoch of having said 'not one word' about the issue while she was women and equalities minister in the Tory government. He added that Chris Philp, formerly the policing minister and now shadow home secretary, also failed to raise the issue as a minister. He said voters should 'compare and contrast' the two leaders' records, pointing out he brought the first grooming prosecutions as director of public prosecutions 15 years ago. At the G7 summit in Canada, Starmer said: 'I know there's some discussion of this far-right bandwagon. I was actually calling out politicians — nobody else, politicians — who in power had said and done nothing, who are now making the claims that they make.' In other developments yesterday: • The national grooming gangs inquiry is expected to oversee local inquiries into failings by local leaders and police in Rochdale, Bradford and Greater Manchester; • The Conservatives warned that the record numbers of migrants arriving in small boats has heightened the grooming scandal to a border security issue; • Sarah Champion, the Rotherham MP, said perpetrators had been operating with impunity since the 1960s and it was a 'national shame' that children had been blamed instead . Casey thanked Oliver in her report for the support she had offered survivors, often at great personal cost. Oliver, who was then a detective constable, resigned from Greater Manchester police in 2012 to expose the Rochdale grooming scandal. She said Casey had been the first person who properly listened to her and to victims of grooming and 'reported the truth in an official document'. However, she said she had since lost faith in the system and said that children were still groomed and ignored. Oliver cited a recent case in which officers had been diverted from grooming cases to deal with other crimes. 'I still think there's been a determination to avoid investigating these cases wherever possible,' she said. She created the Maggie Oliver Foundation, which supports victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation. Casey told the Commons home affairs select committee that although sexual grooming was 'thankfully still rare', it was still happening and becoming harder to detect. 'I am fairly sure that it is still happening today,' she said. 'I think people don't necessarily look hard enough to find these children in particular. I think that the world of crime is quite complicated. 'To quote colleagues in the police, they are awash with online harm and online exploitation. We've had the growth in the visibility of county lines and child criminal exploitation — at the same time, I do not think child abuse or, indeed, child sexual exploitation has gone away. Casey told the Commons home affairs select committee that the government should implement her 12 recommendations within six months HOUSE OF COMMONS/UK PARLIAMENT/PA 'Certainly, from the evidence that we saw during the audit and the visits we undertook to some police forces, it is clear that it is still happening.' She called on ministers to act within six months on all 12 recommendations in her report, including the mandatory recording of ethnicity for the perpetrators of child sexual abuse. Analysis of Ministry of Justice figures carried out by The Times has revealed that more than 1,000 offenders who were sentenced for child sex offences did not have their ethnicities recorded, This was a fourfold increase on the 248 recorded in 2017, the earliest figures available, and the increase happened despite warnings that a failing to record the data would fuel more grooming scandals. Casey also told MPs that children were being put at risk because police data-sharing systems were outdated and different agencies were failing to share information sufficiently quickly. She has called for mandatory sharing of children's services records between all statutory safeguarding partners in cases of child sex abuse and exploitation. This was particularly important to ensure the safety of children in care who go missing but do not have parents to check about their whereabouts as this cohort had been particularly preyed upon by grooming gangs, she added. Casey said she had not realised the 'paucity of technology' available to support police investigations of missing children. Casey said her recommendation for mandatory rape charges for all adults who have sex with 13-15 year-olds would be a 'clear, historic law change' and prevent the offence being downgraded to less serious crimes, which are often pursued by police and prosecutors to maximise their chances of a conviction.
ABC News
3 days ago
- ABC News
Queensland man accused of producing child abuse material in the Philippines set to face court
A Queensland man accused of producing child abuse material in the Philippines is expected to face court today. The Australian Border Force allegedly found exploitation material on the 63-year-old's phone, laptop and two hard drives when he landed at Cairns Airport on Christmas Day last year. Two days later Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers searched his home. In May the AFP charged the man with possessing, controlling, producing, distributing or obtaining child abuse material outside Australia. The maximum penalty for the offence is 15 years' imprisonment. AFP Detective Superintendent Adrian Telfer said the creation and spread of child abuse material was a "borderless crime". "Creating this material is a serious offence," he said. The man is due to face Cairns Magistrates Court today.
