CITY Hall has declared war on London’s growing prostitution in a bid to stamp out trafficking ahead of the 2012 Olympics. It is calling on Londoners to give prostitution ads in phone kiosks the red card’
CITY Hall has declared war on London’s growing prostitution in a bid to stamp out trafficking ahead of the 2012 Olympics.
Boris Johnson’s deputy mayor for policing, Kit Malthouse, has called on Londoners to give prostitution ads in phone kiosks the red card.’
Kit said: “We want people to be free to use telephone boxes without having to see pornography, while at the same time help those women at the other end of the line who are forced into prostitution. Technology means we know who the pimps are.”
The Met Police have seized 400,000 cards this year alone, which are the main form of advertising by brothels.
Chief Supt Richard Martin said: “The impact of this immoral trade on women can never be overstated. Behind the brothel doors, my officers have found women who have been exploited, abused and sometimes trafficked into this country.”
The latest move against the illicit vice trade is supported by The Salvation Army which has been in the fight since the 1860s.
Their Anti-Trafficking co-ordinator, Major Anne Read, said: “Some of those being sold’ through sex cards may have been forced into prostitution against their will. Removing cards from phone booths is a commitment against trafficking and to putting an end to this modern slave trade.”
Displaying vice cards was made an arrestable offence in 2001.
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