After Natasha was rescued by a police raid, she was placed by social services in a flat with two other vulnerable, young women. Some trafficked women are fortunate enough to be taken in for support by the POPPY project, a specialist service which currently provides only 35 bed spaces. Here, women have access to support workers, medical and counselling staff, and legal advisors, which enables them to come to a decision about their future in the safety of such accommodation.

Since the UK government signed up to the European Convention on trafficking in March 2007, trafficked women are allowed a 30-day period of reflection after they have escaped their traffickers, during which time authorities are not allowed to deport anybody. In order to pursue compensation claims against the traffickers, victims will be granted renewable residence permits because they need to stay in the country where the legal proceedings are being instituted.

Trafficked women may apply for leave to remain under the provisions of the Geneva Convention of 1951 if they can prove a ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of origin of her nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail [her/himself] of the protection of that country. In a precedent setting case in 2003, an immigration judge had argued that women who had been trafficked into the UK formed part of a particular social group and therefore the provisions of the Geneva Convention would apply to them. This case has influenced a number of asylum decisions for trafficked women. In Natasha’s case, the adjudicator also ruled that if she were deported, it would amount to a breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which decrees that no one will be subjected to torture, degrading or inhuman treatment. However, most women fail in their initial application for asylum and not all of them have an automatic right of appeal.