Think of it as a dream, not a nightmare if you wake on the operating table: Incidences of ‘accidental awareness’ are far higher than previously thought

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"dysanaesthesia", 'accidental awareness', anaesthesia, awareness, consciousness, operations, surgery

Think of it as a dream, not a nightmare if you wake on the operating table: Incidences of ‘accidental awareness’ are far higher than previously thought

It is every patient’s worst nightmare: that the anaesthetic won’t work… And now a review suggests that bad dreams can come true, after one leading expert found that incidences of so-called “accidental awareness” are far higher than was previously thought.

Professor Jaideep Pandit, a consultant anaesthetist and fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, has warned that the number of patients who are “dimly” conscious – for which read that they can feel that blade and see all the blood – could be very high. That’s the bad news. But tomophobes (people with an extreme fear of surgery) can take heart from the suggestion that being vaguely conscious isn’t necessarily a disaster.

It’s possible that some patients are floating in a “third state of consciousness”, dubbed “dysanaesthesia”, in which they have some awareness of the world around them, but feel no pain or distress. Or so Professor Pandit believes.

He came up with his theory after reviewing existing evidence that found large differences between the number of patients who, when asked, recall awareness while under anaesthetic, and those who report awareness without being asked.

National data released earlier this year, based on an audit for the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, showed that only one in 15,000 patients had told their doctor that they recalled something while under general anaesthetic; of those, only a third reported any distress. But on closer questioning a much higher number, one in 500, gave an answer that suggested they were dimly aware of something happening after being given an anaesthetic, instead of being out for the count.

“The difference between the incidence of 1:500 and 1:15,000 suggests that even in the rare instances where patients are experiencing awareness, in most cases the sensation is a ‘neutral’ one. What we are possibly seeing is a third state of consciousness – dysanaesthesia – in which the patient is certainly aware of events, but not concerned by this knowledge, especially as they are not in pain.”

A recent study in which 34 surgical patients were anaesthetised and had their whole body paralysed apart from one forearm reinforces this theory. The patients were asked to move their fingers, which a third were able to do. But intriguingly, none of the patients moved their fingers without being asked to.

“The difference between one third of patients who can respond to commands to one in 15,000 who report remembering something, tells us that there must be a different state between full awareness and full anaesthesia,” said Professor Pandit. “Logically, it follows there is a large group of patients who are experiencing something in a neutral way.

“I liken it to a jigsaw puzzle – if being aware is the ability to recognise the image of a jigsaw puzzle, then anaesthesia is something that takes away the pieces. A point comes when you take away so many pieces that you can’t tell what the picture is, but you can still see it is a jigsaw. That’s what I call dysanaesthesia – you can see the pieces but there’s no recognisable image, so you’re not interested.”

Professor Pandit called for more research to be carried out to see if dysanaesthesia could be identified by monitoring brain signals and, if so, whether it could be a warning sign that patients are more conscious than they should be.

Accidental awareness during surgery is the second most common concern raised by patients before operations, and the third commonest cause of litigation against anaesthetists in the UK.

The problem for anaesthetists is that they cannot risk putting a patient to sleep too soundly because that would be far more dangerous.

Paedophiles blackmail thousands of UK teens into online sex acts

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images, self-harm, social networks, suicide

Paedophiles blackmail thousands of UK teens into online sex acts

Thousands of British children have been targeted by internet blackmailers, with many forced to use webcams to film themselves performing sex acts or self-mutilation because they fear having their naked pictures sent to their families, child protection experts warn today.

The blackmailing of children has emerged as a fast-growing new method employed by sadistic abusers who operate behind fake profiles on social networks to take advantage of youthful sexual experimentation and snare their victims, driving some to self-harm and even suicide.

A single police operation discovered that one small ring of paedophiles overseas had pressured more than 300 children, including 96 in Britain, into performing live sex acts online. Some of the youngsters attempted suicide when they were threatened with having their behaviour made public, according to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop). Police analysis of computers reveals that, before befriending a child they intend to groom for online abuse, perpetrators often research the victim’s location, school and other details, so as to present a convincing picture of themselves as a local young adolescent. Children as young as eight are being targeted, according to Ceop.

Such grooming often starts on open chat forums before moving to private areas where the talk swiftly becomes more explicit. The threats usually start after children have been tricked into posting compromising pictures of themselves that they fear could be distributed more widely. In one online conversation retrieved by the authorities, an abuser tricked his victim and then became increasingly aggressive, saying he did not care if the boy killed himself. “I totally own you,” he said.

The practice appears to be a new,  more menacing development in the world of cyber-bullying. Children have been forced to film themselves on  webcams as they write degrading statements on their bodies or cut themselves, says Ceop. One abuser collected images of his blackmailed victims in a folder named “slaves”.

A British teenager is one of seven young people who have killed themselves over blackmail. Daniel Perry, 17, of Dunfermline, Fife, leapt from the Forth Road Bridge in July. He had been having online chats with a person he believed to be an American girl of his own age, but was then told his conversations would be played to his family and friends unless he paid money into a bank account. Police are still investigating Daniel’s death.

Experts said that, while they had seen a few cases of extortion, most blackmailers were motivated by sexual desire and sadism. “There is a desire for power and control, and getting a kick out of causing as much pain as possible,” said Dr Elly Farmer, a clinical psychologist.

Ceop has carried out 12 operations over the past two years in which the blackmailing of children into performing sex acts was a clear motive, with 424 victims worldwide and 184 in Britain. Five of those operations – against groups and individuals – were in the UK. Ceop said the number of victims identified represented a small fraction of the number targeted.

The global nature of the problem was highlighted by “Operation K”, launched this year after a complaint by one victim to police in Britain. It revealed evidence of a group of friends in an unspecified country acting together to ensnare young children. They operated dozens of profiles and email addresses on five websites. Most of the British children targeted were boys aged 11 to 15. Britons were disproportionately targeted because they spoke English, and in the apparent belief that liberal values in this country were likely to make them more susceptible to online grooming, Ceop said. Many of the victims were forced to conduct graphic sex acts. “The coverage was immense,” said Ceop’s operations manager Stephanie McCourt. “It was very easy for children to get caught up in that process.”

A group of men, aged 20 to 44, are due to go on trial within the next month in an unspecified non-European country that authorities declined to name for legal reasons.

Ceop said a third of its operations had seen abusers operate on the so-called “Darknet” – an encrypted sub-layer of the world wide web that is supposed to ensure anonymity – but officials said people were arrested in every “sting”. They declined to say how suspects were identified.

“Young people must remember that the online world is the real world. Pictures can be distributed to thousands of people in seconds and can never be fully deleted,” said John Cameron, the head of the NSPCC helpline. “We need to educate young people but also reassure them that no matter what threats people make to them over the internet, they can be stopped and the crime they are committing is very serious and can result in a lengthy jail sentence.”

Last year, two brothers in Kuwait were jailed for five years after targeting 110 children around the world using similar tactics, with the majority from Britain. Mohammed Khalaf Al Ali Alhamadi, 35, and 27-year-old Yousef Al Ali Alhamadi were found to have blackmailed children from a dozen countries. They often pretended to be someone the victim already knew on social networks, then tricked them into handing over online passwords. Andy Baker, the deputy chief executive of Ceop, said: “These offenders are cowards. They hide behind a screen and, in many cases, make hollow threats which they know they will never act on because sharing these images will only bring the police closer to them.”

Contact the NSPCC’s dedicated helpline on 0800 328 0904

Case studies

‘Blackmail drove me to self-harm’

“I was about 12 and this person started talking to me on the internet and said he was around my age, and then the conversation sort of developed into other things.

“He’d steer the conversation in a way where it was turning a bit dirty, then he’d start asking for other types of pictures as well. If you try and say ‘oh I don’t want to talk about that’ or ‘whatever’, he’d threaten or blackmail me, saying that he’d send my dad all the chat logs if I didn’t do what he said. I just thought you wouldn’t blackmail someone you’re supposed to be in love with so I just told him to shut up and sent him a couple more photos but he started to do that every week.

“My teacher said I’d been acting depressed and they sorted me out with counselling. I’d started to self-harm as well because everything  just came together at the same time, and I was really upset and just needed a release.

“Luckily I’m a fairly strong person and I can get over things – I’ve learned to just push them away. But what if it was someone who wasn’t, who was a weaker-minded person than me, what would have happened? They might have committed suicide or something, and it wouldn’t have even been their fault – it would be because people weren’t there for them.”

Source: CEOP

‘He thought he let everyone down’

Daniel Perry, 17, a trainee mechanic, thought he was having conversations with a girl about his own age over the internet. Then in July he received a message saying that unless he paid up, explicit material from the conversations would be posted to his family.

An hour later Daniel, who was from Dunfermline, killed himself by jumping off the Forth Road Bridge.

“Knowing him as I do, he has felt embarrassed, horrified and has thought he’s let everybody down,” his mother told her local newspaper.

“He wasn’t doing anything wrong, just what anyone his age might do. This scam is all about exploiting young people.”

Blackmail chat: Extracts from intercepted conversations

I recorded everything. 8 minutes. Your mine

I am sending it to your friends

Why???

Please I’m begging you

What will you do for your social life? Are you willing to do anything?

Please delete it.

I’ll kill myself

I don’t care if u gonna killur self or whatever u gonna do

I totally own you

Staying safe: Advice for children

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) gives the following tips for young people to stay safe online.

1. Don’t feel pressured to get naked on webcam. Abusers don’t always share images, even if they have threatened to. The more information they share, the more likely they are to be arrested.

2. If you are threatened online, tell a trusted adult at the earliest possible opportunity. There are alternatives to parents, including the NSPCC and Ceop.

3. It’s never too late to get help. Even if an abuser does share an image, that is better than being forced to do more sexual acts.

4. It’s not your fault – the abuser is the only person to blame. You won’t get in trouble. The abuser has broken the law by encouraging a young person to strip naked and is liable for prosecution.

CEOP also draws attention to some of the lies abusers use. For example: “The police will never find me. I’ve hidden myself on the internet.” In fact, this is never true: all abusers leave a “digital footprint” online. Another common lie is: “I’m definitely going to share this image if you don’t go on webcam for me.” In fact, abusers don’t always share images, even when they’ve threatened to. It’s not in their best interests: the more information they share, the easier it is for police to track them down.

For more information see: http://www.ceop.police.uk

China’s stolen children: parents battle police indifference in search for young

Tags

abduction, child kidnapping, Children, China, police, Trafficking

China’s stolen children: parents battle police indifference in search for young

“Back then, they just told me to keep looking,” said Yuan Cheng, punctuating the sentence with a lengthy drag on his cigarette. Sitting in his mud-floored home in Hebei province, a few hours north of Beijing, the farmer is talking about the lack of interest from the police when his 15-year-old son, Xueyu, went missing from a construction site in Zhengzhou in 2007.

Six years on, Yuan says the police have finally admitted to him that there was a string of child abductions in the area around the time his son disappeared. But when he went to them, two days after Xueyu went missing, the police said: “Keep looking on your own and we’ll talk about it again in a couple of days.”

Tens of thousands of children are kidnapped in China each year for sale into adoption, street life, forced labour and prostitution.

The horror faced by parents whose children are stolen is highlighted in Chinese and international media whenever there is a particularly disturbing case. Recently police arrested a hospital doctor in Shaanxi province over her alleged role in stealing newborn babies and selling them. The police investigation managed to track down some of the missing babies and reunite them with their parents.

But that is an unusually happy ending in a country where parents say they are battling police indifference as well as traffickers in the hunt to find missing children.

In 2011, Chinese police rescued 8,660 abducted children, but it is likely that at least double that number were kidnapped. China does not release official figures relating to child trafficking, so estimates are based on the numbers of missing-child reports posted by parents online and of children reported rescued each year.

Estimates range from 10,000 kidnapped per year to as high as 70,000. Most parents who lose children stand very little chance of seeing them again.

At the national level, China takes child abduction very seriously. It has a national anti-kidnapping taskforce that investigates and infiltrates trafficking rings, and there are frequent anti-kidnapping campaigns that encourage citizens to report anything suspicious. But at local level, where the first, crucial reports will be made when a child goes missing, parents say the police just don’t seem to care.

“The evening we reported it they went out and patrolled a bit, after that we never saw them looking [for her] again,” said Zhu Cuifang, whose 12-year-old daughter, Lei Xiaoxia, went missing in 2011. The police also failed to check surveillance tapes at her school or interview any of her classmates.

Critics say that the slow reaction of local police plays into the hands of the traffickers. The involvement of organised rings means a kidnapped child could be taken thousands of miles and passed between numerous handlers over the first couple of days.

Pi Yijun, a professor at the Institute for Criminal Justice at the China University of Political Science and Law, says: “An important problem is that when a child is lost, the parents go and talk to the police, and the police need to judge whether the kid has got lost or has been kidnapped.

“At present, in Chinese law, they need to be missing for 24 hours to be listed as a missing person or as kidnapped, but that 24 hours is also the most crucial time – so there is a major conflict there. How can you judge quickly whether the child has got lost or is being hidden as a prank or really has been kidnapped? That’s a serious problem.”

Often, it is a problem that is never fully resolved. In rural areas and the outskirts of cities where migrant workers live, children aren’t too difficult to acquire, adds Pi.

China’s one child policy has created an environment where finding a buyer for a boy is rarely difficult; there are always parents somewhere who want a son to support them in their old age but don’t want to pay the fines for additional children just to end up with more daughters.

Child kidnapping is so prevalent in China that even when a stolen child tells people what has happened, sometimes nothing is done.

Wang Qingshun was kidnapped and sold to “adoptive” parents in the 1980s. The couple who bought him already had two daughters and thought it would be easier to buy a son than keep trying to have one naturally.

While he was growing up, Wang told his neighbours that he had been kidnapped and that the people he lived with were not really his parents. But they didn’t report this to the police until a decade later.

While individual stories of stolen children make the headlines briefly and then fade, parents never stop looking. Many say they are spending thousands of dollars searching, unsupported, for their children, fighting to raise awareness of cases that will never be solved.

In the six years that Yuan Cheng has been searching for his son, he has helped rescue other children who had been kidnapped and sold into forced labour, but he hasn’t found Xueyu yet.

Zhu Cuifang and her husband, Lei Yong, haven’t found Xiaoxia either. Still, they press on, because as Zhu put it, “if we can’t find our daughter, life is meaningless”.

Spike in suicide rate in Europe and US linked to financial crisis

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debt, recession, redundancy, suicide, unemployment

Spike in suicide rate in Europe and US linked to financial crisis

Thousands of suicides are linked to the global financial crisis, with particularly high numbers of people killing themselves in countries suffering heavy job losses as austerity bites, an international study has concluded.

The research found there were about 5,000 more self-inflicted deaths in Europe and North America in 2009 – the first year after the banking crash triggered economic turmoil – than would have been expected in normal times.

Britain shared in the distressing trend, suffering 300 extra suicides in 2009, according to a study published last night by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Researchers blamed the spike in suicides on soaring dole queues – an estimated 34 million people worldwide lost their jobs during the crisis – as well as bankruptcies and housing repossessions. According to their analysis of suicide rates in 45 countries in Europe and North America, young men aged between 15 and 24 were particularly vulnerable.

“Men are more likely to be the main earner in the family and thus more affected by the recession than women. They might experience a greater degree of shame in the face of unemployment and are less likely to seek help,” their report said.

They said there was evidence that numbers of self-inflicted deaths increased sharply in countries where unemployment had been relatively low before the credit crunch.

And the researchers, from universities in Bristol, Oxford and Hong Kong, warned they could still be underestimating the extent of the problem as some countries hit hard by the financial crash were excluded from their study.

They added: “The rise in the number of suicides is only a small part of the emotional distress caused by the economic downturn. Non-fatal suicide attempts could be 40 times more common than completed suicides and for every suicide attempt about ten people experience suicidal thoughts.”

The Samaritans said the conclusions chimed with their experience of dealing with suicidal and deeply depressed callers who were increasingly raising problems with redundancy, debt and mortgage repayments.

A spokesman for the organisation said: “It is no surprise to us to be told suicides rise during recessions. A snapshot survey of calls to our branches in 2008, just before the current recession began, showed that one in 10 callers talked  about financial difficulties.

“That had risen to one in six at the end of last year. Clearly this is a factor governments need to keep in mind when planning for economic downturns.”

The Samaritans’ own research suggested that middle-aged men from disadvantaged backgrounds are at highest risk of suicide. They are up to  10 times more likely to kill themselves than men living in Britain’s most affluent areas.

Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said research showed economic shocks were “seriously bad for the health”.

He said: “When people face economic hardship, and the stress and uncertainty that comes in its wake, they can react in different ways. Some will take it out on others, getting into fights, assaulting their partners, perpetrating homicides.

“Violence can also be turned inwards, leading to depression, distress and, for some, suicide.

“Whatever the economic arguments in favour of austerity, the rise in suicide rates is one of the clearest signs of its human cost,” Mr Garside added.

Official figures show that 4,331 people committed suicide in Britain in 2008 – a sharp rise of 246 on the previous year and a reversal of the general trend over the previous decade – and 4,304 in 2009. The rate fell to 4,231 in 2010, but climbed again to 4,552 in 2011.

The findings echo documented increases in suicide in previous downturns, such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s.

Also:

Loneliness, relationship problems and money troubles: The Samaritans reveal what is troubling modern man

Exercise and disability: ‘Now things hurt for the right reasons’

Tags

confidence, Exercise, multiple sclerosis, Self-esteem, symptoms

Exercise and disability: ‘Now things hurt for the right reasons’

It’s hardly surprising that Shana Pezaro started comfort eating. After 20 years of unexplained and debilitating symptoms, she had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Having built up her own stage-school business, she was now losing the ability to walk and was forced to sell up. Then her marriage fell apart.

“My husband had found my illness and disability very difficult to deal with, but we always thought I was going to get better,” says Pezaro. “Then, when I was finally diagnosed with MS in 2007 and we realised I wouldn’t, he just couldn’t handle it. I used to be a dancer, but my body had changed and he told me he just couldn’t find me attractive anymore. Within a year of my diagnosis, we’d split up.”

It was a relief, she says, when he finally left, but the experience nevertheless dealt a blow to her self-esteem, not helped by the fact she had started to put on weight.

“I went from 12st to 15st in the space of three years. The fatigue was so bad that I didn’t have the strength to cook. I was living on microwave meals and snacks. The steroids and other medications made me incredibly hungry. And of course as my legs got worse I was getting less and less exercise – I could barely walk. I was miserable.”

Weight gain is a serious issue for the disabled community. In a study of 30,000 people published this summer by the University of Texas School of Public Health, 42% of adults with a disability were reported as obese, compared with 29% of those without a disability. Gaining weight not only affects a person’s emotional wellbeing, but can also make mobility even harder and symptoms feel worse. Yet fatigue and pain can make sport participation seem daunting. And although things are improving following the success of the Paralympics, access remains a major barrier. Just 18% of people with a disability or long-term limiting illness participate in sport each week, around half the level of the general population, according to a survey by Sport England.

“You don’t have to eat a lot to put on weight if you’re not moving and your body isn’t burning calories,” says Vanessa Daobri, a gym instructor who specialises in working with people with disabilities. “Disabled people often suffer because they don’t know how to exercise. If the disability is a result of an injury or it’s been a slow onset, they may find it hard to accept that they can’t do a sport in the way they used to, so they feel there’s no point.”

Organisations such as Aspire and the English Federation of Disability Sport run inclusive gyms across the country. But not everyone is lucky enough to be near one, and regular gyms are still lagging behind, says Daobri. “Often the staff get the approach wrong – sometimes it’s just laziness, sometimes it’s ignorance. Health and safety is used as a crutch, too.” Another issue, she says, is that disabled people can feel frightened to be seen going to the gym in case their benefits are cut.

Daobri has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a disorder affecting collagen. In 2007 she grew from a size 12 to a size 24 in less than a year. She felt “stuck”, until she joined a wheelchair racing group and the coach asked her if she used the gym.

“I just laughed,” she says. ‘I thought gyms were not for me – they were for other people.” She was shown how to use gym equipment in new ways and quickly became “addicted” to exercise. Now, she has made a career out of helping disabled people find ways to get fit.

“Once someone opened the door for me I realised there was a whole world out there,” she says. “Whatever your disability, there’s a version of a sport for you – you just have to be a bit creative.”

After six months of post-divorce counselling, Pezaro decided she wanted to lose weight. “I got a brilliant new carer who got me eating healthily,” she says. “Then I found out there was an MS treatment centre near me that runs lots of different exercise classes.”

She signed up to a class she has come to describe affectionately as “sadistic PE”. “The instructor is ex-military but also a counsellor and herself has MS. So she completely understands us, but she doesn’t let us get away with anything. We adapt everything to our own personal needs. It’s not your average fitness class – it’s not unusual for people to collapse and have a leg spasm in the middle of their situps, or to suddenly fall off their exercise ball, but we just laugh about it.”

At first Pezaro was unable to do most of the exercises, but she persevered and since starting the class three years ago has lost nearly 4st.

“It’s not been easy,” she says. “It took me 30 months to lose 45 pounds. But I didn’t get demoralised. I knew that over the years it would add up. And the more I’ve exercised the better my fatigue is. I still can’t walk, but I now have less weight to lift when I’m using my frame, or getting on and off the toilet, so everything is easier.”

Pezaro’s confidence has been transformed and now she is enjoying dating again. But perhaps most the important gain has been to her sense of control.

“I really worked myself at last night’s class, and today every muscle in my body hurts,” she says. “But I’m so used to living with pain, it’s kind of nice to know that for once, things are hurting for a good reason.”

• For information and support on multiple sclerosis visit mssociety.org.uk. Aspire’s Instructability programme offers free fitness industry training to disabled people. Visit aspire.org.uk

Demands grow for child guardians to end shame of modern slavery

Tags

Children, human trafficking, traffickers, Trafficking

Demands grow for child guardians to end shame of modern slavery

Pressure is growing on Theresa May to tackle human trafficking and halt the disappearance from care of hundreds of children. Despite unveiling a parliamentary bill to end what she called an “evil in our midst”, May will this week face criticism for failing to include proposals that would see professional guardians caring for suspected victims, a system likely to be urged in a Children’s Society report.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, joined the calls for child guardians. “The system is failing them. Those who work with trafficked children, including charities and organisations that support victims, see this as a vital change to prevent modern slavery,” she said.

Cooper added: “Independent advocates can ensure a trusted adult becomes known to the child, rather than their trafficker being the only person they know in the country. When these children go missing, when they should be safe having been identified to the authorities, there is a strong chance the children return to their traffickers.”

The number of children identified as potential victims rose by 12% last year, according to a recent report by the UK Human Trafficking Centre. It identified 2,255 potential child victims – up from 2,077 the previous year.

Advocates of guardianship say it would ensure secure housing, education and legal support to stop trafficked children falling back into the hands of their exploiters.

Solicitor Philippa Southwell, of London-based Birds solicitors, works with young people who have been convicted and jailed for crimes committed as a result of being trafficked. She specialises in helping them overturn their convictions. Within days of her clients being released, many of them will have gone missing, believed to be back in the hands of traffickers. “You have to prepare for the event that they are going to disappear, it’s happened in a huge number of my cases.” Most never know that she has managed to overturn their criminal conviction and clear their names.

Southwell usually meets her clients in prison after they have been convicted. Most are Vietnamese and have been brought into the country by their traffickers and forced to work in cannabis factories or in other forced labour.

“It’s explained to them that there are things we can do to help them rebuild their life and that the first step is to appeal [against] their conviction. But these are very vulnerable young people who have a real distrust for authorities.

“It’s very difficult to build the trust, because the legal system has previously let them down. I often have to explain to them that they are not criminals but victims,” added Southwell.

Philip Ishola, director of the Counter Human Trafficking Bureau, believes that preventing children from falling back into the hands of traffickers can also be achieved through the provision of specialist accommodation.

“The missing rate is alarming. For trafficked children there are so many risks, and for Vietnamese children that risk is magnified because it’s such a closed environment that children are trafficked within. It’s a really specialist knowledge and understanding. That knowledge is there – thousands of social workers have been trained – but the huge gap is in safe accommodation. For a Vietnamese placed in foster care or a children’s home, we know from experience that in two days you will be lucky if the child is still there.”

Despite a growing understanding of the need to protect trafficking victims from prosecution, experts say there are still major flaws in how victims are treated within the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, claims for damages against police and local authorities for failure to properly support victims of trafficking is a growing area for lawyers. Tony Murphy, a partner at Bhatt Murphy, said: “We are using the Human Rights Act to call public authorities to account for failing to protect these victims. It is an indictment on our society that the state should need to be forced by litigation to address a crime as heinous as human trafficking.”

For Southwell, the problem of finding missing children will remain difficult because of the absence of anyone to pressure police. “They have little or no support in the UK by way of family or friends because as soon as they are smuggled into the country they are immediately taken to a cannabis house and forced to work for months and sometimes years without leaving the premises,” she said.

Case study

“Rachel” (not her real name) was trafficked into the UK from Nigeria when she was 15. She was placed in foster care but her traffickers found her, approaching her as she walked to school, and took her to work in a brothel in London. She was picked up by police in a raid on the brothel following a tipoff.

Despite the fact that they were told an underage girl was working there, they arrived with a journalist in tow. “The police said ‘put your head down’,” because a reporter was around, Rachel said. “They took me to the police station, took my fingerprint and bag and locked me in a cell. Then they let me out onto the street.” The police didn’t ask her any questions about who was running the brothel, she said.

With nowhere to go, Rachel had no option but to move in with a client from the brothel and was eventually picked up again, this time in an immigration raid. She was detained at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre, where a solicitor recognised that she had been trafficked.

“She said I looked like a trafficking victim and that because of my age I didn’t have control over myself. I felt ashamed and I was crying. It shocked me that she knew about these things – at first I didn’t trust her.”

Rachel’s lawyer put her in touch with the Poppy Project, which supports trafficked women, and she is now studying at college, having been given leave to remain in the UK. Human rights law firm Bhatt Murphy is currently suing the Metropolitan Police, Home Office and the London Borough of Newham over Rachel’s treatment.

Netherlands to pay compensation over Srebrenica massacre

Tags

Bosnia, Dutch

Netherlands to pay compensation over Srebrenica massacre

The Netherlands has been ordered to pay compensation for the deaths of Bosnian Muslims in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in a ruling that opens up the Dutch state to compensation claims from relatives of the rest of the 8,000 men and youths who died.

The judgment by Holland’s supreme court is the final decision in a protracted claim brought by relatives of three Muslim men who were expelled by Dutch soldiers from a United Nations compound during the Balkans conflict then killed by Bosnian Serb forces.

Although the case related only to the murder of three victims, it confirms the precedent that countries that provide troops to UN missions can be held responsible for their conduct.

The case was brought by Hasan Nuhanovic, an interpreter who lost his brother and father, and relatives of Rizo Mustafic, an electrician who was killed. They argued that all three men should have been protected by Dutch peacekeepers. Mustafic and Nuhanovic were employed by the Dutch, but Nuhanovic’s father and brother were not.

The men were among thousands who had sought shelter in the UN compound as Bosnian Serb forces commanded by General Ratko Mladic overran the area on 11 July 1995. Two days later the outnumbered Dutch peacekeepers bowed to pressure from Mladic’s troops and forced thousands of Muslim families out of the compound.

Bosnian Serb forces sorted the Muslims by gender, then began executing Muslim men and boys. The bodies of approximately 8,000 were buried in hastily dug mass graves.

The international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague has ruled that the killings constituted genocide and Mladic is on trial for crimes committed at Srebrenica. The atrocity was the worst massacre on European soil since the second world war.

The Dutch court ruling held that in the chaos of the Serb takeover of Srebrenica, UN commanders no longer had control of the troops on the ground and “effective control” therefore reverted to Dutch authorities in the Hague.

The human rights lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld, who represented the Bosnian families, called the ruling historic because it established that countries involved in UN missions can be found legally responsible for crimes, despite the UN’s far-reaching immunity from prosecution. “People participating in UN missions are not always covered by the UN flag,” she said.

Toon Heisterkamp, a supreme court judge responsible for briefing the media, insisted that the narrow focus of the case meant it was unlikely to have far-reaching effects.

Outside the courtroom Nuhanovic said he was stunned by the ruling, which ends a 10-year legal battle and opens the door to compensation claims against the Dutch government.

“I was thinking about my family, they are dead for 18 years,” he said. “It does not change that, but maybe there is some justice. It should have happened years ago. In the future countries might act differently in peacekeeping missions and I hope the lives of other people in the future will be saved because this mistake was admitted.”

The Dutch government resigned in 2002 after the National War Documentation Institute blamed the debacle on Dutch authorities and the UN for sending underarmed and underprepared forces into the mission and refusing to answer the commanders’ call for air support.

The government accepted “political responsibility” for the mission’s failure and contributes aid to Bosnia, much of which is earmarked for rebuilding in Srebrenica. But it has always said responsibility for the massacre itself lies with the Bosnian Serbs.

The three men were among the last to be expelled, the 2011 ruling said, and by that time the peacekeepers, known as “Dutchbat” for Dutch battalion, had already seen Bosnian Serb troops abusing Muslim men and boys and should have known they faced the real threat of being killed.

“Dutchbat should not have turned these men over to the Serbs,” a summary of the judgment said.

The Hague appeals court in 2011 ordered the families of the three dead men to be compensated, but no figure was ever reached, pending the outcome of the government’s appeal to the supreme court.

Zegveld said the amount of compensation the families will receive was not important. “It’s far more important what’s been decided today than any amount that will be established in the future,” she said.

The Srebrenica massacre has turned into a national trauma for the Netherlands. Dutch troops returning home faced accusations of cowardice and incompetence.

The Dutch soldiers, many of whom feared for their own lives, helped the attacking Bosnian-Serb troops as they separated Muslim men from women. The men and boys were then bussed to execution sites. A subsequent inquiry exonerated the ground forces.

“Dutchbat decided not to evacuate them along with the battalion and instead sent them away from the compound,” a summary of the supreme court ruling said.

“Outside the compound they were murdered by the Bosnian-Serb army or related paramilitary groups.”