CHILD TRAFFICKING
A Cinderella story ELENA was six years old when she was set to work as a SLAVE in this SUBURBAN house in north London. She never went to school and rarely saw DAYLIGHT. Sharon Hendry reveals her SHOCKING tale
CHILD TRAFFICKING
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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITAN POLICE; PETRUT CALINESCU/PANOS FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
t 5.30pm on a cool spring evening in 2011, a team of five specialist crime officers knocked on the white door of an ordinary terraced house in north London and waited. Inside the house in Cranbrook Park, Wood Green, a timid 6-year-old girl was getting eight other children, some as young as two years old, ready for bed. Barefoot in a filthy T-shirt and torn trousers, Elena had spent the day cleaning and preparing food. Her feet were black with grime, even to the top of her shins. Now she was getting ready for her night shift — tidying bedrooms, running baths and handing out freshly laundered pyjamas. If she put a foot wrong, she would be beaten by her terrifying,
gold-toothed female “boss” Alexandra Oaie — otherwise known as “Ferma” (the Firm One). Elena’s own needs had been neglected long ago, her childhood eclipsed in the process. She had been transported to Britain seven months earlier by a Roma gang intent on using her as a slave and beggar; she was just one victim of a human-trafficking scandal that has reached epidemic levels. Yet who would ever know? Brutalised and silenced, she and 500 other child victims of human trafficking believed to have entered Britain in 2011 are invisible to us. The trial that followed Elena’s discovery unravelled one of the most poignant and troubling cases of child trafficking that the police in Britain have had to deal with. When the case eventually came to court, the judge, perhaps with one eye on the headlines, described Elena as a “Romanian Cinderella”.
Although some details of her captivity emerged in court, this is the first time that her story has been told in any detail, and the first time her journey — almost entirely under duress — from Romania to London has been documented. In April last year, Alexandra Oaie, her husband, Remus, and their adult sons Marian and Florin, all Romanian nationals, were tried and convicted of trafficking Elena with the intention of exploiting her. They were jailed for 40 years between them. They were also convicted of trafficking a 53-year-old Romanian man to Britain, brutally exploiting and, in the sons’ cases, sexually abusing him. Elena’s story only came to light after the man went to the police. Sentencing the traffickers, Judge Shani Barnes described the couple’s behaviour as “cruel and sadistic”.
ELENA WAS DROPPED ONTO A CONCRETE SLAB FOR TAKING A SQUARE OF CHOCOLATE
“You stole this sweet and innocent little girl’s childhood by your treatment of her, by your neglect, by your cruelty,” Barnes said. “You made her think you were her parents and this was normal.” The judge added that Cristian, an older man who had also been trafficked, and who eventually raised the alarm — probably saving Elena’s life — had become a “filthy cold scavenging man who was living in a twilight misery… it is hard to believe this was happening in leafy Wood Green in 2011”. He had been EVIL EMPIRE, left: the house of the criminal family the Zlates, in Rosiori de Vede, Romania, where Elena was adopted. Right: stolen goods from countless looting expeditions in the cellar at 15 Cranbrook Park
tortured and raped by the couple’s sons. Summing up the evidence, the judge highlighted the bleak life both Elena and Cristian suffered: “There would be times when she was beaten up and humiliated as he was. She was like a little slave looking after the youngest children. She was changing nappies, feeding them and making up their bottles, and feeding the animals. She would be hit on the head, shouted at and sworn at. The other children would beat her like she was a carpet. She was never allowed to do a day of school.” Although the trial brought the misery of Elena, now settled with a foster family in north London, to an end, there is still a sense of bafflement that such an appalling chain of events could befall a young girl in Britain in the 21st century. Where did she come from? And how did she get here? a The Sunday Times Magazine
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Elena was born into extreme poverty in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, in the summer of 2004. Her mother, Ramona, then in her mid-thirties, was fearful of the future but overjoyed when nurses placed her daughter in her arms. With no committed father to place his name on Elena’s birth certificate, and with two other children to support, Ramona took to the road. The family, with Ramona’s new partner in tow, travelled 76 miles southwest of Bucharest to a town called Rosiori de Vede. Elena was just 15 months old when they arrived. During the Communist era under Ceausescu, the town had a population of 32,000 — most of the men had jobs in state-owned food factories. They were relatively prosperous. Now jobs are scarce, and the population has dropped by a third.
A budget supermarket and several elaborately built villas occupied by Roma families are the only sign of new investment in the town. It was with one of these better-off Roma families — the Zlates — that Ramona secured employment as a cleaner. The Zlate family trace their gypsy roots back to the Ursari clan — traditionally nomadic animal trainers adept at handling bears for circuses. Locally, Ferma Zlate, 45, and her husband, Remus, 48, are known as camatari: ruthless moneylenders who loan cash at exorbitant interest rates. In a police statement seen by The Sunday Times Magazine, Ramona later testified: “When Elena was 20 months old, Ferma approached me. It was at her house and she mentioned that she wanted to adopt her.” Elena’s angelic looks would make her useful to the family’s “business ventures” —
including begging and benefits fraud — in Romania and, later, Britain. “My first thoughts when I heard her proposal were that I wanted to think about it, also to speak with my husband,” Ramona recalls. “I was not at all pleased with the idea.”
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rustrated by Ramona’s lack of cooperation, Ferma enlisted the help of her husband, Remus — an equally ruthless individual, who also goes by the name of Aurel, with criminal links throughout Europe. He reassured Ramona that Elena would be looked after. “We reached an agreement that they will take care of Elena,” says Ramona. “They asked if I wanted anything in exchange, and I said I do not want anything else but for Elena to have a good life.”
Elena was duly handed over to the Zlates and began living with Ferma’s mother in a modest single-story house in Rosiori de Vede. Nearby lay the foundations for a much grander villa being built from the proceeds of the Zlates’ crimes. Today, the house stands unfinished and nobody wants to discuss the Zlates. “Get too close and they will find someone who will cut you,” I was told by one local. At first, Ramona was allowed access to Elena, but the informal agreement soon ended. “On the first occasions she looked well and she was well dressed, but one time I found her with Ferma’s mother and she was in a bad way, dirty and unhappy. I was afraid people were beating her, but I did not see marks on her. During this meeting, Ferma’s mother grabbed my child and told me to leave. I started to worry about Elena and to ask myself: ‘Why did they want her?’ ”
Elena was indeed being treated badly. Inside the Zlates’ home she was being subjected to systematic emotional and physical abuse. By day she was buckling under the weight of the buckets of rubble she was being forced to carry across the Zlates’ building site. By night she was sleeping naked outside on a bench in a courtyard. Another of the Zlates’ employees was deeply troubled by the little girl’s plight. Cristian, a Romanian driver and electrician, had also been tricked by the family and was being held FIGHT FOR JUSTICE: the Romanian anti-trafficker Romulus Ungureanu (left). Right: the shed at the house in Cranbrook Park where Cristian was held by Ferma Zlate (centre) and her family
captive by them. Desperate for work, he had accepted what appeared to be a legitimate driver’s contract in the town in March, 2009. He had no idea it would entail sitting behind the wheel while Ferma subjected late interest payers to horrific beatings. Once he was asked to drive over a terrified victim — he refused, and later took a beating. His passport was seized by Ferma, Remus, and their elder sons Marian, 25, and Florin, 23. He knew too much to leave, so they held him captive using extreme violence. But it was Elena’s predicament that pained Cristian most. He witnessed a terrible scene in which she was dropped on a concrete slab as a punishment for taking a single square of chocolate from the fridge. She was left unconscious. Now living in Britain, Cristian is in constant fear for his life. “Ferma would hit Elena a The Sunday Times Magazine
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over the head, saying, ‘You don’t do anything,’ ‘You are an orphan,’ ” he recalls. “The other children would jump on her and throw her to the ground and beat her as if she were a dusty carpet. She was like a family slave. Sometimes she would say to me, ‘I can’t go on.’ I’d tell her, ‘You have to keep going, you have to stay strong because one day we’ll escape together.” Cristian remained true to his word. Later, he risked his life in order to turn informant. “Sometimes after a beating I would see her curled up on the floor with her hands clasped tightly over her head,” he recalls. “I also have a daughter, and it killed me to see her like this. One day I had to find a way to free us both.” I n October 2010, Elena was bundled into the back seat of a maroon seven-seater Volkswagen Sharan and told to prepare for a
of Wood Green or in Trafalgar Square. When Cristian resisted one robbing mission, Marian Zlate slashed his arm with a knife. Today, he shows me the scar. He has marks all over his body: traces of smashed kneecaps, a cracked skull and broken ribs. Later, the violence became even more sinister and depraved. The Zlate brothers Marian and Florin violently raped Cristian during a drunken row on December 31, 2010. By the following March, he could take no more. He waited until the Zlate family was asleep, retrieved his passport from a bedroom drawer, fled to Wood Green police station, where he gave a statement to WPC Laura Coates. With virtually no English, he could only write “SOS” and “WOATR” (water) on a piece of paper given to him by the sympathetic
want me to take you away?’ Her face lit up. We took her around the house to look for other clothing, but she didn’t have any. All the other kids had thick winter coats on and brand-new football boots. And despite being Romanian, she couldn’t count to 10 in Romanian. That wasn’t a reflection on her intelligence, though. Within weeks, she could count to 10 in English, and by October we were able to conduct an entire interview with her in English.” In that interview, Elena poignantly summed up her own experience. She said of Ferma:
long journey. With Cristian at the wheel, the Zlate family travelled for six days through Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany and Belgium, arriving at Cranbrook Park, Wood Green, north London, on October 16, 2010. In London, life worsened for Elena and Cristian. Up to 27 people lived at the property. While Elena had to tend to the needs of each resident, Cristian was forced to live in a wooden shed at the back.
officer. She later took a statement from him and referred him to a bed-and-breakfast through social services. The case was quickly transferred to the Metropolitan Police’s elite SCD9 trafficking-and-prostitution unit. Detective constables Gemma Fraser and Lee Moreton were among officers who began the painstaking process of putting a case together. “Cristian told us about a little girl who had come in a car from Romania with him,” says DC Fraser. “He was worried she was still at the address, so we went there on a Friday evening on April 1, 2011. As soon as we walked in it was obvious who the person was. I thought she appeared younger than 6 because she was tiny. She had messy, short hair, and later that day a foster carer noticed scabs on her scalp. “At one point I said to the child: ‘Do you
“I can’t stand her because she beats me all the time. I had blood all over. She beat me with the broom. Come on, keep working, keep working.”Lee Moreton, 35, served with the Metropolitan Police between 1999 and 2012. He now lives in Manhattan. “After we got Elena settled with her foster carer, I spent two days interviewing Cristian,” he says. “His evidence was harrowing. At one stage the Romanian interpreter had to leave the room. She was physically sick. Next, we began the painstaking process of collecting additional evidence and forensics. We didn’t want to have to arrest the Zlates only then to have to bail them and risk them returning to Romania. “Every day felt like a race against the clock because Elena’s safety was at stake. The Zlates were brazenly going to their local social services department, showing the a
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lena had to slave for all the family while sleeping on the living-room floor. Sometimes there would be gang meetings until 3am and Elena couldn’t sleep until everyone had left. But she would still be up again at 6am tending to the younger kids. Some days she would be forced to beg in her bare feet in the centre
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The Sunday Times Magazine
SIGNS OF SUFFERING, left: a bloodstained mattress that Cristian slept on, with a police measuring tape used to document the stains. Right: more stolen goods at the Zlates’ Wood Green home
CHILD TRAFFICKING
LEFT AND RIGHT: SHARON HENDRY
adoption papers and saying, ‘Give us our child back.’ Without credible evidence and charges, Elena could have been back with them in days.“Elena began giving video evidence in a series of sessions that took place over five months. It was harrowing. Here was a little girl who was 6, turning 7, but with an emotional age of 3. She had no idea that the people who she believed were her mother and father actually were not.” The police investigation took a year to complete, with Elena’s mother’s co-operation. Former DC Moreton says that although justice was done, “the case must be part of a wider, ongoing dialogue about trafficking. People need to be more aware of what is going on behind closed doors, maybe even in a house next door to them.”
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“Cristian couldn’t speak English — he had no idea where he was when he arrived in Britain, and he couldn’t read or write. Imagine the terror he must have felt.” As the head of the Metropolitan Police’s trafficking-and-prostitution unit SCD9, Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland is at the forefront of the battle against child trafficking. “The United Nations now flags up human trafficking as the second-biggest crime in the world,” he says. “Only the drugs trade supersedes it. The traffickers threaten adults and children with violence, confiscate their passports and even hold them at gunpoint. It’s all part of a brainwashing process.” His Bucharest-based Romanian counterpart, Romulus Ungureanu, believes that a coherent, pan-European approach is the only way forward. “Children represent around a third
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of the victims we identify,” he says. “Most of them are between the ages of 14 and 17, from vulnerable and broken families. Many have been institutionalised, and half have been recruited by acquaintances or relatives.” “So many victims of child trafficking are hidden, so accurate stats are always difficult to obtain, but we know that around 1.2m children are trafficked globally each year,” says Bharti Patel, director or Ecpat UK (End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking). “Ecpat UK is concerned that the Home Office’s appetite for dealing for human trafficking is not voracious enough for the severity of the crime.” And what of Elena now? At first, her foster carer noticed worrying signs of neglect. “When I tried to speak to her, she just looked at me with her head down. She
PEOPLE NEED TO BE MORE AWARE OF WHAT GOES ON BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, MAYBE EVEN NEXT DOOR
had heavy scabs on her skull. Her teeth were rotten right down into the gum. She said she had pain in the lower back. In the morning she would clean her room, tidy it, make her bed, get the dustpan. I did not ask her to do these things. Now, after almost two years in the same family, Elena is flourishing. “She looks completely different,” says DC Fraser. “She takes pride in wearing dresses and she likes girly hairstyles and ballet.” Lee Moreton adds: “I got a photo of Elena a few months back. She was holding a teddy bear HAPPY ENDING, left: a recent drawing by Elena that she sent to Cristian, depicting a happy little girl playing in the park. Right: Elena’s handwritten note to Cristian, thanking him for helping to free her
and she had a big smile on her face — just as a kid should be. It made my day.” Most poignant of all is the brown envelope that Cristian, who is living in Britain under a witness-protection scheme, produces when we meet on a sunny day in early March. Inside is a child’s drawing of a happy little girl next to a swing and slide. On the back of the flimsy piece of tracing paper it simply says: ‘Thank you for helping me. Love Elena.” “I will cherish this forever,” he tells me with tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m told that a £15,000 contract has been taken out on my life, but this picture puts everything into perspective. It makes everything I have been through feel worthwhile.” ■ For more information on child trafficking go to www.ecpat.org.uk. Some names have been changed to protect the identities of vulnerable individuals.