London: African children are being sold for "modern-day slavery" in Britain by impoverished parents on promise of better life, a media report said on Sunday.
"Hundreds of young children are being sold and trafficked to Britain from Africa to be exploited as modern-day slaves," the Sunday Telegraph reported.
"Teenage girls – including some still pregnant – were willing to sell their babies for less than ₤1,000," said the daily, which conducted an investigation into the trafficking.
It said that one trafficker in Lagos claimed to be buying up to 500 children a year.
In Britain, these children are used to obtain illegal housing and other welfare benefits. They "are exploited as domestic slaves, forced to work for up to 18 hours a day, cleaning, cooking and looking after other younger children, or put to work in restaurants and shops," the daily said.
According to the report, these children are also subjected "to physical and sexual abuse, while others even find themselves accused of being witches and become victims of exorcism rites in 'traditional African churches in Britain."
"They are being cynically used by adults as slave labour and to defraud the state and then when they get older and have served their purpose and no longer attract entitled to benefits they are thrown out on to the streets with no papers even to prove who they are," Debbie Ariyo, an executive director of the London-based charity Africans Unite Against Child Abuse, was quoted as saying by the daily. Left to fend for themselves, many fall into crime and the sex trade.
A recent figure by the Government's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre claimed that 330 children, many of them from Africa, have been trafficked to Britain over the past year. Many, however, believe that this is just the "tip of the iceberg".
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