Ex-Policeman charged with trafficking Women

A former police officer in the North and a woman have been remanded in custody and charged with human trafficking and controlling prostitution.

The accused, who appeared at Belfast Magistrates Court this morning, are the former policeman Simon Dempsey (39) from Newtownards in Co. Down and Chen Rong (32), a Chinese woman with an address at Kidderminster, in the English county of Worcestershire.

Both are alleged to "have facilitated the arrival of people in the UK, knowing a sexual offence would be committed".
Or, in normal English: They are accused of having smuggled Chinese prostitutes into Britain.

Last Thursday police officers raided a number of suspected brothels in Belfast, Derry and Newry and liberated six Chinese women who had been forced by a Chinese criminal gang to work there as prostitutes.

The women are now being cared for by specialist officers from Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

Police opposed bail for both accused, because the detective said he feared that they would flee the country, and interfere with identified and as yet unidentified victims.

A solicitor for Chen Rong claimed that the accused had herself been a prostitute before "being used by sinister people", while Simon Dempsey's lawyer claimed that the Chinese woman "had duped him" and that in fact "he knew nothing about the women being used as prostitutes".

Looks and sounds as if the two of them rather deserve each other.

The Magistrate refused bail for both defendants, and they were remanded in custody until June 26th.

Police Action against African Prostitutes and organised People Trafficking across Ireland

A total of ten people have been arrested yesterday in a major coordinated police operation, targeting people trafficking and prostitution across Ireland and Wales.

Four women and three men were taken into custody following coordinated Garda raids on nine brothels and six other locations across the Republic of Ireland. Another man was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in Newry, Co. Down, and a couple were detained by British police in Wales.

Those arrested in Wales are a 47-year-old Irishman and a 31-year-old woman from South Africa. The four women and three men being held in the Republic are suspected of committing a number of criminal offences, including organising and managing prostitution.

Brothels in Cavan, Drogheda (Co. Louth), Athlone and Mullingar (Co. Westmeath), Sligo, Kilkenny, Enniscorthy (Co. Wexford), Newbridge (Co. Kildare) and Waterford were raided and searched by officers of the Garda Síochána (Ireland's police).

Six other locations in Co. Carlow were also searched by Gardaí, including the homes and offices of a number of professional individuals, among them an unnamed accountant.

The raids followed an international investigation into organised people trafficking, which involved the Garda Síochána, the PSNI and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

The PSNI said that the man arrested in Newry was being detained on suspicion of immigration offences.
It also conducted a number of covert inquiries at several locations throughout the North, which are being used as brothels by an criminal gang, organised through the internet.

A spokesman said the PSNI believes it has "dismantled an organised crime gang which was operating in three jurisdictions in Europe and has close links to South Africa".