This case is an unopposed appeal against conviction brought before the court by leave granted by Cox J on 26th June 2008.
On 17th March 2008 at the Canterbury Crown Court before Her Honour Judge Adele Williams, this appellant pleaded guilty to an offence of possessing a false identity card with the intention of using it as her own and was sentenced to 8 months' imprisonment less 16 days spent on remand.
The appellant had been arrested shortly after midnight on 29th February 2008 at the Dover Docks. She was on board a coach which was departing the United Kingdom bound for France. At French passport control in Dover she was asked for identification and she handed over a Spanish identity card in the name of Rosalia Majeda Segura, date of birth 10th November 1976. It was plain to the officer that the appellant did not resemble the woman on the photograph in the card. The police were called. The appellant insisted at that time that the identity card was hers. She said her name was Rosalia and she was 31. The arresting officer was to describe her as "a very young small black woman". On arrest she was taken to Dover police station where she persisted in giving the same details. However, at interview in the morning she admitted that the identity card was not hers. She gave her correct name and stated that she was a Nigerian national and had entered the United Kingdom about 2 months before on her own passport. She said that she was trying to get to France to see her uncle. She had lost her passport when her handbag had been stolen and she had obtained the false identity document from a friend. She gave a birth date in 1985. The Kent police custody record and charge sheet both give 10th December 1985 as her date of birth.
According to the appellant, she was brought to the United Kingdom by a man called Osas, who insisted she would have to pay 60,000 Euros. In the United Kingdom she was installed in a flat with a woman called "Kate". She was threatened and raped by a man there. Before that she was a virgin. Kate told her that she would have to work as a prostitute in order to repay Osas; and she was forced to do so three days after she had been raped and thereafter for over a month before she escaped.
NigeriaUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandPossessing a false identity card with the intention of using it as her own
The first ground of appeal is the want of an interpreter, since it was clear that the appellant had a strong accent that was hard to comprehend.
The second ground of appeal invokes the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings which requires the States Parties to identify and protect victims of trafficking.
The third ground of appeal is that the appellant may well have been entitled to rely on the defense of duress, on the footing that victims of trafficking are known to be at risk of physical violence if they seek to escape or obtain official help. This possibility should have been investigated, it is said, by the appellant's lawyers.
The fourth ground of appeal concerns the appellant's age. It was submitted to the Crown Court that she was 17. Given the date of birth she had supplied (10th December 1991), she might have been no more than 16. Aged 17 or under, she should have been proceeded against, if at all, in the Youth Court. The case should not have been sent to the Crown Court.
Grounds five and six are to the effect that the appellant's lawyers took no proper steps to appreciate her possible position as a victim of trafficking and a child or young person. Indeed they did not. On 17th March 2008 they determined to proceed without regard to any input from The Poppy Project. They failed entirely to consider whether she might have been a victim of trafficking, or what the consequences of her age might have been, if she was 16 or even 17 as stated.
The seventh and last ground of appeal is not a ground of appeal at all but an application to admit fresh evidence in three categories: (i) a report by The Poppy Project prepared after the trial date, 17th March; (ii) the file of the trial solicitors; and (iii) correspondence between the appellant's present solicitors and trial lawyer.
England and Wales Court of Appeal
The defendant was a victim of a sex trafficking organization and was arrested without a due investigation of her situation in United Kingdom.
The Poppy Project, mentioned above, is part of an organization known as Eves Housing for Women. It was set up in 2003 and is funded by the Ministry of Justice. It supports vulnerable women who have been trafficked into England and forced into prostitution.