What Brexit is really about
Jim Carroll

This morning's Times
POLICE TRIED to DEPORT SLAVERY VICTIM+
Gabriella Swerling
Northern Correspondent
The police and the Crown Prosecution Service have been accused of wasting public money for prosecuting a Vietnamese teenager whose case was dis¬missed when a judge said that he was probably the victim of slavery.
The boy, who may have been trafficked into the UK to work on a canna¬bis farm, now faces deportation.
An investigation by The Times revealed that between 2012 and last year more than 1,100 Vietnamese children suspected of being smuggled into Brit¬ain had been arrested rather than being seen as slaves. The authorities refuse to
say what happened to them after their detention, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has no data on how many were prosecuted or convicted.
Judge Robert Trevor-Jones dis¬missed the case against the boy, who said that he was 16, on the fourth day of his trial at Liverpool crown court. The child had spent six months in custody on remand. The boy, who does not speak English, had been accused of being involved in the production of cannabis. He was arrested at a cannabis farm in St Helens earlier this year.
Baroness Butler-Sloss who helped to draft the Modern Slavery Bill in 2014, said that the case was “undoubtedly a waste of court time, the judge’s time and the jury’s time — as well as a waste of public money. If he is genuinely a victim, to deport him without protection will be to put him back in the hands of the traffickers.”
The court was told that the boy’s parents had died and he was responsible for their debts. He said he had been threatened by creditors who told him to earn money in the UK. He was taken to China, shipped to France, smuggled into England on a lorry and given to a man in Manchester known as Uncle.
Uncle took him to St Helens where he was told to help men to take bags and boxes into a flat above newsagents. The boy denied knowing that these contained cannabis plants and thought that he was moving household goods. Judge Trevor-Jones asked if the defendant had been subject to a referral under the Modern Slavery Act and said that if the boy were convicted he would ask for one.
Clare Jones, for the prosecution, said that the boy had been seen by a social worker who assessed his age as 25 but it was unclear whether there had been a referral. Ben Morris, for the defence, said that more inquiries were needed to assess his age.
Judge Trevor-Jones said that it would be “wrong to risk a possible conviction” and that there should be a Home Office appraisal to assess the boy’s status and verify his age. He discharged the jury because the boy had spent six months in custody, the time he could have éxpected to serve if convicted.
Debbie Beadle, of Ecpat UK, an anti¬child trafficking charity, said: “Being wrongly accused of crime and put through the court system means child victims are at risk of being removed from the UK and placed back into a situation where they are vulnerable to being re-trafficked.”
Merseyside police said that the force noted the judge’s comments.
The CPS said that the boy had been “deemed an adult at an earlier hearing” and that it had been unable to satisfy the court that the appropriate inquiries and referral had been made.