This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Mental health support helped survivor to testify against trafficker
August 29, 2024
As a medical student training to become a physiotherapist in the expensive city of London, Olivia* was struggling with huge debts. While searching for a way to make money, she responded to an advert in a newspaper for escort work, believing she would be accompanying clients on dinner dates in exchange for money. Within 30 minutes of arriving at what she had been told was an ‘interview’, she was raped. The man who had raped Olivia recorded the attack and used it to blackmail her into sex work.
For six months, Olivia was regularly driven by her abuser to different hotels and houses to be sexually exploited, and forced to give up almost all of the money that she earned to him. Eleven other young women were targeted by the same man, many of them also students looking to fund their studies. The horrific exploitation came to an end when the man was arrested by the Metropolitan Police and charged with rape, sexual assault and controlling prostitution.
While Olivia had escaped her trafficker, she was left with extreme trauma from her experience. When she was first connected with Justice and Care in 2021, she was falling behind with her university course, spent most of her days sleeping, and cancelled her first two meetings with one of our Victim Navigators as she was in such a bad place that she didn’t feel able to leave her home.
She had provided evidence to the police for the case, but doubted that she would ever feel strong enough to give evidence in court. Similarly to many survivors of sexual exploitation, she was experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), isolation and depression, alongside a deep sense of shame and physical and emotional disconnection from other people.
While many in the UK will face nine month NHS waiting lists to access mental health support, Justice and Care is able to provide access to private counselling to ensure survivors can get the support they need straight away. Following an assessment with a therapist, it was decided that Olivia would benefit from eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a therapy which is often used to treat PTSD and other mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.
The therapy, which involves recalling a traumatic incident in detail while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation such as eye movements, thankfully had a positive effect on Olivia. Olivia’s Navigator also liaised with the welfare team at her university and worked with her and the university to create a suitable timetable for her to keep up with her studies as she started her recovery.
Alongside mental health support, our Navigators help survivors with any other essential needs they have – including food, housing, healthcare and support through the criminal justice process, if they wish to engage. Due to this holistic model, our Navigator was able to support Olivia with housing when she became homeless, by speaking to a landlord and arranging a payment plan for her. They also assisted her to pursue a claim for compensation with the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.
Thanks to Olivia’s determination, and the support Justice and Care provided, she was able to return to her studies in time and graduated as a qualified physiotherapist. The therapy and other support she received also helped her build the confidence to testify at her trafficker’s trial, alongside a number of other survivors in the case who were supported by Justice and Care. Their bravery, and the partnership between the Metropolitan Police and Justice and Care, resulted in the defendant being found guilty of rape, sexual assault and controlling prostitution. He was sentenced to 31 years in prison.
Justice and Care is proud to support hundreds of other survivors like Olivia with their mental health, alongside other essential needs, throughout our work in the UK, Romania and Bangladesh. In the UK, an encouraging 82% of survivors we are supporting have shown improved mental wellbeing scores in their most recent recovery assessments, compared to when their cases were first opened – with evaluations looking at indicators of depression and anxiety, as well as ability to cope with challenges and a sense of hope for the future.
Vitally, our team also supports police in trauma-informed approaches. This means helping law enforcement understand how trauma affects survivors, including how it affects their behaviour, their memory and their reactions. This work helps officers learn how to interact with survivors in a way that avoids triggering their trauma and enables them to feel believed, not blamed and safe to share their experience.
*name changed to protect identity and stock image used