The applicant in this case is a Nigerian national living in Spain. According to the applicant, she had been trafficked from Nigeria to Spain at the age of 14. A family acquaintance had offered to take her to work in Spain in return for £70,000 to be paid back from the wages she would earn there. She was not told the nature of her future work. She travelled under a forged passport crossing into Spain from France. She met C at the border who forced her to work as a prostitute for several years until she escaped in 2007.
The applicant brought a criminal complaint in 2011 after receiving support from NGO’s. She had specified that C’s relatives had performed a “voodoo ritual” on her that would kill her if she ever reported C. The authorities subsequently opened a formal investigation granting her protected status as a witness.
The Spanish courts investigates the matter for the next 6 years, transferring her between courts in which several key witnesses and alleged traffickers were questioned. Ultimately it was decided based on an age assessment report that reported the victim would have been 6 years old in 2003 when she alleged she entered the country on an adult passport and had worked a prostitute. The courts decided it was unlikely as the police had monitored the age of prostitutes. Throughout the entire proceedings the applicant’s testimony had remained detailed and consistent, and the applicant argued that age assessment reports were often unreliable.
The applicant appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Relying on Article 4 (prohibition of slavery and forced labour) alleging that the Spanish authorities had failed to investigate, prosecute and punish those responsible for subjecting her to human trafficking.
The courts found that the applicant made a arguable claim that she was subject to human trafficking and forced prostitution as her allegations had remained detailed and consistent, as well as her story of recruitment and threats of voodoo remaining corresponding the usual methods used by traffickers in Nigeria. There was also no doubt that she was in an extremely vulnerable situation between 2003 and 2011 as the Spanish authorities themselves had consistently considered her a victim of human trafficking.
The court found that the Spanish authority’s investigation has been tainted with shortcomings. Despite the investigation beginning in 2011, steps to identify the alleged traffickers had only been taken in 2014. Secondly the court found that the authorities had failed to pursue obvious lines of enquiry including proper questioning of the managers of the club, the applicant had claimed to work at. Despite discrepancies between the statements by the managers of the club. In addition only one of the many clubs mentioned in the applicant’s testimony was investigated. Furthermore the investigators had not checked the applicant’s story against her two arrest records of 2005 which could have corroborated her testimony. The Spanish authorities also made no attempt to check with their French counterparts whether there had been a record of the applicant crossing the border form France which was how she entered the country.
Finally the court found that the Spanish court’s decision to provisionally dismiss the case had been superficial and insufficiently reasoned. There has been only a one paragraph conclusion based on unexplained assumptions. Furthermore the report alleging the applicant has been exactly 6 in 2003 was ill founded as there had been other evidence in her case file that she had been perceived as an adult by the police, doctors and charity foundations that helped her.
The court found that all the shortcomings in the investigation demonstrated a blatant disregard for the duty to investigate serious allegations of human trafficking, an offence with devastating consequences for its victims, the court therefore held there has been a violation of Article 4.