Franca Asemota Who Smuggle Girls Into UK Faces Jail Term (Photos)

38-year-old Franca Asemota, from Benin, known to her victims as “Auntie Franca”, used Heathrow Airport as a hub to smuggle at least 40 children and young adults into Europe.

A court was told Asemota lured the girls who were as young as 14 and mainly orphans from remote Nigerian villages with promises of jobs and education.

She then used “witchcraft”, threats and violence to force them into the European sex trade. Her audacious gang even managed to snatch back two girls who had been rescued and placed in in foster care in Worthing, West Sussex.

A jury at Isleworth Crown Court today convicted Asemota of eight counts of conspiracy to traffick people into sexual exploitation. Her operation first came to light when Border Agency officials stopped two groups travelling on false passports, in September and November 2011.

Although she was not arrested at the time, it was later discovered that Asemota’s ticket had been booked at the same time, at the same travel agent in Lagos, and that she was sitting next to the group on the plane.

Investigators then linked Asemota to at least six other “successful trafficking trips” and the kidnapping of two girls who had been placed in foster care on the south coast.

Paul Cabin, prosecuting, previously told the court how three victims were first stopped at Heathrow in September 2011, and a further two were also to give detailed accounts of the smuggling.

They all traveled on fake passports which claimed they were over the age of 18.

Mr Cabin said: “They all came from remote Nigerian villages and had all been told that they were going to be educated, trained and employed in France.

“They all had difficult histories - for example, some were orphans. One was a runaway from an attempted forced marriage.

“They and their families and guardians are told that educational and work opportunities exist in Europe for them.

“Initially, therefore, the girls go with the gang voluntarily.

“Their compliance from that point on is secured by a mixture of threats, to themselves and their families back in their villages, the use of ‘Ju-Ju’ rituals and sexual violence, including in one case rape."

Investigators spent around three years trying to locate Asemota until they successfully tracked her down to Nigeria on March 25, 2015, and she was arrested and extradited.

Asemota will be sentenced later this month.