A piece of British legal history may make it easier to bring those who trade in human beings to justice, says Cary Gee
On May 28 2008, police discovered a young woman hiding in the toilets at London City Airport. She had no passport, no money and was clearly frightened. Her name was Szendi. This week, Szendi helped to make British legal history after three members of the same family, István Kalocsai, his wife Istvánné Kalocsai and their son, also called István, were jailed for trafficking Szendi and another woman into Britain for sexual exploitation. Szendi’s place in the annals of legal history was secured after she was allowed to present her testimony, not in the Inner London Courts where the case was heard, but from 1,000 miles away, at home in Hungary – more precisely, through a video link from the British Embassy in Budapest.
Szendi’s story began in a remote village in Hungary. When the Kalocsai family offered her an all expenses paid trip to Britain, the cost of which she would be allowed to repay while working at a legitimate job, Szendi packed her bags.
She was driven to this country via Germany by Kalocsai and two of his sons. According to police reports, her ordeal began almost immediately when she was forced to sell sexual favours to lorry drivers in order to pay the costs of petrol for the journey.
Once in Britain, Szendi was taken to the home of Istvánné Kalocsai, who put her to work as a prostitute. She was forced onto the streets of Barking where the younger members of the Kalocsai family would pimp her. Her services as an “escort” were also offered for sale on the internet. She was told she had to earn no less than £250 per day. She believed – with good reason – that if she refused, she would be beaten. Her evidence included several accounts of physical assault by both Mr and Mrs Kalocsai. Her ordeal in the Kalocsais’ home lasted for two months before Szendi summoned up the courage to escape.
With £50 in her pocket, she fled to a small Barking hotel, before making her way the next day to London City Airport. Without a passport, luggage or even a ticket, she was prepared to take her chances when she got to the airport. In faltering English, Szendi originally told the police she was the victim of a robbery and begged their assistance in sending her home. Only once the police had spoken to her using a “language line” did the actual circumstances of how she came to be found in the toilets become clear.
On visiting the Barking address where Szendi had been held, police officers discovered another woman, also from Hungary, whose circumstances and statement corroborated what Szendi had told them. Like Szendi, she had been prostituted at addresses across London and via the internet.
It is a measure of the significance of the case that followed that it was prosecuted, successfully, by barrister David Harounoff, who has built a career mainly as a defence lawyer with a strong track record in taking on human rights cases. Harounoff is relieved, though not a little surprised, by the successful outcome of this case. However his relief is tempered by the negative implications for the trial of what he describes as a “constitutional crisis” provoked by two earlier rulings, one emanating from the European Court and one decided in Britain.
Earlier this year, in a case known as “al Kwaja”, the European Court ruled that hearsay evidence, which had direct implications on this case, would no longer be admissible in court.
Prior to the ruling in al Kwaja, any decision to admit hearsay evidence resided in the hands of the presiding judge, who would look at all the evidence submitted before considering its relevance.
Under cross-examination, the witness in this case claimed that she and another woman were subjected to intimidation and threats of violence, both in Britain and once they returned to Hungary. One woman was, in Harounoff’s words, “quite simply petrified”. The second was so angry about the intimidation she was subjected to by associates of the Kalocsai family in Hungary that she agreed to be cross-examined, on videotape, at the British Embassy in Budapest. It’s a measure, says Harounoff, of the determination displayed by police in both Britain and Hungary to bring the Kalocsai family to justice – and perhaps a sign that Hungary takes its membership of the European Union seriously.
In her videotaped evidence, the witness in this case reported high levels of threats, intimidation, drug use and actual violence while she was under the control of the Kalocsai family. However, in his summing up, the judge decided not to impose the maximum sentences possible on conviction of people trafficking and controlled prostitution, due to “the lack of gratuitous violence” used against the women. The claims made in her videotaped interview had earlier been ruled inadmissible as hearsay evidence.
The Kalocsai case was heard under very different circumstances to a separate case in Britain, known as Harncastle, in which the presiding judge took the decision to ignore the earlier European Court ruling and allow hearsay evidence to be presented. That decision presents something of a constitutional crisis for this country, says Harounoff, and directly affected the sentences handed down by the judge to the three members of the Kalocsai family convicted of people trafficking and controlling women for prostitution. In this case, a sentence of six-and-a-half years was given for the trafficking offences in addition to three years for offences relating to controlling prostitution.
Harounoff’s view is that, if the Kalocsai case were tried again tomorrow in the wake of Harncastle, the “hearsay evidence” presented by Szendi would be admissible – and would almost certainly have resulted in longer sentences being handed down to those who trafficked her to Britain.
Ironically, the very crime of trafficking has been made significantly easier by closer European ties, according to Roddy Llewelyn, who leads the Metropolitan Police’s specialist team which investigates people trafficking. Llewelyn, like Harounoff, is staggered that the Kalocsai family were able to cross the Schengen area of Europe, navigating several national borders unimpeded, until they arrived in Britain.
In deciding to treat the European Court’s ruling in the case of al Kwaja as a guiding principle only and not a legally binding precedent, British judges have effectively and almost without notice usurped the jurisdiction of the highest court in Europe, setting the entire British judicial system on the road to a far greater legal battle than any seen in our courts so far.
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