The last-minute payout – secured by lawyers at Birnberg-Pierce and approved by Mrs Justice Cox– was made by the Home Office just before the start of what would have been a headline-grabbing, landmark human rights trial at the High Court.
The judge said the woman – who was forced into the sex trade at 14 and trafficked to Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Israel and Britain until she was 21 – suffered severe sexual degradation.
She was arrested in a London brothel in 2003 by Home Office immigration officials and charged with possession of false documents, then imprisoned for three months while her trafficker was allowed to visit her at Holloway Prison and at Oakington immigrants’ Detention Centre.
On her fast-tracked return to Moldova she was found by her traffickers and forced back into slavery for another two years.
