At least five women who were abused by former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed have been formally recognised by the Home Office as victims of modern slavery.<\/p>\n
The BBC revealed in April that Rachel Louw, who has waived her right to anonymity, had become the first woman known to receive such a decision.<\/p>\n
Since then, at least four other women have received positive “conclusive grounds” decisions recognising them as victims of modern slavery, with more expected to follow, according to PA Media.<\/p>\n
The latest cases include women who were trafficked internationally and within the UK, including one case in which the trafficking took place entirely within Harrods.<\/p>\n
When an individual receives a positive “conclusive grounds” decision through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) – the UK’s official framework for identifying victims of modern slavery – they are formally recognised as a victim.<\/p>\n
Legal experts have previously told the BBC that these decisions can strengthen the credibility of witnesses in criminal proceedings and may influence the way police investigate cases.<\/p>\n
The Modern Slavery Act, which came into force in 2015, defines human trafficking as arranging or facilitating the travel of another person within a country or across borders for the purposes of that person being exploited.<\/p>\n
The latest decisions include all four members of the survivor advocacy group No One Above, who had been awaiting rulings after being referred to the NRM by the anti-slavery charity Unseen. <\/p>\n
According to PA Media, one survivor had been recruited to a false role within Harrods, while two others were employed in legitimate roles before being selected for abuse from the shop floor.<\/p>\n
A fourth worked as a domestic employee for the Fayed family after being recruited by a letting agency called Hyde Park Residence.<\/p>\n
One of the survivors said receiving the decision was “very significant”.<\/p>\n
“Seeing it in writing that you were a victim of modern slavery and trafficking is very… it’s really shocking to read,” she told PA Media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least five women who were abused by former Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed have been formally recognised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-725445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}