Caitlin Hanna: Trafficked in Belfast
Duration: 1 x 60'
Contact SalesThrough archive and testimony from family and friends, this film reveals how a vulnerable young woman’s life fuelled a police investigation into a hidden criminal underworld of grooming, drugs and sexual exploitation.
Caitlin was a bright schoolgirl who began struggling with her mental health in her teens, a vulnerability exploited by predatory men who introduced her to class A drugs, deliberately fostering an addiction that gave them control over her. What her mother and close friends didn't realise was that Caitlin was being trafficked into prostitution to pay for her habit, forced to see up to ten men a night and subjected to repeated violence at the hands of the men who used her.
She was one of a group of young women targeted the same way, trapped through a deliberate strategy of coercion, fear and heroin designed to keep them obedient. On camera, other women who survived the same network describe the horror of being trapped by these men.
Police were attempting to intervene and rescue Caitlin from her exploiters, an effort that ultimately failed. She died from a drug overdose aged just 21, found dead in a house belonging to the men exploiting her, with no immediate leads for police to follow.
The turning point comes when another trafficked woman decides to go to police, prompting more victims to come forward. The film follows the resulting three-year investigation, tracing the same hidden criminal network that had ensnared Caitlin and others. That investigation results in convictions against four men.
Because of the secrecy and control involved, the true scale of the problem across the wider Western world is impossible to quantify although one expert describes it as an epidemic.
For BBC3 & BBC Northern Ireland
