Christine Beddoe, director of End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (Ecpat UK), said the investigation into child trafficker Anthony Harrison highlights the need for change.
Harrison was convicted this week for trafficking two girls, aged 14 and 16, and imprisoning them in his London home before attempting to traffic them to Spain and Greece to be sexually exploited.
But Beddoe said detectives had to work on the case for two years to secure the evidence required for conviction. "This shows the need for a specialist child trafficking police unit.
"The children were so scared to come forward to police and a great deal of persistence was required in the investigation. A lot of police forces wouldn’t necessarily recognise what the indicators were."
Beddoe said a child trafficking unit within the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) has been disbanded, while there are also fears over plans to incorporate Ceop into a new National Crime Agency (NCA).
Campaigners have said work to protect children will be sidelined in the new organisation.
Ecpat is also putting pressure on the Metropolitan Police to create its own child trafficking unit and is calling on the government to provide a system of guardianship for children who may have been trafficked so they have one person they can trust and who can act in their best interests during the investigation process.
The Metropolitan Police believes the conviction of Harrison is the first prosecution of trafficking involving "juju", rituals used to instil fear in victims.
