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."
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