Northfleet man's sex trafficking trial hears evidence of alleged victim (From News Shopper)

Northfleet man's sex trafficking trial hears evidence of alleged victim

5:27pm Friday 21st September 2012 in News By Tim MacFarlan, Bexley and north Kent reporter

A YOUNG Nigerian girl allegedly brought to Europe to be a prostitute was told she was going on holiday, a court has heard.

Osezua Elvis Osolasi, 42, is on trial at Canterbury Crown Court accused of trafficking teenage girls from Nigeria to be sex workers.

Osolasi, of Beaumont Drive, Northfleet, sat impassively in the dock as interviews with one of the alleged victims were played to the jury of six men and six women.

The girl was only 12 in 2010 when she claims she was first visited by the defendant, whom she knew as 'uncle', in her home country.

The orphan girl thought him a "good person" when he brought her gifts the second and third times he visited her in February last year, the court heard.

Living at the time with a man in his 40s whom she claims she had been forced to marry, the teenager was told 'uncle' was an "old friend" of her husband's who lived abroad.

She then heard she would be going on holiday for a week, before being given £800 to give to 'uncle' on her arrival in the UK, the jury was told.

With a passport including a false date of birth, the girl was allegedly put on a flight to the UK and picked up by the defendant at the airport.

She was then taken to a house and locked in a bedroom for a week, allowed out only to bathe in the mornings, the court heard.

The teenager alleged Osolasi asked to sleep with her and touched her breasts during this time, though she cried and begged him not to.

He also took some of her arm hair and blood and wrapped it in a red cloth, jurors heard.

Jury members have previously heard during the trial that girls were allegedly subjected to Juju rituals - traditional west African customs used superstitiously in witchcraft and as spells to enforce contracts.

The girl then alleges she was told she would soon be travelling to Italy to work as a street prostitute making money for Osolasi.

She was also told he had paid her husband in Nigeria so she could come and work for him.

At this point the court heard from the girl: "I didn't know what to say.

"I was crying and I was saying that in this life there is nobody can be trusted."

Osolasi denies six charges of trafficking for sexual exploitation, four of rape and one each of sexual assault, false imprisonment, sexual activity with a child and assault, in relation to three teenage victims.

The trial continues.