Portraits of Lily (not her real name) appear in a photographic exhibition in St Paul's: Slave Britain: the 21st century trade in human lives.

It's 200 years ago this month since the slave trade was abolished in the UK. But now Britain has become the number one destination for sex slave traffickers.

To crack down on the scandal, a police task force, the Human Trafficking Team, has been set up as traumatised girls as young as 14 are being auctioned for up to £8,000 to the highest bidder before being forced into prostitution.

They are then ordered to sleep with scores of men in seedy brothels to make their pimps up to £1,000 a day. It was ordinary people who brought an end to the slave trade in this country 200 years ago by petitioning and making their voices heard at the inhumanity of it all.
But that slave trade wasn't under cover like today's sexual exploitation of Lithuanian girls, victims from China, Malaysia, Thailand, Africa, South America and the Baltic countries, who are regularly raped, beaten and held prisoner in filthy hovels, while gang bosses live lives of luxury.

Just like Lily they arrive in this country with no idea where they are, unwitting victims. Many speak no word of English and are lured into the gangs' clutches by promises of work in bars and restaurants. Once here their passports are snatched before they are raped by their "owners" and told to work as prostitutes.

Danielle, who features in the photographic exhibition, was brought from Lithuania at 15 under the false impression of what a "summer job in London" would entail.

She says: "At the airport we were met by some men who handed £3,500 to the guy who'd travelled with me. To my horror I realised I'd been sold. I was taken to Birmingham by the man who bought me."

Danielle was then raped and forced to have sex with clients in a brothel for several months, before eventually escaping.

Other harrowing stories include a woman from India sleeping rough since escaping violent captivity and a young mother seeking refuge in a convent from the traffickers who have targeted her on five separate occasions.

And on Wearside I met a woman who was subjected to sickening, horrific and repeated rape after she had paid to stow away on a ship to bring her to England and escape political persecution in Sri Lanka. She lost her husband and two sons to the regime and believes they are dead.

As for Lily, she arrived in Britain at 15, from Uganda, traumatised after seeing her mother, father, her sisters and two of her brothers massacred by the military.

"I saw everything that happened," she says. Lily hid up a tree while the killings occurred and all because her father had been deeply involved in paramilitary activity.

Now at 20, she has lived a lifetime and has a child as a result of being forced into prostitution. Lily is vulnerable and pregnant again, a lonely traumatised young woman.

When her family was wiped out – except for a younger brother – they ran away together and met one of her dad's friends she called uncle who brought her to Britain to a flat with two men.

She has no idea where her brother is. Of the man she called "uncle" she says: "He used to go out to get me some food that I used to like, chips. So the last time he said he was going to MacDonald's, I thought he'd come back but he never came back. He disappeared.

"Then those men started asking me for sex and that, and I didn't like the way they asked me so I told them no. One day when I was sleeping they tried to come on top of me so I fought and pushed them and that's when I ran out of the house."

She ran straight into kids sleeping rough on the London Underground, druggies, boys and girls, all having sex for money.

"They said I only had one choice to get food to survive, because they all said I had to survive. You have to have sex with men who give you money."

Lily explains: "When I was like stopping men on the street and that, I started to feel sick and I stopped one man and asked him for £2 to get some tea."

He was her saving grace and after Lily told him her story he gave her £20 and directed her to the Home Office.

Lily was then put in touch with the NSPCC centre, with one of the few projects that supports children who have been sexually exploited and assigned an NSPCC social worker, Mandy.

She has a boyfriend on and off and desperately longs for a man who will love her child like a dad.

Lily doesn't want to go back to Uganda: "I would rather die. I would rather kill myself."

Every day she waits for a reply from the Home Office allowing her to stay: "Then I think, not today, maybe tomorrow." Maybe.

The photographic exhibition at St Paul's Cathedral aims to reveal the reality of trafficking for sexual exploitation or domestic labour in the UK. It runs until March 29.

l A service on March 24 at Durham Cathedral at 11am, Set All Free, is a regional celebration of the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act and an opportunity to remember, reflect and respond to the 12million people in slavery today.

Children are too young to learn about homosexuals

POOR kids! Now our bairns are to be force-fed gay propaganda in city schools at just four years old. Of course they should know about homosexuals and lesbians but not at four and not in the infant classroom.

There is no justification for this promotion of minority same-sex relationships. And the reasoning to stamp out homophobia in the schoolyard is totally flawed.

It will do more damage than good. They are too young. Children of that age do not have an opinion on this issue, only what they take on board from their parents. And in the environment the majority live in, it's not an issue and for those who have a same sex couple in their life, children of that age are trusting and accepting.

Sunderland-based academic Elizabeth Atkinson has welcomed the books with stories about gay penguins and a spacegirl with two mothers. She says: "It's an issue for every school in every part of the country."
It's most definitely an issue for every parent of very young children to take a stand on. And I say that as someone with gay friends.

I asked one what he thought. Like me he thinks infant school too young and reckons junior school is soon enough. We agreed that once homosexuality was a taboo subject and that given today there's more awareness, it's right that youngsters are educated on same sex relationships but not at four.

If your child asks, you tell them. One friend told me how she and her husband were taken completely by surprise as they had their evening meal with their daughters aged four and seven and their big girl asked: "What is gay then?"

She said: "We both sat there, swallowed hard, stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea."

Dad bit the bullet and my pal says she'll never forget the girls sitting there and listening very quietly, their eyes bulging as he explained as simply as he could that they were not people like mummy and daddy but two girls or two boys rather than a boy and girl falling in love.

Then he asked his daughter: "What made you ask?"

"Oh," came back the answer, "It's your car number plate GAE."