Teenagers in Croydon are being taught about sex trafficking at school.

Croydon Community Against Trafficking (CCAT) devised the lessons for teens aged 14 to 17.

The teenagers are taught how women are trafficked into the UK by gangs.

A volunteer read out a first-person account from Katerina, who described how she was promised a job as a waitress in London and instead was taken to a flat where she was beaten and gang raped, before being pressed into service as a sex slave.

Lyanna Austin, 23, is a member of the Jam team – part of the New Life Christian Centre.

Her team has been taking the CCAT lessons to teenagers in schools and pupil referral units (PRUs).

She said: “It’s hard work to get the schools to cooperate, many are wary.

“Year 11 is a good age to talk about this; pupils are mature enough to understand the issue and take it seriously.

“It can be difficult, boys especially have an attitude – they don’t care.

“Then we say what if it was you? Or your sister?

“Some of them are shocked to learn there is a brothel on the road they live in.”

The students listened to a recorded phone call enquiring about girls on offer at a brothel in Windmill Road.

The pupils were shocked at the matter-of-fact manner that bra sizes, sexual acts and ethnicity were reeled off down the line.

One 15-year-old boy said: “The lesson was really good. I was really shocked to learn this was happening on my doorstep. It needs to stop.”

Students learned how brothels are advertised in the back of local newspapers such as the Croydon Advertiser and the Croydon Post and how these adverts fuel the demand and exploitation of women.

The team have had mixed reactions to the lessons. On the whole many pupils were both interested and shocked.

Last week the team carried out lessons for year 11s at two schools in South Croydon and a few PRUs.

Miss Austin said: “In one of the PRUs they were outraged and wanted to do something.

“They all wrote letters to the Croydon Advertiser, which I am posting this week.”

Another of the schools have started a petition to get the Croydon Advertiser and Post to drop the adverts.

The Croydon Guardian and its publisher Newsquest banned all adult advertisements from its 305 titles nation-wide in July 2008, having been persuaded of the clear link between the ads and women being trafficked for sex.

There are more than 50 brothels in Croydon, 80 per cent of the women working in them are foreign nationals.

CCAT research shows most of these women are likely to have been trafficked.

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