THE YOUNG girl arrived at London's Heathrow airport clutching a passport saying she was only eight. But in her thick make-up and short skirt she looked several years older.
That and her strange manner alerted a crack team of cops waging a secret war on child vice.
They opened the youngster's luggage—and were sickened to discover a stash of very adult underwear.
She was really 12—and the "family friend" at her side was bringing her into Britain as a child sex slave.
This is the horrific reality behind the shocking Channel 4 series Sex Traffic, launched this week, which portrays the anguish of young victims dragged across the world to be sold into a life of brutality and vice.
Vicious
We can reveal there is a thriving sex trade in poor Eastern European and African girls, duped into the UK vice world by vicious pimps.
Over the next two weeks we will report from behind the scenes on the specially-trained cops battling to protect kids as they deal with cases that will horrify every caring parent.
The News of the World has been given rare access to the work of Scotland Yard's elite Child Abuse Investigation Command. Even the location of its HQ is a closely guarded secret—and officers seldom talk to the media.
That is because their work is so sensitive and vital. For every day they deal with children trapped in circumstances that bring tears to the eyes of the most hard-bitten officers among them.
Children like the 12-year-old sex slave are rescued from a life of misery by Detective Constable Barry Jones.
"This is typical of what we deal with week in and week out," he said. "The girl had flown in with a man who wasn't related to her, claiming they were here for a two-week holiday.
"They were stopped and I went down to question them. Her behaviour was completely inappropriate for someone of her age—every man she met she flirted with."
DC Jones placed the girl with social services and she is now safe at a care home nearby. With no firm evidence the police had no choice but to let the man accompanying her go free.
DC Jones explained: "Our main priority is to ensure the children's safety.
"But after a couple of days the girl told us she'd been sold by her family to the man. He told her she would find out what she would be doing in Britain when she got there."
Cops have now launched an operation to snare the "agent" as they monitor his movements around the globe.
DC Jones is just one of 468 cops who make up the Child Abuse Investigation team. With 150 support staff and a £29million budget it is the biggest of its kind in the world.
The squad sprang from cases like the murder of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie—tortured to death by her aunt and uncle in north London.
Busted
Constable Jones has worked for 29 years in some of the Met's toughest commands but says his current job monitoring hundreds of kids who daily pass through Heathrow's four terminals is the most challenging.
In the last few weeks he and Det Sgt Ian Knight have busted a string of traffickers from all walks of life.
A few weeks ago the officers stopped a doctor from Swaziland who had papers to show he had been invited to the University of Liverpool to work on tropical diseases.
He came with a boy of six and a girl of eight and claimed to be their father. But under questioning, he admitted child trafficking and is now facing trial. Recently officers were called to an eight-year-old West African boy who collapsed in one of the terminals.
He had flown in from Somalia with an adult. But medical staff discovered the boy had bags of cocaine stuffed inside a body cavity and was being used as a drugs mule.
Another aspect of the unit's work at Heathrow is monitoring sex offenders flying in or out of the country.
In one case DC Jones was called to speak to a suspicious 25-year-old American traveller who finally admitted he was over here to visit a 14-year-old girl he had met on the internet.
Stunned cops had to break the news to her parents, who had been planning to leave her alone with him, that the man was a convicted sex offender.
Next step in the protection team's war on child trafficking is a permanent officer at Waterloo Station to monitor kids coming in on Eurostar.
The squad is making progress. But its war on the monsters who prey on children has only just begun.
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