A court in Helsingør has sentenced the owner of two nail salons to three years in prison for trafficking eight Vietnamese women. Two employees were also convicted and jailed.
Retten i Helsingør delivered the verdict on September 1. As DR reports, the head of the two salons was found guilty of subjecting eight Vietnamese women to human trafficking.
Trine Ingemansen, head of Center mod Menneskehandel, commented shortly after the ruling. Per DR, she said the center had seen people exposed to forced labor for more than ten years without a conviction being secured. She described the judgment as hugely significant for the center’s work.
According to a statement from Domstolene i Danmark, the salons were located in Hørsholm and Farum. The court found that the women worked under forced labor or slavery-like conditions over a 15 month period. The owner was convicted under section 262a of the Danish Penal Code.
The same statement notes that the two co-defendants were convicted of participating in exploitation under section 262b. As reported by B.T., each received one year and six months in prison.
Wages controlled by the employer
The women had been lured to Denmark to work as nail technicians, as they had done at home. Officially they were paid a little over 30,000 kroner, but the first four months brought no wages at all. They were told they owed their boss for airfare, visas and other costs.
After that, they earned between 5,000 and 7,300 kroner a month, in addition to board and lodging. They worked at least 12 hours a day. The money was sent to the women’s families by the boss, who controlled their bank accounts, leaving them only tips.
Center mod Menneskehandel assessed last year that 101 people had been trafficked in Denmark. Of those, 27 had been subjected to forced labor, according to the center and the Danish Immigration Service. The cases were found in nail salons, construction, restaurants and cleaning companies.
Twenty-six of those cases were reported to the police by the center, which says it seeks to file a police report in every case. The definition of human trafficking requires that a person has been recruited, transported, housed and held. According to the center, forced labor succeeds partly because the person is left in deep dependence on the employer.
