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14
Dec 2021
Guilty verdict for couple who flew in sex workers to Harrogate
A Portuguese dominatrix and her English husband have been found guilty of running a sex-trafficking and prostitution racket in Harrogate after “flying in” women from Europe and South America.
Fabiana De Souza, 41, and Gareth Derby, 53, from Norfolk, flew sex workers in from Brazil and Portugal, paid for their flights and met them at airports, before whisking them off to flats where men paid women for “massages” and “full (sex) services”, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Nicholas Lumley QC said De Souza rented a two-bed flat in Harrogate town centre through a letting agency “so it could be used for sex…which would be advertised on the internet by these two defendants”. Mr Lumley added:
The couple, of Town Street in the village of Upwell, Norfolk, each denied one count of people-trafficking and another of controlling prostitution for financial gain. The charges related to six named women who worked at the Harrogate sex den between April and the end of August 2017.
They were found guilty on both counts on Monday following a 10-day trial.
Bower Road flat
Mr Lumley said that at least one other woman was prostituted in other parts of the country, including King’s Lynn in Norfolk and Birmingham, but they were not part of the charges.
De Souza and Derby would pay for sex adverts within hours of picking the women up from the airport and “setting them up” at the flat on Bower Road. The adverts were placed on the classified escorts websites Viva Street and Adult Work and included raunchy descriptions of the women.
They took the bookings and “made the arrangements (with the clients)” who would pay various amounts - from £80 for half an hour to over £1,000 for an overnight stay. Mr Lumley said:
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The money, described as “significant cash deposits”, usually ended up in De Souza’s Halifax bank account, but on occasions “cash simply changed hands, handed by the sex workers to one of these two”.
Mr Lumley said one woman was flown in from Amsterdam and was picked up by the couple who had driven from Norfolk in a 4x4 pick-up. Derby also drove a Mercedes.
Police were tracking the couple’s movements, including their journeys between Harrogate and Norfolk using number-plate recognition cameras.
An undercover officer searched the escort sites and called the phone number provided on the women’s sex profiles, pretending to be a client. The call went through to De Souza’s mobile phone in King’s Lynn.
She answered in “broken English”, claiming to be ‘Lisa’, and an “appointment” was made for the Harrogate flat.
Mr Lumley said the couple “often met the flights at the airport or arranged for a train ticket to be available at the airport as they moved these women around the country or put them on a bus and sent them up to Harrogate or somewhere else”.
Harrogate flat rented for £700 a month
Following her arrest, De Souza told police she had left her husband in September 2017 with the intention of divorcing him and moved to Harrogate “where no-one knew me”.
She said she rented the Bower Road flat for over £700 a month and let rooms out to “others”, some of whom were “friends from Portugal”.
She said it was “none of my business what (the women) were doing, as long as they paid (their) rent”.
She claimed that in May 2018, she reconciled with her husband and moved back to Norfolk, to a property in Walpole St Andrew.
Derby said he only had an “inkling that Fabia worked at the Harrogate flat as a dominatrix”.
Mr Lumley said that photos of the women – which were often false and whose profiles made out they were much younger than their true ages – were posted with the ads.
The women arrived at various airports including Manchester, Gatwick and Stansted. Mr Lumley said:
In a text sent to an associate in January 2018, Derby boasted of being a “smuggler of women”.
One advert showed a “Latina” woman who said her services included “tantric massage, role play and fantasy”.
The undercover officer made an “appointment” and went to the Harrogate flat as a ‘client’, dressed in civilian clothes and with female back-up officers waiting outside.
Once inside the flat, he showed the woman his warrant card. She showed him a Brazilian ID card, but her responses were “not entirely honest”.
£40,000 in five months
Police trawled through the bank accounts of De Souza and her husband and found they had spent “thousands on air fares” and over £2,000 on Viva Street adverts alone. Mr Lumley said:
He added that £40,000 appeared in the couple’s bank accounts during the five-month prostitution racket in Harrogate alone.
The undercover cop said that on his first visit to the building on Bower Road, the sex worker named ‘Lisa’ buzzed him into the flats which were above shops. He was met by a woman in a “revealing” short-length dressing gown who said she had also worked as a stripper.
He made “numerous” such visits to other women after responding to adverts including one for a “Hot Brazilian, full service”. She was about 57 years’ old but was advertised as 33.
He said there was another woman in her 50s inside the flat who was also a sex worker. She said she was from the “Republic of Portugal” but was born in Brazil. She had been earning about £280 per day.
Michael Fullerton, for De Souza, said there was no dispute that she was working as a dominatrix before and during the prostitution enterprise. She had previously worked as a stripper.
Richard Mohabir, for Derby, said his client was adamant that he “controlled nobody” and “didn’t know sex work or prostitution was going on”.
However, the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on both defendants.
Judge Guy Kearle QC adjourned sentence until January 18. He granted both defendants bail until then.
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