A married couple were jailed today for sexually exploiting seven vulnerable women in what amounted to modern day slavery in Harrogate.

Fabiani Alvez De Souza, 42, and Gareth Derby, 53, were both sentenced to five years’ imprisonment at Leeds Crown Court, having been found guilty following a two-week trial in December.

De Souza was charged with eight offences contrary to the Sexual Offences Act 2003 of controlling prostitution for gain, along with seven offences contrary to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 for arranging or facilitating travel of another person with a view to exploitation.

Derby faced two charges in relation to controlling prostitution for gain and arranging or facilitating travel of another person with a view to exploitation.

Both these offences involved the same woman who was the first to work as a sex worker in the rented flat in Harrogate.

They were handed slavery and trafficking orders that will last for 10 years following their release from prison.

The seven victims involved in the case are from Brazil, Portugal and Spain and aged between 26 and 60.

The convictions followed a four-year investigation by North Yorkshire Police’s Organised Crime Unit.

Harrogate sex workers

In January 2017, North Yorkshire Police launched Operation Oasis, which involved police officers conducting harm reduction visits to identify and support vulnerable sex workers in North Yorkshire.

Between October 2017 and May 2018, officers attended the same location on Bower Road, Harrogate, on six separate occasions during which they spoke to five women who were sex workers.

After the third visit in December 2017, it became clear that a brothel was being operated from the flat and that another woman was facilitating the travel of the women working at the premise to the UK and that she was also involved in the management of their activities.

These concerns were passed to Detective Inspector Fionna McEwan in North Yorkshire Police’s Organised Crime Unit. Her team began an in-depth investigation led by the officer in the case, Detective Constable Leah Kitchen.

It was established that De Souza was the person who was renting the flat on Bower Road in Harrogate and that she had created, posted and paid for the adverts on an adult website under “Escorts and Massages” in Yorkshire and the Humber with a partial Harrogate post code.

At the same time, she also paid for similar adverts in the South Wooton/PE30 area which related to another rented address on Nelson Street in Kings Lynn.

Rented flats in Harrogate and Norfolk

The investigators were able to establish a pattern of activity of De Souza or Derby paying for flights from locations such as Lisbon, Amsterdam and Brussels to Manchester and Stansted airports, as well as train and road travel within the UK including from these airports to the rented flats in Harrogate and Kings Lynn.

The first time this occurred, on 27 September 2017, is a perfect illustration of how the pair, from Upwell in Norfolk, operated their illegal enterprise.

Evidence showed that De Souza and Derby had travelled from their home address to Manchester Airport that evening in Derby’s work van.

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They collected a woman who had flown in from Amsterdam and they drove her to the flat in Harrogate.

At 6.28am the next day, financial enquiries confirmed that an advert was uploaded to an adult website paid for by De Souza.

Evidence again confirmed that De Souza and Derby left Harrogate to return to Kings Lynn shortly after the advert went live.

Cash deposits

Between 30 September and 13 October 2017, three cash deposits were made in Harrogate to De Souza’s bank account of £163, £600 and £1,045.

During this period neither De Souza nor Derby were in Harrogate.

When the first harm reduction visit at the flat was carried out by North Yorkshire Police on 8 October 2017, officers were able to establish that it was the same woman who had been collected from Manchester Airport by De Souza and Derby.

De Souza and Derby clearing the flat out in Harrogate.

The investigation showed that De Souza was controlling this woman’s activities. Between 25 and 30 October, two further cash deposits were made into De Souza’s bank account in Harrogate of £500 and £600 respectively, again during this period De Souza and Derby were in Norfolk.

Financial records showed that De Souza then paid £70.98 for an EasyJet flight for the same woman who flew from London Stansted to Amsterdam on 29 October.

On 8 August 2018, North Yorkshire Police and Norfolk Constabulary attended the couple’s then home address at Walpole St Andrew. Upon entering the property officers found one woman who had previously been encountered at the Harrogate flat.

Officers then had to force their way into the garage which had been converted into a small flat where they found another woman who was involved in prostitution.

De Souza was arrested and taken into custody for questioning. Derby was working out of the country at that time but was arrested on his return.

A detailed financial examination showed that the couple had spent several thousands of pounds setting up the business, including paying for the adult website adverts and travel and accommodation for the woman who worked as prostitutes.

However, cash deposits totalling more than £40,000 were found to have been paid into their bank accounts during this six-month period.

‘Controlling prostitution for gain’

Detective Constable Leah Kitchen, of the Organised Crime Unit, said:

“De Souza claimed throughout the investigation that she was just helping friends of hers who were working as prostitutes, while Derby repeatedly told the police that he was unaware of what was going on.

“The truth of the matter is that they, together, were operating an illegal business involving human trafficking and controlling prostitution for gain.

“Among the considerable evidence we were able to recover were WhatsApp messages in which De Souza refers to herself as ‘the boss’.

“Tellingly, WhatsApp messages from De Souza to Derby in June 2017 included the following:

‘Let me tell you something…the first month was an experience, but there are still a lot of adjustments to make so we can actually make money.

‘At this point we have more than 10 women interested in working for us, but we need to have other conditions for our business to work. Try to find another apartment…or we’ll both try to find to make our business more profitable.’

“It is clear from these messages alone that they were determined to expand their business. They had invested thousands of pounds, but they had profited by more than £40,000 during this six-month period.

“This considerable sum of cash was gained through the exploitation of seven vulnerable women in what amounted to modern day slavery.

“I’m very proud that North Yorkshire Police, with assistance from Norfolk Constabulary, have rooted out this activity and brought the offenders to justice.”

DC Kitchen added:

“This is an important case as it is a victimless prosecution for a human trafficking and controlling prostitution investigation, which is unusual and more difficult to progress to court.

“It has also shown the importance of a safeguarding approach to policing, because if it wasn’t for the sex worker harm reduction visits carried out in Harrogate under Operation Oasis, this fledgling international sex trafficking business may have grown significantly without coming to the attention of the police.”

A Portuguese dominatrix and her English husband ran a sex-trafficking and prostitution racket in Harrogate after “flying in” women from Europe and South America, it’s alleged.

Fabiana De Souza, 41, and Gareth Derby, 53, from Norfolk, flew prostitutes in from Brazil and Portugal, paid for their flights and met them at airports, before taking them to sex dens 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 on Bower Road 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:

“It was run as a business by these two, controlled invariably from their home in Norfolk and the pair of them were in it together.

“The provision of sexual services provided by them was not confined to Harrogate (which) was an extension of an existing business.

“There was another flat in Norfolk put to similar use and when that became unavailable, even the home of these defendants was converted for use by sex workers. The labour force came from overseas, from countries such as Brazil, and they got here by air and their travel in and out of the country was invariably organised and paid for by these two defendants.”

“As soon as the (sex workers) arrived here, they would be installed in the flat in Harrogate or elsewhere, always with the purpose of being available for sex.”

The couple, of Town Street in Upwell, Norfolk, each deny two counts of people-trafficking and controlling prostitution for financial gain. The charges relate to six named women who worked at the Harrogate sex den between April and the end of August 2017.

Their trial began this week and is expected to last 10 days.

Sex workers flown in

The prosecution claimed that at least one other woman was engaged in sex work in other parts of the country, including King’s Lynn in Norfolk and Birmingham but they were not part of the charges.

Mr Lumley said 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.

De Souza and Derby 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 “the defendants would receive their cut”.

The money, described as “significant cash deposits”, usually ended up in De Souza’s 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 picked up by the couple who had driven from Norfolk in a 4×4 pick-up. Derby also drove a Mercedes.

Her profile soon appeared on the Viva Street website, advertising her as ‘Lisa, stunning brunette’.

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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, said Mr Lumley.

She answered in “broken English”, claiming to be ‘Lisa’, and an “appointment” was made for the Harrogate flat, he added.

Mr Lumley told the jury how 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”.

£700 a month Bower Road flat

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 had an “inkling that Fabia worked at the Harrogate flat as a dominatrix” but that “she wasn’t the type of person who would pay for adverts or run such a business.”

Mr Lumley said that photos of the “naked or scantily-clad” 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 added:

“They are flown in, spend two or three weeks in the country and then flown out again.”

In a text sent to an associate in January 2018, Derby allegedly boasted of being a “smuggler of women”.

Undercover police operation in Harrogate

One advert showed a dark-haired “Latina” woman wearing just a thong. In the profile, she 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 said to be “not entirely honest”.

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;

“Who knows how much cash simply changed hands?”

He added, however, that £40,000 appeared in the couple’s bank accounts during the alleged five-month prostitution racket in Harrogate alone.

Earning £280 a day

Michael Fullerton, for De Souza, said there was no dispute that she was working as a dominatrix before and during the alleged prostitution enterprise. She had previously worked as a stripper.

“She says she was not controlling others (or) exploiting them, but there were a number of sex workers whom she had known…for a very long time,” he added.

Richard Mohabir, for Derby, said his client was adamant that he “controlled nobody” and “didn’t know sex work or prostitution was going on”.

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 dressing gown who said she said had also worked as a stripper.

He made “numerous” such visits to other women after responding to adverts including one for a woman who was about 57 years old but 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.

The trial continues.