Nigerian woman who used witchcraft to traffick orphans for sex trade faces jail term (Photos)

A woman who forced scores of trafficked teenage orphans into the sex trade using the threat of witchcraft faces years in jail.

Franca Asemota, 38, known to her victims as “Auntie Franca”, used Heathrow Airport as a hub to smuggle at least 40 children and young adults into Europe.

A court was told Asemota lured the girls – who were as young as 14 and mainly orphans from remote Nigerian villages – with promises of jobs and education.

She then used “witchcraft”, threats and violence to force them into the European sex trade.

Her audacious gang even managed to snatch back two girls who had been rescued and placed in in foster care in Worthing, West Sussex.

A jury at Isleworth Crown Court today convicted Asemota of eight counts of conspiracy to traffick people into sexual exploitation.

Her operation first came to light when Border Agency officials stopped two groups travelling on false passports, in September and November 2011.

(Franca Asemota after being extradited from Nigeria to face charges in the UK)

Although she was not arrested at the time, it was later discovered that Asemota’s ticket had been booked at the same time, at the same travel agent in Lagos, and that she was sitting next to the group on the plane.

Investigators then linked Asemota to at least six other “successful trafficking trips” and the kidnapping of two girls who had been placed in foster care on the south coast.

Paul Cabin, prosecuting, previously told the court how three victims were first stopped at Heathrow in September 2011, and a further two were also to give detailed accounts of the smuggling.

They all traveled on fake passports which claimed they were over the age of 18.

They also found her guilty of two counts of trafficking a person out of the UK for sexual exploitation and two counts of assisting unlawful immigration to an EU member state.

Asemota, of no fixed abode, will be sentenced later this month.

-Mirror