SCOTTISH victims of human trafficking are not receiving the help they need, an expert has said.

Adults living in the country are as vulnerable to trafficking as those being moved into the country from overseas but services say they are not seeing victims.

Bronagh Andrew, Operations Manager for TARA, the Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance, said the concern is Scotland-wide.

She said: “Something that concerns us and our colleagues across the wider network in Scotland is that there’s a lack of Scottish citizens being referred in.

“And we have no doubt vulnerable Scottish adults are just as vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation.”

Ms Andrew spoke out following the conclusion of a seven-week human trafficking trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

Four members of a gang – Vojtech Gombar, 61, Anil Raj Wagle, 37, Jana Sandorova, 28, and Ratislav Adam, 31, – were found guilty of trafficking women from Slovakia to Govanhill.

While the women involved in the case were from Slovakia, Ms Andrew said women supported by TARA come from “all over”. She said: “The only continents we haven’t hit are the Artic and Antartic. Some years we help large numbers of Romanian women, some years no Romanian women.

“We have supported Vietnamese women, Albanian women, Nigerian women... for a long time Nigerian women were one of the largest groups.”

She added: “One of the big pull factors [for traffickers] as far as Tara is concerned is around the sex industry and demand in Scotland from men living in Scotland.

“If you look at some of the websites that are out there, some of the adverts can be really racist in terms of how women are advertised.

“On the punter messageboards you can see very clearly that they are collecting different types of “exotic women” for that purpose.”

But Ms Andrew says the types of issues leaving people vulnerable to trafficking also affect Scottish adults, in particular poverty and violence.

She said: “Many women we work with are fleeing poverty, inequality, a significant number are fleeing forms of violence against them.

“We sometimes get frustrated because people talk about vulnerabilities in terms of poor, uneducated woman, didn’t know any better. But women are striving for a better life.

“Those issues are prevalent in Scotland as well.”