Trafficked woman harassed when housed by council fails in damages claim

A judge has dismissed a claim brought by a woman trafficked into prostitution that a council was responsible for harassment that occurred when she was housed.

XPQ made a claim for damages from incidents she said occurred during two temporary accommodation placements.

She had been accepted by the Home Office as having been trafficked, and given leave to remain in the UK but when told to vacate a safe house applied to the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham for housing.

It placed her in Rose Lodge, where XPQ claimed she was the only female resident and suffered sexual harassment.

She was then moved to Tottenham where she said she was threatened by a member of the trafficking gang, from which she had escaped, during a chance encounter.

Following these incidents she sought damages from the council for sexual assault and harassment, victimisation and risk of re-trafficking, psychiatric injury, re-traumatisation, anxiety, stress, depression, fear and humiliation and injury to feelings.

In addition, she claimed aggravated damages, and exemplary damages, arguing that the council was in breach of its duties under the Trafficking Directive, Human Rights Act 1998, the Housing Act 1996 and common law duties of care.

But Langstaff J said O'Rourke v Camden LBC [1998] AC 188, had seen the House of Lords hold that Section 63(1) of the Housing Act 1985, and so now Section 188 of the 1996 Act, “did not create a private law duty for which damages could be claimed”.

The judge in XPQ v London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham [2018] EWHC 1391 (QB) also ruled that the European Union Trafficking Directive left it to a local housing authority to decide what was appropriate accommodation and did not create any right to claim damages over the nature of the accommodation.

Hammersmith & Fulham had no responsibility for the actions of those at Rose Lodge or at Tottenham - if the events described at the latter in fact occurred - and neither had been “the very sort of thing that was likely to happen nor even reasonably foreseeable”.

He said the council should have moved XPQ from Rose Lodge “more quickly than it did, but it had no private law duty to do so, and in any event this failure caused no loss nor does it appear to have exacerbated any pre-existing psychological condition from which the claimant suffered”.

XPQ failed to prove that the incident with the trafficking gang in Tottenham ever happened as “the only evidence of what happened comes from her”.

The judge expressed concern about numerous inconsistencies in the evidence.