:00:20. > :00:25.Retreat in it human beings on a our doorsteps.
:00:25. > :00:35.Jan Leeming uncovers the mystery of the life and death of a hero of
:00:35. > :00:46.
:00:46. > :00:56.Battle of Britain. It was an extraordinary story.
:00:56. > :01:05.
:01:05. > :01:15.This is Rene -- This is Inside Out. Tonight we're at the Battle of
:01:15. > :01:16.
:01:17. > :01:23.Britain Memorial at Capel-le-Ferne. We are back year later.
:01:23. > :01:30.Human trafficking is a global crime. It is happening here in the UK. Its
:01:30. > :01:33.victims walk among us that a living in the shadows of our communities.
:01:33. > :01:41.We are investigating how traffickers exploit the most
:01:41. > :01:47.vulnerable people in society. The trade in human misery. Our journey
:01:47. > :01:55.will take us to meet the traffickers. We will be looking at
:01:55. > :02:04.how victims are being brought into a region to work as slaves. They
:02:04. > :02:08.are just going to sell me. This is a safe house. The girls who live
:02:08. > :02:15.here have been trafficked into the country to be sexually exploited.
:02:15. > :02:25.It is Flavia's home. She fled her home country desperate to escape
:02:25. > :02:45.
:02:45. > :02:55.from her uncle who sexually abused But her situation was about to get
:02:55. > :03:19.
:03:19. > :03:23.worse. She was taken to a house and Flavia joined an underclass of
:03:23. > :03:27.exploited foreign females living in the UK. Mike Emberson runs a
:03:27. > :03:37.charity that is helping her to charity that is helping her to
:03:37. > :03:43.
:03:43. > :03:53.recover. It is a profoundly evil business. You are degrading them.
:03:53. > :03:56.
:03:56. > :03:59.There are extra levels of horror. There are threats of murder. People
:03:59. > :04:07.often pay their traffickers to come here in the hope of a better life.
:04:07. > :04:15.Up when they get here at the reality is different. Individuals
:04:15. > :04:25.have been promised jobs in the UK, receptionist, cleaners in a hotel,
:04:25. > :04:25.
:04:25. > :04:35.even apposition as a model to stop -- even as a model. Then if they
:04:35. > :04:37.
:04:37. > :04:47.find out they are required to work in a brothel. Superintendent David
:04:47. > :04:49.
:04:49. > :04:54.Miller. They have been moved about the South of England. There at
:04:54. > :05:01.adverts in the back of the papers. And they are not new girls. The are
:05:01. > :05:10.the same goals being moved around. -- be seen people being moved
:05:10. > :05:20.around. Children are being born into slavery in the UK. In this
:05:20. > :05:23.
:05:24. > :05:30.safe house babies have been born, conceived as a result of rape.
:05:30. > :05:40.Trafficked women asked to do things that UK sex workers voluntarily
:05:40. > :05:50.would not do. They fill some unpleasant, and say that the gaps
:05:50. > :05:54.
:05:54. > :06:04.in the market. They have no say in the matter. This treatment puts
:06:04. > :06:18.
:06:18. > :06:24.Despite the fact this is happening in the UK some experts say we are
:06:24. > :06:34.only just beginning to realise the extent of the problem. There are no
:06:34. > :06:40.
:06:40. > :06:45.targets for this. If we do not do this we do not understand the scope.
:06:45. > :06:52.We uncovered exploitation been a number of places. This has made us
:06:52. > :07:02.realise how much is out there. the key to take inspiration from
:07:02. > :07:10.
:07:10. > :07:16.further afield? This is Romania. This is a country that some say is
:07:16. > :07:25.ahead of the game in recognising it has a problem and dealing with it.
:07:25. > :07:29.It has tougher maximum sentences and a dedicated law. This is a
:07:29. > :07:33.prison on the outskirts of Bucharest where some traffickers
:07:33. > :07:40.are taken to serve out their sentences. We have been given
:07:40. > :07:44.special access to speak to some of the prisoners.
:07:44. > :07:54.This man sold girls to the UK and Europe. Why did he start
:07:54. > :08:04.
:08:04. > :08:09.TRANSLATION: Became from abroad. People with money. They look for a
:08:09. > :08:19.typical girls. Where are the beautiful girls? Romania. Do you
:08:19. > :08:20.
:08:20. > :08:29.think about what happened to them? I knew how things worked. They took
:08:29. > :08:39.slaves from Romania. They can even kill them. They are bought, taking
:08:39. > :08:43.
:08:43. > :08:53.it illegally. -- taken illegally. This man is doing time for pimping
:08:53. > :08:56.
:08:56. > :09:06.trafficked women. TRANSLATION: Many women are not as developed as a
:09:06. > :09:08.
:09:08. > :09:14.girl of 15. They are told. You cannot tell the age. I was putting
:09:14. > :09:22.them on the market. I was taking them to where there was a crowd.
:09:22. > :09:27.asked to he sold the girls too. he paid he could talk, or not talk,
:09:27. > :09:36.just take her away and straddled her. Do you have the right to buy
:09:36. > :09:41.or sell people? I have to serve 13 years. Did it could be of? Yes. In
:09:41. > :09:51.this country we have harsh laws and well deserved. It put me off. When
:09:51. > :09:56.
:09:56. > :10:00.I come out I will be the best Romania has been cracking down on
:10:00. > :10:05.traffickers with one of the highest conviction rates in Europe.
:10:05. > :10:13.Campaigners like Mike Emberson from their The Medaille Trust think they
:10:13. > :10:19.could learn a lot. I want to know why we only get eight convictions
:10:19. > :10:23.per year and here they are getting 200 convictions. Is it because
:10:23. > :10:26.there is more trafficking? A I do not think so. I think it is
:10:26. > :10:32.legislation. How would you like to see our legislation improve
:10:32. > :10:40.question mark a single consolidated at would help our prosecution more
:10:40. > :10:50.than the current legislation. It is four different sets of
:10:50. > :10:53.
:10:53. > :10:57.legislation. They do not mesh This man is head of the anti-
:10:57. > :11:07.trafficking agency. He says having a single piece of legislation has
:11:07. > :11:17.helped bring offenders to justice. With a specific law it is easier to
:11:17. > :11:24.
:11:24. > :11:28.promote. It is easier to understand. It is hard legislation. What has
:11:28. > :11:38.targeting the traffickers meant? They have moved their criminal
:11:38. > :11:42.
:11:42. > :11:52.activity. Credit cards. What ever was not placing and in front of
:11:52. > :12:03.
:12:03. > :12:08.The Superintendents as we could be getting more convictions than we
:12:08. > :12:12.think. To convict the right people, it may be rape or sexual offence,
:12:12. > :12:17.some of the offences do not fall naturally under the umbrella of
:12:17. > :12:22.human trafficking. It is unlikely that many of the women here it will
:12:22. > :12:27.ever see justice. This man says the UK needs to do more to make sure it
:12:27. > :12:31.is not seen as a soft touch by traffickers. At the moment the UK
:12:31. > :12:37.represents a fairly low-risk environment with a high-return. One
:12:37. > :12:42.of the reasons why it is a high return is that to put it bluntly if
:12:42. > :12:52.you have got a human Slava you can use them and we use them. Day after
:12:52. > :12:57.day week after week to bring you money. Greed. That is what his
:12:57. > :13:00.feeling it. It is as simple as that. While it is easy to think about
:13:00. > :13:06.traffic came as something that happens in faraway places like
:13:06. > :13:16.Romania, it is happening in the south-east in ordinary houses and
:13:16. > :13:19.
:13:19. > :13:22.streets. It could even be happening Now, back in 2007, former BBC
:13:22. > :13:26.newsreader Jan Leeming sponsored a name on the Battle of Britain
:13:26. > :13:36.Memorial. And that was just the beginning of a quest to find out
:13:36. > :13:45.
:13:45. > :13:49.more about the life of a remarkable I wasn't even born when the Battle
:13:49. > :13:52.of Britain raged over Kent. I can only imagine the sounds of battle
:13:52. > :13:54.and the vapour trails of stricken aircraft, criss-crossing the sky as
:13:54. > :14:03.an ever-shrinking band of young pilots defended this country from
:14:03. > :14:10.invasion against overwhelming odds. Never in the field of human
:14:10. > :14:13.conflict was so much been owed by so many to so few.
:14:13. > :14:18.The closest I've ever come to committing an act of bravery was
:14:18. > :14:21.back in 2006 in Australia with a bunch of celebrities. It was
:14:21. > :14:31.terrifying, but I can't claim to know anything of the terror those
:14:31. > :14:32.
:14:32. > :14:35.pilots must have experienced. On my return from the jungle I sponsored
:14:35. > :14:38.a name on the Battle of Britain Memorial at Capel-Le-Ferne near
:14:38. > :14:41.Folkestone. I was intrigued by all the foreign names listed here,
:14:41. > :14:44.especially the French pilots. There are 13 French names on this wall of
:14:44. > :14:52.remembrance. Because of my French ancestry I asked to sponsor a
:14:52. > :14:56.French pilot. And the name I was given was that of Rene Mouchotte.
:14:56. > :14:59.Rene was a Spitfire ace who was killed in battle at the age of 29
:14:59. > :15:05.and who left behind plenty of evidence of his short but dramatic
:15:05. > :15:08.life. And a mystery to solve in death. The man who chose this name
:15:08. > :15:12.for me was Group Captain Patrick Tootal of the Battle of Britain
:15:12. > :15:15.Memorial Trust. And he explained that if it hadn't been for my
:15:15. > :15:19.French connection, he could very easily have chosen an American, or
:15:19. > :15:24.a New Zealander, or any of a dozen or so other nationalities who made
:15:24. > :15:28.up Churchill's famous few. There were several nations from occupied
:15:28. > :15:30.Europe, the Commonwealth. New Zealanders were a large contingent,
:15:30. > :15:37.Australians, Canadians, Americans who had to become Canadians to
:15:37. > :15:41.fight or else they would have been arrested back home. They crossed
:15:41. > :15:44.the border and became Canadians to join the Battle of Britain. And of
:15:44. > :15:50.course, the free French. Many of them escaped to north Africa and
:15:50. > :15:55.then came through Gibraltar back to Britain. Rene was one of those Free
:15:55. > :15:58.French pilots. And I wanted to know more about him, his life before the
:15:58. > :16:02.war, how he ended up fighting here with the RAF. And how he died. I
:16:02. > :16:12.wanted to know the whole story. But I had no idea what an extraordinary
:16:12. > :16:14.
:16:14. > :16:16.story it was and where that story As soon as I started to research
:16:16. > :16:20.the name Rene Mouchotte I discovered he'd kept diaries which
:16:20. > :16:29.were published after the war. And I even found him in an old newsreel
:16:29. > :16:32.from 1943. This was Rene enjoying his own brief taste of celebrity as
:16:32. > :16:38.one of two pilots who shared the credit for shooting down Biggin
:16:38. > :16:41.Hill's 1,000th enemy plane. So, the modest Frenchman and the Canadian
:16:41. > :16:44.share the credit and the sweepstake. The 1,000th shot-down plane was
:16:44. > :16:48.such a big deal at Biggin Hill that many airmen had refused to take
:16:48. > :16:51.leave so they could be around to see it. And as Wing Commander Andy
:16:51. > :16:55.Simpson told me, this bumped up the sweepstake prize money to a tidy
:16:55. > :16:58.sum for 1943. Apparently, the winner of the sweep stake was going
:16:58. > :17:03.to get �150 which was not an insubstantial sum at the time. And
:17:03. > :17:11.the pilot who got the 1,000th was going to get �300. So, of course,
:17:11. > :17:15.what actually happened was that the two pilots shared it. Rene shared
:17:15. > :17:20.his portion of the prize money with his crew and they all got a chance
:17:20. > :17:26.to celebrate at a huge party at the Grosvenor House hotel in London. A
:17:26. > :17:31.rare opportunity to enjoy some rest and relaxation away from the war.
:17:31. > :17:37.At the end of evening, a delegation of taxi drivers appeared who
:17:37. > :17:45.offered their services to those going home any distance and for
:17:45. > :17:51.nothing. In his three years of action with the RAF, Rene completed
:17:51. > :17:54.more than 380 sorties. He flew from bases all over the country, but is
:17:54. > :18:01.best remembered here at Biggin Hill where he became the first Frenchman
:18:01. > :18:03.to lead an RAF squadron. He even had a local street named after him
:18:03. > :18:09.where servicemen from all the forces still live today, including
:18:09. > :18:11.Lieutenant Colonel Sebastian Pollington. We all know of the
:18:11. > :18:16.significance of Mouchotte and indeed other famous airmen who
:18:16. > :18:21.roads here at Biggin Hill Patch are named after. But Mouchotte in
:18:21. > :18:24.particular because it's the biggest road on the patch. And the
:18:24. > :18:28.significance of him is not lost on the residents here. And there's a
:18:28. > :18:33.book that goes round the patch and everybody who's read it signs it
:18:33. > :18:37.and passes it on to the next guy. The book is a collection of Rene's
:18:37. > :18:43.war diaries. His first-hand account of life as an RAF pilot. Much more
:18:43. > :18:46.than just a description of missions and sorties. These are personal
:18:46. > :18:53.notes about fear, fatigue, blackouts in the air, anger at
:18:53. > :18:57.bureaucracy and what it feels like to see your friends die in battle.
:18:57. > :19:00.May 10th, 1941. We had been flying for over an hour when I suddenly
:19:00. > :19:04.saw the fatal white cloud which indicates complete engine-failure.
:19:04. > :19:08.As we made for the coast I advised him to bail out. My poor old
:19:08. > :19:11.Charles, if only you had listened to me. Alas, when we were at 50
:19:11. > :19:13.feet, he straightened his plane out then with a savagely swift movement
:19:13. > :19:20.the plane lurched to starboard, skimmed the sea, turned over and
:19:20. > :19:26.vanished in less than a second. is a fantastic series of diaries
:19:26. > :19:31.and flying logs and it is well worth a read. And the romance
:19:31. > :19:34.behind these stories of these airmen is fabulous.
:19:34. > :19:38.What really comes across from the diaries is Rene's determination to
:19:38. > :19:41.fight to liberate France. At the Battle of Britain, Rene was one of
:19:41. > :19:46.13 Free French pilots who had escaped to England after France
:19:46. > :19:53.surrendered to the Nazis. According to historian Professor Mark
:19:53. > :19:56.Connelly, Rene risked his life just to get here. In 1940, when he
:19:56. > :19:59.escaped from a surrendered French airfield in Africa, he stole a
:19:59. > :20:04.plane and flew it to Gibraltar. That was a massive act of bravery
:20:04. > :20:07.and daring in its own right,because Gibraltar was on red alert. So
:20:07. > :20:11.anything flying across its airspace, they could have had the whole anti-
:20:11. > :20:14.aircraft defences opening up on them. And of course, if they'd
:20:14. > :20:21.strayed into Franco's airspace, they would have found things very
:20:21. > :20:27.nasty for them. So the very start of their journey was fraught,
:20:27. > :20:31.almost a mini battle in its own right, even before they got to
:20:31. > :20:34.Britain. Cheating death was a way of life for pilots like Rene. At
:20:34. > :20:37.the Battle of Britain, they were outgunned and outnumbered, but it
:20:37. > :20:40.was a battle they had to win, no matter what. Defeat would have seen
:20:40. > :20:46.Britain invaded and overcome and left most of Europe under Hitler's
:20:46. > :20:49.control. It would have opened up the way for the Nazis to dominate
:20:49. > :20:53.the entire seaboard of the eastern Atlantic and possibly use the
:20:53. > :20:58.British fleet to put pressure on the Americans. We might have seen
:20:58. > :21:01.the Second World War pan out in a very different way. It is a moment
:21:01. > :21:04.where history is shaped and made by the few, as Winston Churchill
:21:04. > :21:08.called them. Rene survived the Battle of Britain and many other
:21:08. > :21:14.adventures. But, almost inevitably, his time came on the 27th August,
:21:14. > :21:18.1943. His death, shortly after this photograph was taken, was shrouded
:21:18. > :21:28.in confusion and mystery for several years. It would have
:21:28. > :21:33.
:21:33. > :21:37.unexpected consequences for me as Paris was Rene's home town. I
:21:37. > :21:40.wanted to know more about his life before the war and to see if any of
:21:40. > :21:44.his relatives had survived. So I decided to visit the places where
:21:44. > :21:48.he grew up and the streets he walked. Rene came from a well-to-do
:21:48. > :21:51.family. He was born here almost a century ago in the summer of 1914.
:21:51. > :21:58.The Mouchottes ran a successful distillery business and Rene grew
:21:58. > :22:03.up in this grand Parisian villa. But today it's an apartment
:22:03. > :22:05.building with no trace of his family here anymore. So my only
:22:05. > :22:08.option was to leave a note at the Mouchotte tomb at the Pere Lachaise
:22:08. > :22:15.Cemetery in the hope that someone with a connection to Rene would
:22:15. > :22:18.find it. Incredibly, four months later, the note was found by Rene's
:22:18. > :22:26.sister, Jacqueline, who instructed her son-in-law, Hubert De Lisle, to
:22:26. > :22:29.contact me. My mother-in-law found the letter in late October,
:22:29. > :22:35.beginning of November, when she naturally every year went to put
:22:35. > :22:39.flowers on the tomb. She called me and she said, there's this letter
:22:39. > :22:45.and it's in French and English. Somebody wants to make a recording,
:22:45. > :22:55.photographs, on the life of Rene Mouchotte. And she was slightly
:22:55. > :22:58.reticent at first. Until I discovered it was you, Jan Leeming.
:22:58. > :23:02.On your email, I managed to contact you and that was it. Jacqueline
:23:02. > :23:05.agreed to see me and we met on her 101st birthday. We looked at photos
:23:05. > :23:09.of her with Rene when they were children and the news footage of
:23:09. > :23:19.her brother from the war, footage she'd never seen before. She had
:23:19. > :23:24.
:23:24. > :23:28.fond memories of him as a boy who was always kind and smiling. With
:23:28. > :23:33.tears in her eyes she said it was wonderful to see her brother as she
:23:33. > :23:35.remembered him, 70 years ago when he set off for war. Although Rene
:23:35. > :23:38.is remembered and honoured in France, I was astonished to
:23:38. > :23:42.discover that the Mouchotte family had never received his Battle of
:23:42. > :23:48.Britain medals. I decided to find out why and my search took me north
:23:48. > :23:55.to Belgium and the stretch of coast where Rene died. On 3rd September,
:23:55. > :23:59.1943, a body in RAF uniform was found on the beach here at Westende.
:23:59. > :24:03.The man had been dead for a week. He'd been shot down somewhere over
:24:03. > :24:06.the English Channel, returning from a raid over the Pas De Calais.
:24:06. > :24:12.According to the documentation recovered from the body, his name
:24:12. > :24:16.was Rene Martin and he was a French Canadian. And this is where the
:24:16. > :24:24.body was laid to rest in the field of honour at Middelkerke Cemetery
:24:24. > :24:27.in grave number 87. But the body had fake identification. It was, in
:24:27. > :24:31.fact, Rene Mouchotte. He carried fake ID because he was a Free
:24:31. > :24:34.French pilot. The wartime Vichy Government had given orders to
:24:34. > :24:37.execute anyone from France who'd chosen to fight against the Nazis.
:24:37. > :24:45.So to protect himself and his family in France, Rene kept the
:24:45. > :24:48.fake ID of a French Canadian. I met up with local archivist Simon Sters
:24:48. > :24:56.at the Middlekerke Museum to find out how Rene's real identity was
:24:56. > :24:59.eventually discovered thanks to detailed records made at the time.
:24:59. > :25:03.They don't only talk about his height, but also his colour hair
:25:04. > :25:09.and the fact that certain teeth were missing. But in general, his
:25:09. > :25:16.body was still in a good shape. Rene probably died of exposure
:25:16. > :25:19.after crashing into the sea and washed up in Belgium a week later.
:25:19. > :25:22.There's something strange about his wrist watch. It had stopped the day
:25:22. > :25:26.they had found the body which is a bit strange. You'd expect that the
:25:26. > :25:28.moment he crashed into the sea, the watch would have stopped. But when
:25:28. > :25:34.they made the research, they discovered that it had stopped just
:25:34. > :25:41.shortly after they found the body on the beach. If it's coincidence,
:25:41. > :25:44.I don't know. Six years later in 1949, the postmortem report was re-
:25:44. > :25:48.examined and it was discovered that a small piece of clothing on the
:25:48. > :25:55.body bore the name Rene Mouchotte. So the body was exhumed and
:25:55. > :25:58.transported to Paris to be reburied with the correct name on the grave.
:25:58. > :26:04.It was important for the family afterwards to see who was actually
:26:04. > :26:10.found at Middelkerke. If you didn't do it properly, you would have
:26:11. > :26:20.troubles when the war would end. This was proven with feet Rene
:26:21. > :26:25.
:26:25. > :26:27.Mouchotte case. -- with the Rene Mouchotte case. Now I knew the full
:26:27. > :26:30.story of the confusion over Rene's death and a possible reason as to
:26:30. > :26:33.why his medals were never presented to his family. But that was
:26:33. > :26:37.something I could put right. I contacted the Allied Air Forces
:26:37. > :26:39.Museum in York. With their help, I was able to go back to Paris last
:26:39. > :26:42.summer and finally present Jacqueline and her family with her
:26:43. > :26:49.brother's Battle of Britain medals. She was not in good health at the
:26:49. > :26:52.time but delighted to receive them. She died just three weeks later.
:26:52. > :26:59.Jacqueline was buried here at Pere Lachaise in the family tomb where
:26:59. > :27:04.Rene's body was eventually laid to rest six years after his death.
:27:04. > :27:07.flowers look lovely. Thank you, Jan. It's my pleasure. It was a great
:27:07. > :27:12.pleasure to meet all of you, but to meet your mother was really very
:27:12. > :27:22.special. It was a high moment towards the end of her life to meet
:27:22. > :27:26.
:27:26. > :27:33.you and the medals. We were all thrilled to be there. And to meet
:27:33. > :27:38.you, such a charming young person. I think she needed her eyes tested!
:27:38. > :27:43.No, her eyes were much better than all of us. My search for Rene and
:27:43. > :27:45.his family has taken up much of my life since 2007. But with the help
:27:45. > :27:54.of a great many people, I've finally been able to complete his
:27:54. > :27:57.story. So my journey has ended where it began. And after five
:27:57. > :28:07.years of searching, Rene Mouchotte is no longer just a name engraved
:28:07. > :28:22.