by Cooley, Ben;
That’s when we started a new tradition. Every time we achieved a rescue, we would crack open a bottle of champagne. On that bottle we would write the victim’s name, reinforcing the vision. Rescue is what we do and we do it together. Every single rescue, every single member of the team would gather together and we would celebrate. Whether you were a receptionist, a lawyer, an aftercare specialist or the CEO, you knew that what you were doing was making a difference. It was a tradition that grew. We would share on social media that we were celebrating another rescue and we would receive messages from all over the country from our various Act for Justice groups, who shared photos of themselves cracking open their own bottles of champagne. We celebrated together. We would see an end to this together.
With a culture of togetherness and celebration driving us forward, I knew Hope for Justice didn’t just need people with great credentials, it needed people with great character. This is not easy. I must have interviewed hundreds of people over the past few years, but that process is not suited to identifying character. Character is proved over time, through hardship and good fortune. Take Emma, the coordinator in Magdalene’s story. Emma is the only person I’ve ever interviewed three times and, perhaps naturally, by the time of her third interview she was actually relatively scared of me. And so when she began working for us, whenever we were in a meeting together she would be quite timid. But not on the day we rescued Magdalene and her family. Faced with this challenge, faced with this injustice, Emma owned her leadership capacity in a way I couldn’t have imagined. It was amazing to see this strong, dynamic woman leading this family into freedom.
It was also during this season that I met Jeremy. Jeremy was a Borough Commander in Hertfordshire Constabulary. I had connected with Jeremy through one of our trustees. We met for lunch and, as we talked, I could tell that he was a man of great substance and experience. He had been there, done it and got the t-shirt. But there was something more impressive: his character.
His character was completely different from mine, but it was complementary. I was restless. When we rescued one victim, I wanted the second. When we rescued two people, I wanted the third. I was completely motivated to do something. Jeremy also wanted to do something, but he wanted to do it right. He wanted to do it methodically and sustainably. I would normally have worked at full pelt, all systems go, all the time. Jeremy introduced a new gear to my life. When we discussed life, when we discussed the organization, when we discussed the vision, he would always come back to: ‘So how will we make this work?’ I would want to be innovative and pioneering but Jeremy introduced policies and infrastructure. He would emphasize sustainable approaches. He didn’t want relationships for the short term but relationships for the long term.
In these discussions and during this time, I felt as though I was growing up. I learned what it meant to build an organization and a movement that would last. There were moments when the restless got frustrated with the reliable. There were moments I wanted to go faster and further. But in Jeremy I had someone who would suggest the right pace of growth. It trained me, and I’ve since gathered lots of people who can provide this input. I’ve realized that I am the by-product of the environment I have deliberately placed myself in. That’s why I’ve surrounded myself with people who are better than me. I can’t do it all, so I want the best people around me to do it with me.
Another side to the story
Jeremy Alford, former Hope for Justice Director of Operations
Out of the blue a retired pastor friend of mine rang me up. We’d not seen each other or spoken for several months. He said he’d been to an ‘event’ and heard a young guy called Ben Cooley speak with great conviction about an organization called Hope for Justice. Because of the type of work I did, he thought I’d find it interesting to get in touch to find out more. Looking back on it, this phone call was about to change the next chapter of my life significantly, but neither of us realized it at the time.
I’d retired from the police service a year earlier. The past five years of my service were spent as a Chief Superintendent, a role I had found hugely fulfilling as a Borough Commander in the west of Hertfordshire. I’d spent the previous five years as the senior detective in the Hertfordshire Constabulary. I was working for the Mayor of London as part of a team developing a strategy for dealing with violence against women and girls. I was content. I wasn’t looking for a job. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t about to be led into one.
Out of no more than a mild curiosity and, if I am honest, a sense of duty towards Tony, my old pastor mate, I picked up the phone one day and rang Hope for Justice. The phone was answered by Rob White, the Chair of Trustees. Rob was not someone who would usually be in the office to answer the phone! The fact that he was there at that time was uncanny. I explained who I was and apologized for potentially wasting his time. What he told me next hit me like a hammer. It was clear I needed to know more. It just so happened that Hope for Justice were looking for someone with relatively senior policing experience to review the work of their investigative team.
Little did I know that first day when I boarded the train bound for Manchester what I was letting myself in for! I met Ben Cooley. I was confronted with a young man who was extraordinarily passionate about his vision to bring an end to human slavery. He was so honest. He had made mistakes along the way (haven’t we all?), and he wanted some help and advice.
To cut a long story short, I left Manchester convinced that I could take a look at the way Hope for Justice did things and could help in some small way. I carried out the review and recommended some new ways of operating. I presented it to the board of trustees and got offered a job! I hadn’t gone for one, but I am so thankful that I was handed the opportunity to make a difference in my own small way.
Ben is right. We were (are) very different people. I honestly don’t recognize the Jeremy Ben so graciously describes in this chapter. I am humbled by his description of my character and that he has learnt from me. Well, if he has learnt from me, I learned so many lessons from him. I learned the importance of passionately believing in what you do, of having a vision and of striving endlessly to bring that vision about. With no hint of false modesty, I do not consider myself to be inspirational. Ben is inspirational; he also has a wicked sense of humour and a terrible American accent that he puts on at every opportunity! He is loud, he is self-confident and brings people along with him for the ride. He is an up-front guy. I am more of a behind-the-scenes type of bloke!
It was my job to start building the infrastructure, writing the policies and procedures and taking things one step at a time to help build trust with police forces and to present Hope for Justice as what it is now: a professional organization that knows what it is doing and does it right.
I know I frustrated Ben. Policies are not the most exciting things in the world. They are not achieved overnight. They take time. I had to be boring! For every visionary there has to be at least one pragmatist. We had difficult conversations. I often failed to grasp Ben’s vision for a particular aspect of the work, be it legal, aftercare or other areas of operation that I controlled as Director of Operations. On an almost daily basis he would come into the office and spend time on his latest idea for doing things differently. I got through it by saying ‘Good idea. Let me think about it and we’ll talk tomorrow.’ That way we managed to capture the brilliant ideas, of which there were many, and jettison the outlandish, of which there were also a few!
In the two and a bit years I spent at the heart of Hope for Justice, with the help of Ben and some great professional people around me I think we started to gain some real momentum and build genuine trust with various agencies, including law enforcement. There is never a good time to leave an organization, but I came to see that my work, although not complete, was well underway and could be accomplished by others.
I always keep a close eye on Hope for Justice and its continuing work. It is amazing, groundbreaking, earth-shattering and all the other superlatives you
can think of. Hope for Justice, its work and all those trafficked people out there still to be rescued, are always in my prayers.
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Chapter seven
Lucas’s story
Lucas was homeless in his home country. He had no-one to turn to for help and was struggling to find work. The weather was extremely cold and he was desperate. He was at a homeless shelter one day, where some people were recruiting people to work in the UK. They were targeting those who didn’t speak English and hadn’t been to the UK before; they said they had found success in the UK and were returning to find more people. They said he would be well paid and would be provided with accommodation and food.
With few other options, Lucas chose to take the risk and go with them. He arrived at a house where that night he had to share a mattress with two other men. He thought this might just be a one-off, that things would improve, but sadly that wasn’t the case.
He was put to work in a bed factory, doing hard physical labour for eleven hours a day. After two weeks he had earned £10. The people running the factory gave the money straight to the traffickers. Most of the time Lucas was having to sleep on the floor in an overcrowded house where up to forty men were living at a time, where he and his fellow workers were not allowed in the kitchen and only permitted to use the shower once a week. If Lucas didn’t do what the traffickers told him he would not be given any food. He had no money, spoke no English and didn’t know the area in which he was living, so had no way to ask for help. He was trapped.
By the time Hope for Justice found Lucas, he had lost a lot of weight and was desperate and frightened. However, after spending some time in a safe house, he felt able to report to the police what happened and help bring the perpetrators to justice.
Structure, strategy, sustainability
As Hope for Justice continued to grow, so did I. I was learning every day, from the people around me and the experiences we had shared.
At the beginning of our journey I had spoken of the vision I had to organize a big event. I was now learning that that was entirely the wrong message. An event is not a vision. The true vision behind The Stand was to mobilize people and find the resources that would allow us to employ others to rescue victims, advocate on their behalf and provide aftercare, and, ultimately, to be able to offer the same freedom to every single slave.
One thing that saddens me about our generation today is that we are often distracted by stuff I would call ‘non-visions’. Hoping for a suitable building to house a cause, for example, is not a vision. A building is a facility. It is a vehicle for a vision. Our vision is about transforming elements of society, about seeing every business operating in a manner that pays its staff fairly, that sees its responsibility to society and not just the profit margin. Our vision is that we see governments putting policies in place that protect the most vulnerable. That is the vision, and we must hold fast to it in the face of many other distracting non-visions.
In this new era of expansion I became even more aware that there were certain skill bases that I was missing. Organizing The Stand, I had been too busy to self-assess or compare what we were doing to what others were doing. But now I began to analyse, and in some senses over-analyse. I’d begun to realize what I was and what I was not. So in order to educate and develop myself, I deliberately built relationships with those who could help me.
You should know that I often feel intimidated when surrounded by our team. We have people working for us now who have managed thousands of staff. We have people working for us who have held extremely senior positions within some of the largest police forces in the country. Every time our organization has gone through a season of growth, I have experienced something like an identity crisis. Every time we have become bigger, I’ve had to ask myself: ‘Where do I fit in this vision, in this organization?’ I’ve heard some people say: ‘I am not defined by what I do, rather by who I am.’ But who I am is intrinsically linked with what I do, and I’d love to say I’m totally secure, that my identity is not tied to Hope for Justice, but this is all I know. This is who I am. And particularly in this new season, I tried to learn and in some senses had to learn to be all right with being scared. I had to learn to be all right with not knowing for periods who I was or who I was turning into. I may often feel intimidated, but the vision is too important for me to be insecure and, because of that insecurity, not to involve the very experienced people in the Hope for Justice team. I need their wisdom with structure and strategy.
I remember getting in touch with this chap called Peter Elson. He’d been introduced through a mutual friend and he ran a large company in the UK. I needed someone like Peter to answer questions such as: ‘How do you structure your team?’ ‘How about your meetings?’ ‘What does organizational infrastructure look like?’ ‘What level of accountability do you have with your key team?’ Just like in Mumbai, the list of questions went on and on.
I mentioned earlier that Jeremy Alford and I were very different people. Peter and I were totally different. Peter’s the kind of guy who will spend hours and hours considering a single question or issue, and in the early days of meeting with Peter I would keep trying to steer him away from certain questions and he would keep coming back to them. I was quickly learning the importance of surrounding myself with people who think differently from me. Thanks to them, I’m a different Ben Cooley from the one who picked up the phone and booked the NEC Arena. It’s not that I’ve lost my audacity; it’s certainly not that I’ve lost my passion. But they’ve strengthened me, helped me mature. I’m now more deliberate, less knee-jerk, more, well, boring (just kidding!).
* * *
Through this team effort we were building something sustainable. We were rescuing victims. We were seeing our organization’s objectives become a reality. We were seeing people transformed from just surviving in life to thriving. But we were also noticing something.
In one area where we had rescued a number of victims, there was a worrying trend. Some 61% of victims we were rescuing had gone to various agencies before they were rescued by Hope for Justice, but had not been identified as victims of human trafficking. I couldn’t comprehend how this might be possible. Things are now very different and the story is improving but, back then, we knew these agencies had a lot of different priorities, of which trafficking was only one. They can’t know everything, and they certainly didn’t have the resources to cover all areas. However, when vulnerable victims of crime were being turned away when they asked for help, something needed to change.
We had a small team. Our reach was wide but not deep. We’d rescued victims in many parts of the country but had no deep impact in any particular region. We were stretched. So as a team we started talking: what if we could make a serious impact in this region where 61% of victims were being turned away?
We decided we would send a new team into that region and own responsibility for the area. This team became our first investigative hub. We took on six hugely experienced former police officers, who would proactively identify victims of human trafficking and rescue them from exploitation. This region had the fourth-largest police force in the UK but one of the lowest numbers of identified victims of human trafficking. We would work in partnership with local police forces and other agencies to develop cases and go upstream to identify the perpetrators. This was our first regional office, but we didn’t want it to be known as ‘Hope for Justice North East’ or ‘Office Number Two’. That just wasn’t us. So we decided to name the office after the first victim we ever rescued. We called the office ‘Emma’s Hub’.
In its first year, Emma’s Hub assisted and rescued 110 victims of human trafficking. It was incredible. The youngest victim rescued that year was just 1 year old; the eldest was 59. We saw victims from all categories of slavery, but predominantly we found those trapped in forced labour. There were victims who were held in tiny basements for five years. We saw people whose hands had been crippled because they had been forced to dig holes in the frost
and freezing temperatures of winter without any tools. They broke their fingers but were refused medical attention by their traffickers. We found victims caught in domestic servitude. One was 19 years old, forced to sleep next to a toilet.
In this year we were also able to begin to tackle a case where victims were being forced to make beds for some of the largest high-street shopping brands. Lucas’s story was one of many similar, and the same names and places started to crop up over and over again. We recognized links between these cases and realized this was much bigger than just the odd instance of forced labour. This was an organized trafficking gang.
Victims can sometimes be reluctant to speak to the police at first, but after some time spent in a safe, stable place they will often be much more willing to report the crime. As we built up a picture of what was going on, we shared as much intelligence as we could with the police and encouraged victims to submit any information they had so they could build a case against the perpetrators. We also worked with other safe houses and organizations to support the victims through the process. It worked. First the traffickers doing the recruiting were arrested, and then eventually the factory owner was prosecuted for human trafficking and was described in the press as employing a ‘slave workforce’. This was the first case of its kind in the UK, and was a big victory both for us and all our partners on the case.
We were making a massive difference and, importantly, were building a picture of what human trafficking looked like in the UK. We were identifying victims and where they were coming from, and in doing so were discovering where the gaps were in the system. And we were able to take this to the regional Police and Crime Commissioner, who was passionate about making a difference to those most vulnerable in society. We humbly suggested three ways in which we could help. First, we could train local police officers in how to spot the signs of human trafficking. Second, we could help set up a multi-agency working group that would be able to identify the gaps in that region. Third, we would work in conjunction with their police force on every investigation.
