Pimps in Bradford who enslave and abuse teenage girls will come under the spotlight in pioneering Home Office research.

Experts hope girls working Bradford's red-light district can help them build up the first-ever profile of a typical pimp for a report which will help shape future crime policy.

The Home Office-funded project aims to identify how pimping operates and explore links between pimping and drug dealing.

Work in Bradford by the innovative Barnardo's Streets and Lanes Project has already exposed how some children as young as 11 are ruthlessly exploited by older pimps who first befriend them, but later exploit them.

Some girls are treated like animals, raped and beaten, and locked up in bedsits with no access to food, water or a toilet - but are too terrified of their pimp to seek help. Workers have heard of cases where girls have been 'sold' from one pimp to another.

"Significant work has been carried out into prostitution, but very little on the subject of pimping," a Home Office spokesman said.

"The research will find out what's currently known about pimps and pimping and will be reviewing statistics and investigating the background and methods used by pimps, and exploring links with drug dealing and so on. It will be published in December."

Researchers from the Criminal Policy Research Unit at London's South Bank University are carrying out the study, interviewing prostitutes in Bradford and experts working in the field.

The unit's Professor Mike Hough said: "We have five sites across the country including Bradford and we are trying to get as accurate a picture as we can as to how pimping and prostitution operates. We are interviewing all relevant people."

Millie Cummings, of the Barnardo's Streets and Lanes Project, welcomed the research adding: "We do need to know more about pimps - the focus is often on the young girls, but we should not focus on them, we should do more to secure convictions against the pimps and the punters, who are child abusers.

"Our experience shows there are many pimps in Bradford, some control more than one young person, some even sell them on to other pimps."

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman added: "We will be interested to see the results of the research when it comes out."

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