The Vanishing Children

In the dead of night, they slip away—like ghosts swallowed by the fog. Their stories are generally the same. . . the pattern relentless and grim.

Young Vietnamese children, eyes wide with shattered dreams, vanish from Europe’s so-called safe havens. Shelters meant to protect become launchpads into hell. Foster homes turn into fleeting illusions. And the system? It watches, indifferent, as these innocents are dragged into a vortex of exploitation and slavery.

These disappearances aren’t random—it is a fixed, cold-blooded system sustaining the egregious exploitation of minors, the most vulnerable members in society.

It begins in the shadows of Vietnam’s poorest regions. Desperate families pawn everything to pay smugglers who promise their children a better life in Europe (Wee). The journey is harrowing: boys and girls barely in their teens (if that) are stuffed into trucks, shipping containers, or flown in with forged documents. Once near the border, the traffickers abandon them—intentionally. Why? Because apprehended adults risk arrest, but lone minors are treated with leniency. Abandoning the children is part of the plan.

Border officials pick them up and, seeing them as vulnerable and unaccompanied, funnel them into care homes, shelters, or temporary foster arrangements. It looks like safety—but it’s only the next step in the trafficking chain.

Behind the scenes, the smugglers inform their domestic counterparts—already embedded across Europe—that the child has arrived and is now processed into the system. A week or two later, someone comes. Sometimes with threats. Sometimes with false promises. Sometimes just with a van and a waiting silence.

And then the child is gone.

Labeled as a “runaway” or marked with the vague phrase “disappearance under unknown circumstances,” the case quietly fades. The trail goes cold before anyone even looks for it.

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The reality is heartbreaking and tragic in how very unsurprising it is. This isn’t negligence. It’s organized crime putting a premeditated plan into motion. Europol and those agencies willing to discuss the matter admit that most are ensnared in underground trafficking rings—kidnapped from care or coerced to flee, repaying “debts” through forced labor, prostitution, or worse. Too young to fight back, too invisible to matter.

“We have intervened in support of several investigations into the trafficking of Vietnamese children sold for the purpose of forced labor, prostitution, criminality or begging. . . . The majority of the victims have been identified in France, the Netherlands and England”

— Europol (quoted in Investigate Europe)

Child trafficking scars the globe, indifferent to borders or backgrounds. But Vietnamese minors? They’re a key prey of choice.

Between 2016 – 2019, 80 – 90%+ of those processed in powerhouse nations like France, the Netherlands, and the UK simply. . . vanished. Germany, Poland, Belgium—dozens more lost to the void. The vast majority of these are boys (65% in the UK), though girls also make up substantial numbers (Carson).

And the horror drags on: from 2021 – 2023, at least 51,433 unaccompanied minors were reported missing across Europe, averaging nearly 47 children vanishing each day, with poor reception conditions, fear of deportation, and trafficking networks cited as key drivers (Members’ Research Service). Worldwide, detected victims surged 25%, with child exploitation and forced labor exploding, ensnaring the vulnerable like these Vietnamese kids in ever-tightening chains (UNODC).

Common Trafficking Routes

Traffickers exploit evolving paths to shuttle Vietnamese children into Western Europe. Traditional routes through China, Russia, Belgium, or Germany remain prevalent, but newer, cheaper options via Serbia—leveraging bilateral visa schemes—have emerged, costing as little as a few thousand pounds compared to £30,000 for older paths (Gov.UK). Once in Europe, children are funneled into exploitation hubs like the UK, France, and the Netherlands, often transiting as economic migrants only to face coercion en route or upon arrival.

The United Kingdom (UK)

Between 2013 and 2019, Vietnamese nationals were the second most commonly identified victims of human trafficking in the UK, following Albania (University of Nottingham). In 2022, out of 8,622 documented adult potential victims, 911 (10.5%) were Vietnamese—again ranking second after Albania (US Department of State).

The data surrounding trafficked Vietnamese children in the UK reveals an even more troubling trend (Einashe and Terlingen).

As early as 2013, researchers observed that nearly 20% of the 113 children listed as missing in the UK’s official database were of Vietnamese descent—despite Vietnamese individuals comprising just 0.1% of the overall population (Judah).

The situation worsened in subsequent years. Between 2015 and 2017, more than 150 Vietnamese children were recorded as trafficking victims, excluding the likely substantial number of unreported cases (Spillett). By 2019, Vietnamese minors accounted for 9% of all identified child trafficking victims in the UK and 18.8% of all foreign national victims, ranking second only to British citizens (ECPAT). In certain regions, such as Kent, the number of trafficked Vietnamese children even surpassed that of British nationals (Einashe).

The upward trend has since continued in the 2020s. In 2021, the UK’s National Referral Mechanism flagged 269 Vietnamese minors as potential trafficking victims. By 2023, that number had risen to 302—marking a significant and ongoing increase in documented cases.

Steve Robson of Northants Live reported in 2020 that at least eight boys were still missing from Northampton (link), but of the names referenced, only one (Quang Dang Le) was actually included in the UK Missing Persons database. A Thai journalist further noted that one child placed into the British foster system had previously been stolen twice before and was missing once again the last time she went to find him (Lankasri).

The UK also has a unique source of children for smugglers to grab — private schools. In addition to the usual scene of smuggled refugee children, the UK has recently seen scandals come to light where children enter the UK on student visas, ostensibly to attend various private schools before vanishing like the rest (Herrmann). The Mill has identified at least 27 Vietnamese minors who disappeared from high schools and colleges between 2015 – 2020 including eight from Chelsea Independent College alone; while some argue the number is likely double that. The families receive money from traffickers and pay the fees for the first term (between £3,000 – £10,000). The child leaves before the second term and repays the debt + interest to the traffickers. They are entering on a Tier-4 Visa which does not require an English exam, allowing smugglers to bring in children who do not speak the language and cannot communicate properly with their teachers (Herrmann).

Regardless of whether they come on lorries and boats or through the school systems, their fates are tragic. Most upon arriving in Britain are forced into work in a variety of black market jobs including prostitution or unskilled labor in nail salons, massage parlors, restaurants, garment factories, construction, etc. (Lankasri).

Drug traffickers are naturally one of the largest consumers as Vietnamese gangs are a significant trader in the UK (Judah). In the past, illegal drugs were produced abroad and imported into the UK, but this became more risky as border controls and technology improved. Instead, drug trafficking organizations now find it safer to import forced labor and then produce the drugs domestically for export (ECPAT). Consequently, the children (often males) are imprisoned 24 hours a day in homes or buildings with reconstructed wiring and heating systems to monitor the growth and production of cannabis plants. They live in unsafe, unsanitary conditions with dangerous electricity systems, constantly darkened windows and doors to keep light and eyes away from the plants, locked into buildings they cannot escape from (Nguyen).

Care-givers are plagued by the knowledge that many trafficked Vietnamese children eventually leave care voluntarily to rejoin their traffickers (bọn buôn người), often under duress or manipulation. These departures are not always the result of force; rather, they are driven by a complex web of fears and pressures—both personal and familial. Traffickers frequently promise to shield the children from deportation, relocate them to safer environments, or reunite them with family members. For many, such offers seem like the only viable path forward.

The root of this vulnerability lies, in part, in the extreme financial precarity facing families in Vietnam’s poorer provinces. Parents often take on massive debts—sometimes borrowing tens of thousands of dollars or mortgaging their homes—to pay smuggling networks (Wee). This financial burden places immense pressure on the children, who feel obligated to find work and send remittances home. Traffickers exploit this sense of duty by offering supposedly legitimate job opportunities, which often mask exploitative or illegal labor.

In recent years, traffickers have also expanded their tactics, increasingly targeting more educated Vietnamese youth through online platforms—particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated economic and social vulnerabilities. Critically, many of these children may not fully understand the dangers they face, especially when manipulated through familiar language, cultural cues, or perceived trust.

Others, however, are fully aware of the threat—but feel they have no choice. Traffickers often use coercive tactics, including threats of violence against the child or their family in Vietnam. Many are told they must repay smuggling “fees,” which can reach or exceed $40,000 (Nguyen). Under such pressure, escape seems impossible, and exploitation becomes a grim inevitability.

“One Vietnamese boy who disappeared left a note ‘apologizing profusely’ to his foster carers. . . . He felt very guilty about leaving but he said, ‘They’re threatening my sister. I have to go’. . . . That’s what modern slavery is. It’s not always chains, people locked in. It’s a mental form of control.”

— Chloe Setter (Head of Advocacy, Policy, and Campaigns at ECPAT)

Many care centers seem to place the blame fully on the shoulders of the victims, arguing they cannot be expected to constantly monitor those who want to leave. However, there are also many stories of victims who escaped and sought help that were ultimately turned away or threatened by care staff and police officials (Einashe). There is some issue over the fact that western staff and officials often find it difficult to place the age of Asian victims, particularly those in the teenage years; and many adults are trained to claim to be minors to avoid legal ramifications (Carson).

Once in their prisoners’ hands, few of the slaves are ever paid for the work they do and those who are receive mere pittances (far below minimum wage). Occasionally traffickers send money home, but only to recruit new victims. Victims are moved to quieter, less populated areas like Nottingham or Northampton, where police lack sufficient resources to tackle the issue. If recovered, many are prosecuted as criminals, deported with records, and reabsorbed into Vietnam’s crime cycles—60% of traffickers there were once victims according to Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security (Nguyen).

“To my knowledge, there’s never been a prosecution of a Vietnamese trafficking gang for bringing children in for this purpose . . . .We’ve actually locked up, prosecuted and convicted more victims unlawfully than we have prosecuted those that are exploiting them”

— Chloe Setter (Head of Advocacy, Policy, and Campaigns at ECPAT)

France

*For more information, read the report by Investigate Europe (Link).

The center for France’s disappearing victims is the Charles De Gaulle (aka Roissy) Airport in the Paris region. There, children arrive accompanied by an unrelated adult who takes the minor’s papers and promptly leaves to return to Vietnam. Without their papers, the children cannot be immediately returned to Vietnam and border patrol is forced to take them into the government’s care.

Theoretically, the children will be assigned by a judge to the care of child welfare (ASE) who processes them and them places the children in homes like foster care or shelters.

However, the system is racked with failures and weaknesses, leaving the children incredibly vulnerable. The phone numbers which used to connect to the ASE switchboard are no longer in service, leaving them often unaware of new arrivals. ASE officials complain they are only half-staffed and lack sufficient personnel to handle picking the children up and processing them directly. Instead, border patrol and police forces often take the children directly to the homes or shelters, without informing ASE of the placement. ASE has not actually picked up and placed a child directly since 2019 and appears to have insufficient information to know where all the children are or how many have even disappeared.

Of those targeted by traffickers, Vietnamese children have been acknowledged to be the most common as 100% of those processed through ASE vanished between 2018 and 2019, not including those in the years preceding.

In a pattern all to often seen in these stories, area police forces again deny any knowledge that a trafficking system (Đường dây) exists or that the issue is prolific. This despite the fact that public prosecutors have confessed that Vietnamese children are consistently disappearing within 48 hours of arrival and the fact that some traffickers were caught in the act. The exact number of missing children is uncertain, but the government can date the problem clear back to 2016.

France has acknowledged that its system is not set up to properly identify or help trafficking victims. Border officials are trained in anti-immigration or counter-terrorism rather than anti-trafficking identification strategies. Police forces are also not trained in identifying victims which again leads to criminalization of the innocent. Some victims identified in Britain later admitted they had interacted with French police previously; however there were no translators for they to seek help from and police simply returned them to the hands of their smugglers (ECPAT).

The Netherlands

Between 2013 – 2017 in the Netherlands, Vietnam again was the second largest source of trafficked children, falling right behind Dutch citizens (National Rapporteur). Recovered victims have historically reported that Dutch and German embassies in Vietnam are common sources for illegal visas owing to corrupt relations between smugglers and embassy officials (ECPAT).

Dutch officials acknowledged that 97% (80+) of all Vietnamese children placed in government-run centers had vanished between 2013 – 2019 (NL Times Link 1, Link 2). Frustratingly, the government has long been aware of the matter, though it has done little to address it (Terlingen).

As early as 2015, the shelter Jade warned 100% of their Vietnamese children had vanished without a trace and one healthcare organization identified it as a ‘trend’ in the system (Terlingen). Jade pointed out clear signs of human trafficking amongst their inhabitants to police officers and noted that smugglers were actually waiting right outside the center doors to pick up the children. Another shelter expressed additional concerns between 2017 – 2018 (NL Times).

Many of these victims end up in the UK or are shuffled on to other countries as their final destination (Einashe and Terlingen). Recent reports confirm Vietnamese boys in Dutch care often disappear, linked to drug production and trafficking networks funneling them to the UK for exploitation (Missing Children Data)

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Specific countries of origin [go] missing. These include Nigerian girls and Indian- and Vietnamese boys. . . . Concern over the fate of these children relates to the increasing crossover between the smugglers who bring these children to Europe in risky and dangerous circumstances, and the traffickers who then force these children into sexual and labour exploitation as well as criminal and begging rings”

(Missing Children Data)

Despite all of these reports, the Dutch government has stated that there is no evidence to suggest there is a smuggling network in existence (Terlingen). They still have no information regarding who took the children, the circumstances of their disappearance, or where they are today. A supposed ‘investigation’ in 2016 lasted a meager two months and consisted apparently of two detectives asking for data before the study was closed. Though Parliament was told the investigation brought forth no new information, police admitted it was actually dropped because of anticipated difficulty in getting Vietnam’s help in addressing the issue (NL Times). They also acknowledged that evidence of the smuggling network did actually exist.

Officials claim there have been two newer investigations, but that nothing ‘criminal’ was found; however, this speaks more to the Government’s inability to do its job protecting children in its care than the actual issue of whether or not the trafficking exists in our opinion.

Tragically, on October of 2019, one of the children who fled a Dutch center was identified as one of 39 Vietnamese victims of an overheated truck smuggling them into Britain. The temperatures rose too high and the people on board suffocated to death leaving behind only bloody hand prints on the walls (Terlingen). The boy and another Vietnamese child had expressed a desire to remain at the center and had offered to speak with police about the smugglers who brought then into the Netherlands. It is not clear why they suddenly ran away.

“I was a child who was taken across Europe by people I was scared of. In France, the police didn’t help me and my traffickers found me again. When in the UK, I was treated like a criminal. One thing I would say to the people in Europe is, if it happened to your children, you wouldn’t ignore it. One thing I would say to the UK Government is, why are the victims the ones you treat like criminals?”

— Vietnamese Child Victim

Conclusion

The trafficking of Vietnamese children across Europe is a chilling testament to the failure of systems meant to protect the most vulnerable. This crisis is not confined to the UK, France, or the Netherlands but reverberates across the continent. According to a 2020 report from the European Migration Network, 35 of the 38 missing unaccompanied minors in Europe were Vietnamese, underscoring the disproportionate targeting of these children (Missing Children Data).

The pattern is clear: from Vietnam’s impoverished regions to Europe’s care facilities, a sophisticated and ruthless trafficking network exploits systemic gaps, cultural misunderstandings, and institutional indifference. These children, lured by false promises or coerced by threats, vanish into exploitation—forced into labor, prostitution, or drug production—often with no trace left behind. The lack of coordinated action, inadequate training, and denial of the problem’s scale by authorities only embolden traffickers. Until governments prioritize anti-trafficking measures, provide robust support for victims, and dismantle these criminal networks, the relentless cycle of disappearance and suffering will persist, stealing the futures of countless young lives.

The Faces of the Missing

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If You or Anyone You Know Has Information About The Disappearances, Please contact Police immediately or contact ECPAT for more information on who to reach out to (info@ecpat.org.uk)

Nếu bạn hoặc ai đó bạn biết từng là nạn nhân của nạn buôn người, hãy biết rằng bạn không đơn độc. Vui lòng liên hệ với cảnh sát của bạn ngay lập tức hoặc gọi 0800 0121 700. Bạn cũng có thể liên hệ với ECPAT (info@ecpat.org.uk).

Bạn là nạn nhân nếu chủ của bạn trả cho bạn quá ít, nếu công việc là bất hợp pháp, hoặc nếu bạn bị đe dọa tại nơi làm việc. Bạn cần yêu cầu giúp đỡ.

Cảnh sát ở châu Âu được cho là an toàn. Họ không nên làm tổn thương bạn hoặc đe dọa bạn; cố gắng tin tưởng họ. Nếu bạn bị thương bởi cảnh sát, nếu bạn đang bị đe dọa bởi một quan chức chính phủ, hoặc nếu bạn bị phớt lờ, vui lòng liên hệ với Tổ chức Ân xá Quốc tế. Email: contactus@amnesty.org.

Nếu bạn dưới 18 tuổi, bạn có thể là trẻ vị thành niên theo luật pháp và cần được bảo vệ đặc biệt.

Làm ơn giúp tôi.	“Please help me”
Tôi sợ hãi, và tôi cần giúp đỡ.	“I’m scared, and I need help”
Tôi đến từ Việt Nam	“I come from Vietnam”
Tôi cần một phiên dịch viên tiếng Việt	“I need a Vietnamese translator”
Tôi __ tuổi	“I am ____ years old”
Tên tôi là __	“My name is ____”
Tôi là nạn nhân của nạn buôn người	“I am a victim of human trafficking”
Tôi buộc phải làm việc ở đây, và tôi cần giúp đỡ	“I’m forced to work here, and I need help”
Có người đang đe dọa tôi	“Someone is threatening me.”
Ai đó đang đe dọa gia đình tôi	“Someone is threatening my family.”
Có người làm tổn thương tôi.	“Someone hurt me.”
Tôi cần một luật sư	“I need a lawyer”

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Resources

• Robson, S. (2020) ‘The Northamptonshire residents who vanished without trace’, Northants Live, 27 June. Link
• Fathima (2017) ‘Child Slavery Kidnappings in Britain’, Lankasri, 16 December. Link
• Stickings, T. (2018) ‘More than 10,000 children in care went missing last year amid fears of exploitation by child grooming gangs’, Daily Mail, 21 April. Link
• NL Times (2020) ‘Vietnamese kids missing from Dutch shelters victims of human trafficking: Rapporteur’, 26 March. Link
• NL Times (2019) ‘Dutch gov’t must do more to protect disappearing child asylum seekers’, 1 April. Link
• NL Times (2019) ‘Child asylum seekers increasingly disappearing from Dutch shelters’, 15 January. Link
• NL Times (2020) ‘Dutch gov’t knew about Vietnamese children disappearing from asylum centers for years’, 9 March. Link
• Miñano, L. (2020) ‘Missing in France: The plight of Vietnamese children who are trafficked into Europe’, Investigate Europe, 29 July. Link
• Lost in Europe (n.d.) ‘Crossborder investigative journalism’, VersPers. Link
• Einashe, I. and Terlingen, S. (2019) ‘Revealed: Vietnamese children vanish from Dutch shelters to be trafficked into Britain’, The Guardian, 30 March. Link
• ECPAT UK (2020) ‘Every Child Protected Against Trafficking’, October. Link
• ECPAT UK (n.d.) ‘ECPAT UK discusses plight of trafficked Vietnamese children in UK cannabis cultivation’. Link
• ECPAT UK (2020) ‘Precarious Journeys: Mapping vulnerabilities of victims of trafficking from Vietnam to Europe. Link
• Nguyen, K. (2015) ‘Abused, imprisoned Vietnamese slave away in UK’s cannabis farms’, Reuters, 25 February. Link (Wayback Archive)
• National Rapporteur Mensenhandel en Seksueel Geweldtegen Kinderen (2018) ‘Slachtoffermonitor mensenhandel 2013 – 2017’. Link. (Wayback Archive)
• Argos (2019) ‘Dozens of Vietnamese children disappeared from shelter’, 30 March. Link.
• Einashe, I. (2018) ‘Hundreds of trafficked children ‘lost’ by local authorities’, The Guardian, 15 December. Link
• Wee, S. (2019) ‘Britain Hasn’t Named 39 Dead in a Truck. But in Vietnam, They Know.’, The New York Times, 25 November. Link.
• Terlingen, S. (2020) ‘Vietnamese children dissapeared from protected shelters. And our government knew’, VPRO, 11 March. Link
• Spillett, R. (2017) ‘Dozens of Vietnamese children who were rescued from traffickers have vanished from council care amid fears they are back in the hands of slave gangs’, Daily Mail, 13 October. Link.
• Taylor, C. (2017) ‘Rochdale council failings see Vietnamese children in care disappear, with fears they have fallen into the hands of slave masters’, The Sun, 13 October. Link
• Carson, G. (2017) ‘Vietnamese children “at risk of being trafficked from care”, Community Care, 14 September. Link
• Briggs, B. (2019) ‘Trafficked children ‘missing’ from care by Scots councils’, The Ferret, 14 January. Link.
• Judah, S. (2013) ‘Why are so many of the UK’s missing teenagers Vietnamese?’, BBC, 17 June. Link.
• Herrmann, J. (2019) ‘Gangs use top schools to traffic Asian girls’, The Times, 4 November. Link.
• Herrmann, J. (2020) ‘Disappearing students, missed clues and a secret trafficking scandal that rocked England’s private schools’, The Mill, 27 June. Link.
• Winsor, M. and Chambers, A. (2019) ‘Bodies of victims found in refrigerated truck in UK arrive in Vietnam’, ABC News, 28 November. Link
• Missing People and ECPAT (2018) ‘Still in Harms Way’. Link
• Members’ Research Service (2025) “Disappearance of Migrant Children in the EU”, European Parliament, 22 May, Link.
• Anti-Slavery (2019) “Precarious journeys of Vietnamese children trafficked to Europe”, 2 March, Link.
• UN Office on Drugs and Crime (2024) “UNODC global human trafficking report: detected victims up 25 per cent as more children are exploited and forced labour cases spike”, 11 December, Link.
• Gov.UK (2025) “Country Policy and Information Note: trafficking, Vietnam, February 2025”, Link.
• University of Nottingham (2021) “The top 20 source countries for modern slavery victims in the UK: Comparative report”, April, Link
• US Department of State (2024) “2024 Trafficking in Persons Report: United Kingdom”, Link.
• European Commission (2025) “Report from the commission to the European Parliament, the Council, The European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on the progress made in the European Union in combating trafficking in human beings”, 20 January, Link.
• Missing Children Europe (2024) “Missing children data”, 14 February, Link.

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