Woman jailed after claiming to be held captive and work as sex worker

By Sonya McLean

A woman who falsely claimed she was being held captive and being forced to work as a sex worker has been jailed for two years and three months.

Brenda Emmanuel (34) arrived at Store Street Garda Station in Dublin in October 2019 and told them she had just managed to escape her captives. She said she had travelled from her village in Nigeria six months earlier to Ireland to work as a home help.

She said a woman had organised her transportation and she was instructed to engage in certain rituals and afterwards she was threatened that if she didn’t partake she would be killed.

Emmanuel said she had never travelled before and she was provided with certain documentation as she travelled with this woman to Ireland.

She was collected from Dublin Airport and brought to a house in Balbriggan where she was held captive and while there she was forced to work every day as a sex worker. She estimated that she was effectively raped two to three times a day.

Emmanuel said she had been told that sex work was necessary as she was now in debt to others because of the cost of her travelling to Ireland.

Emmanuel, who was previously living in hostel accommodation in Carrickmacross, Monaghan has now moved to County Louth.

She pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to three charges of knowingly making a false statement on dates between October 2019 and December 2020 at Store Street Garda Station. She made five statements to gardaí in total.

Judge Ronan Munro said after hearing the evidence last week that “public deterrence” in such cases is important.

“It is quite concerning to me that the nature of these allegations insulates her from further investigation as you do not want to challenge her on it,” Judge Munro said, referring to the sensitivity of the allegations Emmanuel made to gardaí.

“The gardaí should not have been put in this position,” he continued.

Before sentence was imposed, Emmanuel made a statement outlining her deepest remorse for her actions. She said she was taking full responsibility and knows that her behaviour was unacceptable and had an impact on the officers involved in the case.

“I am committed to change my ways and be of good character henceforth,” she said.

Sentencing Emmanuel, Judge Munro said unfortunately such cases as Emmanuel alleged do occur in the real world.

He commended the gardaí for their “swift, professional and effective response” later describing their high quality detective work as “painstaking”.

“Their investigation was thorough – that aggravates the crime,” Judge Munro said.

Judge Munro said it was obvious that the gardaí would have been concerned that there could be other women being held captive and the crime needed to be detected.

“The gardaí were very compassionate because they took what she said at face value – that they were dealing with a trauma victim,” the judge said.

He noted that the officers drove around Balbriggan for three to four hours trying to get Emmanuel to point out the house where she was held and later put hours into tracing her movements through CCTV footage.

Judge Munro noted that the maximum sentence for the offence is five years.

He said it was pre-planned story that was “concocted and repeated many times over a year”, describing her actions as “pre-meditated and calculated”.

“The gardaí put many hours into investigating the crime in an attempt to rescue the other potential victims. Such false claims of rape is a disservice to rape victims and undermines those victims who are subjected to such appalling circumstances,” Judge Munro said.

He said Emmanuel had deliberately assumed the status of a rape victim which undermines those complaints, noting that gardaí may now ask themselves if these reports of rape could be false – “they (gardaí) should not be put in that position,” the judge said.

“She diverted garda resources from genuine victims which does them an appalling disservice – to woman in particular as it attacks the resources reserved for trafficked women,” Judge Munro said.

In imposing sentence, he took into account that Emmanuel had no previous convictions and had not made a specific allegation against one person. He acknowledged that her motivation was in sourcing a better life for her children.

He set a headline sentence of four years which he reduced to three years taking into account the mitigation.

“There should be a general deterrence for other people who are contemplating such a offence that they are left in no doubt of the gravity of this crime.”

“Her children are at home now without their mother but she has brought this upon them herself. She wanted a better life for her children but that was built on a lie and that is why it has fallen apart,” Judge Munro said.

He suspended the final nine months of the three-year term on strict conditions.

Detective Garda Michelle Fitzpatrick told Antonia Boyle BL, prosecuting, that when Emmanuel arrived at Store Street she claimed she had just been presented with an opportunity to escape that day.

She said had escaped out of the house and climbed over a wall and “ran and ran” until she reached a bus stop. She said a lady at the bus stop put her on a bus and she came straight to the garda station. She said she was frantic and somebody had paid her bus fare.

Gda Fitzpatrick said officers brought Emmanuel to Balbriggan and drove around the area for about four hours to see if she could point out the house she had been held in or if anything in the locality seemed familiar to her.

Emmanuel was unable to recognise anything.

She made further statements the following January and then again in December 2020 but Det Gda Fitzpatrick said she often became too upset to complete the statements.

Gardaí became suspicious as Emmanuel was evasive at times and unable to provide detail of the house. Officers used various interviewing techniques in an attempt to trigger her memory but still nothing was provided that could assist the investigation.

Emmanuel insisted she was telling the gardaí the truth. She claimed her daughter had been assaulted at home and Emmanuel said she was being ordered to pay a large sum of money or her family would be harmed.

She then claimed her family had been attacked because she had escaped captivity. She provided medical records in relation to their treatment after this attack but Det Gda Fitzpatrick said the documentation was not legitimate.

Gardaí looked back on CCTV footage from the area on the day of Emmanuel’s supposed escape from captivity.

They found footage of Emmanuel with two other women in a shopping centre in Swords before the three woman split up and Emmanuel was driven to a bus stop.

Gda Fitzpatrick said they managed to trace the car and searched the home of the registered owner of that vehicle in March 2021. During that search, diaries were found which contained a narrative which was very similar to the account given by Emmanuel to gardaí.

They then searched the hostel that Emmanuel was staying in and found handwritten documentation,  which was later analysed by a handwriting expert.

The expert concluded that there was strong evidence that both the diaries and documentation had been written by the same person.

Analysis of Emmanuel’s bank account revealed that she had been paying money into the bank account of the owner of the car who had dropped her at the bus stop.

Emmanuel was arrested in January 2022. Her DNA was taken and this linked her back to a copy book that also contained handwritten entries with a similar narrative to that account which Emmanuel had provided to gardaí.

Det Gda Fitzpatrick confirmed that the investigation into Emmanuel’s claim was taken very seriously and took up hundreds of hours of garda time.

She accepted a suggestion from Kieran Kelly BL, defending, in cross-examination that it had been a comprehensive investigation and “no stone was left unturned”.

She accepted that Emmanuel had two children who have since come to live with her in Ireland. She is now working as a porter in a hotel.

Counsel said his client wanted to come to Ireland and bring her children with her.