comment is free  Sex trafficking is no illusion  Nick Davies
argues that the problem of sex trafficking has been exaggerated.
This is the last thing trafficked women need  A correction
pertaining to the opinion piece below by Rahila Gupta was
printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column,
Monday 1 February 2010  An article on trafficking into the sex
trade has been written by the investigative reporter Nick
Davies, whose reputation will lend authority to it – although it
is a hugely selective piece of reporting of the available
research.  The article purports to show that so few women are
trafficked into the sex trade that the policy, services and
funding focus on it is completely misplaced. The debate on
trafficking is bedevilled by the lack of credible data – but the
parallels are not with the weapons of mass destruction case, as
Davies suggests, which was ultimately verifiable, but with other
subterranean issues such as domestic violence or rape. The
widely accepted statistic that one in