He claims he was just trying to help women - but police beg to differ. A man convicted of operating brothels in Lincoln, Derby and Chesterfield with his partner in crime has claimed he simply had the girls' welfare at heart. Lorry driver Meyrick Bramhill-Purchase, 65, and restaurant worker Mo Quan Zhou, 45, were arrested in May and subsequently jailed for crimes relating to prostitution and modern slavery.
Their racket was exposed after a concerned letting agent called Lincolnshire Police about suspicions that a house in Friars Lane, Lincoln, was being used as a brothel. Officers launched an investigation which unearthed evidence of nine brothels. Police said vulnerable Chinese and Malaysian women were found, having been trafficked around the country. A man who visited one brothel in London Road, Derby, called police when he became concerned that the woman there had been trafficked.
Zhou was jailed for five-and-half years and Bramhill-Purchase was handed a sentence of four-and-half years after a jury found them guilty in May Bramhill-Purchase, who was released from prison last month to serve the rest of his time on licence, told Lincolnshire Live that he got involved after feeling a bit down in the dumps and going for a massage.
He said: "I went for a massage and afterwards I got talking to the girl and she told me all about the problems for single women from foreign countries. He said that women, aged over 20, "would be expected to perform all sorts of things" in places like London after arriving in the UK to make money to send home to their families. He added that the girls would initially be paying back money they had borrowed, perhaps from loan sharks, to get to Britain.
Bramhill-Purchase said: "I was arrested in Chesterfield for prostitution offences but I did not make people do these things. They knew it was free and easy for them up here and they could still send money back home. My name was on the tenancies of five properties. He accepted that the adverts on escort websites were "suggestive" but that "suggestive sex sells".
