Wakenya mnachoma picha! Kenyan woman jailed for a decade for running brothels in UK

Ann O’Brien
Ann O’Brien
Yes Kenya was not represented at the ongoing World Cup finals but Kenyans have made up to that by attracting headlines all over the world - for all the wrong reasons.

According to Dailymail, a Kenyan woman who ran two brothels and enslaved a Romanian woman to fund lavish home improvements was jailed for 10 years in the UK.

Ann O’Brien, 44, and husband Martin Carroll, 47, splashed out on a loft conversion, ground floor extension, designer kitchen several giant flat screen TVs and even £10,000 curtains.

O’Brien opened her first three-girl escort agency in 1997 after leaving a small village in Kenya and heading to Ireland where she married her first husband Patrick O’Brien.

She was eventually managing 40 prostitutes and paying thousands of pounds into 27 bank accounts each week.

She paid a £400,000 deposit to buy a £1.27m Georgian townhouse in Upper Berkeley Street, Mayfair, to run as a brothel offering a choice of women from around the world.

O’Brien was also running two websites dubbed ‘brothels on wheels’ which sent girls to homes and hotel rooms.

Her sex menu offered services for between £40-£150 depending on the degree of sexual contact with girls from as far afield as Thailand, Brazil and Sweden.

O’Brien was convicted of three counts of controlling prostitution in 2005 but let off with a 180-community punishment order and ordered to pay back £600,000 of her fortune.

Officers from the Met’s financial investigations unit seized assets including the madam’s Kilburn High Road hairdressing salon, her car and what remained in her bank accounts.

But soon O’Brien had started business again, running two bordellos with her husband and sister.

She was convicted of charges including conspiracy to control prostitution for gain, facilitating travel of another person with a view to exploitation after her latest Southwark Crown Court trial.

O'Brien's sister, Elizabeth Muya, 48 and her husband Martin Carroll, 47assisted the madam in running her prostitution network.

Muya was jailed for 21 months while Carroll, received a suspended sentence.

Carroll and O’Brien’s sister Elizabeth Muya, 48, were found guilty of conspiracy to convert criminal property and two counts of keeping a brothel for prostitution.

Judge Simon Russel-Flint, QC, said: ‘This was serious criminality that exploited many people of considerable vulnerability.

‘In Ms O’Brien’s case this is the fourth time that she has been before a court for similar offending in respect of prostitution or management of brothels and I am satisfied that they do present as an escalation and added diversity.