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THE GIRL sat on a bench to one side of the crowded public gallery, fidgeting with the coat on her lap and distractedly taking in the procession of speeding and petty theft cases as they wound their way through the court. Every so often a few words or a smile would pass between her and the two prison officers sitting on either side, their bulk making her look even smaller than she was. Most of the time, she stared inscrutably ahead.

When the time came for her to stand, Judge William Harnett heard that, since gardaí had found the girl alone in a suspected brothel in Kilkenny a few weeks earlier, they had managed to identify her as a 17-year-old from Edo State in south-central Nigeria who was brought to Ireland, as the judge put it, "most likely for the purposes of putting her into slavery".