Caitlin Hanna: sex trafficking in Belfast exposed

The death of Caitlin Hanna helped break a sex trafficking ring operating in the heart of Belfast.

Victims of four elderly men who got young women hooked on heroin and sold them for sex found the courage to speak to police after the 21-year-old died.

New BBC documentary, Caitlin Hanna: Trafficked in Belfast reveals the devastation caused by her addiction and death, after years of grooming by Derek Brown.

And it exposes the seedy truth that women who look ravaged by their addiction are more likely to attract men out to buy sex.

Robert Rodgers at the door of his Antrim Road flat which he used as a brothel 

Caitlin was found dead in Derek Brown’s Lisburn home on March 28 2022. She was one of several young women he controlled by getting them hooked on heroin and forcing them into sex work.

Brown (62) received a six-year sentence in March 2025, half to be served in prison, for human trafficking, controlling prostitution for gain, sexual assault, paying for sexual services and drugs-related offences, including supplying a Class A drug.

His exploitation of young women was exposed when police raided the home of human trafficker Martin Heaney and discovered secretly recorded videos of Heaney having sex with vulnerable women, who were often found in Brown’s home.

He had started to take advantage of Caitlin when she was just 16.

Deborah Hanna with a picture of her daughter 

Mum Deborah says her bright and academically gifted daughter spiralled downwards in her teens, including physical assaults on her mother, and eventually moved to live with an aunt and then to an assisted living facility.

Doborah is haunted by the physical deterioration she witnessed in Caitlin.

“I would have had the police at the door every other night because in the assisted living place they had to contact me when Caitlin didn’t come back,” says Deborah.

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“There was one night my aunt had to go over and get her and I went down to my aunt’s house and I will never, ever forget the image of her when I walked through that door.

“She was wearing this big long black coat which she wouldn’t take off because she didn’t want me to see her arms.

Caitlin and mum Deborah 

“Her hair was falling out. It was just horrendous. It was liking watching her dying in front of your eyes and not being able to do anything about it.”

Deborah tried everything in the hope that Caitlin would come back to the family and friends who loved her. When nothing worked she had to accept her daughter’s circumstances and supported her by paying for clothes and electricity.

“I was sick of fighting and trying to stop her addiction, trying to stop this lifestyle she was in and it wasn’t working so I need to adapt now into her life if I want to have any type of relationship with her. I need to accept that this is Caitlin’s life now,” she says.

She had heard her daughter talking frequently about Derek and remembers the horror of meeting him when she bumped into Caitlin at a local garage four weeks before her death.

“I will never forget that, seeing with my own eyes an old man, he looked older than my daddy,” says Deborah.

“If I had known exactly what was going on he would never have drove out of that garage with my child in that car.”

Oliver MacCormack, Derek Brown, Kenneth Harvey and Robert Rodgers 

Survivor Rebecca Whyte recalls how Brown groomed the young women he exploited, and how his control over Caitlin started when she was just a teenager.

“She would have been round him from she was probably 16 or 17,” says Rebecca.

“When I first met Derek he acted soft, he acted caring and you genuinely would have thought that he was those things.

“He let us stay in his house because we were homeless, would have fed you, gave you a bed to sleep in, somewhere you could get showered.

“If you were taking heroin Derek didn’t just give you money for heroin, he would have supplied it as well.

“There was an aspect of safety around him but that was his approach in getting you under his control.”

Derek Brown started taking advantage of Caitlin when she was just 16 

Rebecca lost everything when she was exploited by Oliver MacCormack (72), who got her hooked on heroin, and made her have sex with him and other men. He’s currently serving a nine-year sentence for 40 convictions, including multiple counts of human trafficking, supplying Class A drugs and controlling prostitution for gain. His initial seven-year sentence, handed down in April 2025, was increased on appeal.

She says customers, some of whom were family men with child seats in their cars, were well aware they were having sex with vulnerable women.

“These men knew we were either addicts, we were homeless or were desperate for money, especially if they were going through the men to book us,” she says.

Caitlin’s mum Deborah says her daughter wanted to turn her life around.

“She wanted her life to change. She wanted to come off the drugs and come away from that lifestyle but it was just so hard,” she says.

Caitlin had met with the police team who eventually caged Brown, and in a heartbreaking interview with an officer she’s heard telling them, “I do try my hardest. But I always fail in the end. Always.”

The documentary contains chilling police body-cam footage of Brown in his home after Caitlin’s body was found, clearly irritated that he’s being arrested and attempting to deflect any blame away from himself by telling officers the young woman has three wraps of heroin in her purse. He told police he was helping the women get ‘straightened up’.

A post mortem showed she had died of a drugs overdose but had no heroin in her system. She had taken methadone, bromazolam and pregabalin. The tablets were found in Brown’s possession.

Another of Brown’s victims, who wishes to remain anonymous, went to police when she witnessed his callousness at Caitlin’s death, and Rebecca also gave evidence.

Kenneth Harvey was 74 when he was jailed in 2024 for human trafficking and paying for sexual services 

“I came forward because I was silenced for so long,” she says.

“Then I thought if I don’t actually speak up then there is going to be a girl after me. There could be a child after me.”

Brown and MacCormack were part of a network of older men who targeted vulnerable young women for sexual exploitation.

Kenneth Harvey of Old Road, Lisburn, was jailed for two years in December 2024, one to be served in prison and one on licence, for human trafficking and paying for sexual services. He was 74 when he was jailed.

Robert Rodgers was convicted in October 2024 and given a two-year probation order for brothel keeping and controlling prostitution for gain. He was 79 at the time.

Harrowing research by the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute (SERP) reveals it wasn’t just the four convicted men who took advantage of the vulnerable and addicted women.  Sex buyers also prefer women who look ill, says SERP director Ruth Breslin.

“I’ve heard survivors say that the healthier I looked the less buyers I had, that it would be the ones who most looked physically like they suffered the effects of addiction, they would have the most number of buyers, they would have the busiest night on the street.

“It’s very hard to understand what that is about except to think that this isn’t just about sex. It’s also very much about power and control,” she says.

Caitlin Hanna: Trafficked in Belfast is on BBC1 on Tuesday at 10.40pm.