Last year, 90 girls who were placed in secure accommodation to protect them from pimps vanished while on leave, television show Zembla will report on Thursday evening.

The total of 90 may be higher because five of the Netherlands’ 14 detention centres did not respond to the researchers or said they did not keep a breakdown of the figures, Zembla says.

Dutch human trafficking chief, Corinne Dettmeijer, says the disappearances are ‘worrying’, given that many of the girls will have ended up in the sex industry again.

Girls who have become enslaved by pimps should be treated as victims not as teenage girls with issues, she tells the programme.