‘I JUST ran and ran,” says P, a human trafficking survivor from Vietnam. The Sunday National has agreed not to identify him to ensure his safety. He can’t remember collapsing in the road. But when he came to, he had been found by locals in the Scottish town where he had been held hostage on a cannabis farm for about a month. They had called an ambulance.

His story ended well. Today he is sitting in the welcoming office of the Scottish Guardianship Service, which was set up in 2010 to work with young people arriving in Scotland alone having been separated from their parents. The majority are applying for asylum and about 40% have been trafficked.

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They come from countries all over the world – China, Iran, Nigeria – but Vietnam is the single biggest country of origin and almost all those young people have trafficking indicators. Last year alone the service worked with 35 young people from Vietnam.

Like P, many are very young when they are trafficked, often told that they are being offered a better life overseas. “I was 14,” he says. “I had a normal life in Vietnam, then my dad left, and I lived with my mum. But she died. I was on my own. So I had no choice.”

First he was taken to Taiwan to work long hours in a restaurant where he was beaten for just breaking a plate. “He was a very angry boss. I worked for two years there. I stayed in a house and I gave them the money I earned for food. I wanted to run away but I didn’t know any Chinese. I didn’t know where I could go.”

In 2016 his boss offered to take him to the UK to work in another restaurant. “When I came here it was not a restaurant,” he says. “He took me to a house where they were growing cannabis. I knew it was wrong.”

The house was, he says, a normal family house but with the furniture stripped out and the windows covered. The cannabis plants, which he had to water and care for, grew in one room and he slept in the next, on the hard floor with blankets. He was guarded day and night and not allowed to leave. The smell of cannabis was overwhelming.

But one day, a month after living there, he saw a chance to escape and ran for his life. “I was very ill,” he remembers. “I had pains all over my body. I remember when the doctor checked me [after he escaped] and I coughed up blood. I must have looked strange and I was crying.”

He was given housing and reassurance but recovery took time. “For a long time after I escaped I was very scared,” he says. “For the first four or five months I didn’t go out at all. I thought the traffickers would find me.”

He was too scared to tell anyone he had been cultivating cannabis, worried that he would be criminalised. Gradually he began to trust his guardian, who had expertise in working with young people like him, and confided in her. “Nobody knew. But my guardian explained that I’d not done anything wrong. I stared to trust her.”

Suddenly his story made sense, and his need for protection was clear. She was then able to help him put forward a case and two weeks ago – though after an 18-month wait – he was granted refugee status, giving him leave to remain.

“I was so happy,” he says. “I was worried that if I was sent back they [traffickers] would kill me.”

At night he can sleep again – for a long time he could not – and his guardian continues to offer support. “I still think about it a lot,” he says. “But I am starting to think about the future too. I just want to keep studying English and get a job. I have people around me now who care about me.”