Fashion firm Target which signed deal with Victoria Beckham used factories where women were raped and tortured

A RETAILER which struck a £5million deal with Victoria Beckham used factories where women were raped and tortured, it has emerged.

Her new range with Target promises to deliver designer goods for prices as low as six dollars.

But we can reveal Target has a history tarnished by abuse of foreign factory workers.

Campaigners say it puts huge pressure on its factories to deliver goods quickly and cheaply — and called on designer Victoria, 42, to intervene.

The Victoria Beckham for Target range is due to hit the shops next April.

But Scott Nova of The Workers Rights Consortium said: “Victoria should be concerned about the conditions under which these goods are going to be manufactured.”

One probe into the Classic Factory in Jordan — where Target’s “limited edition Missoni range” is made — found 300 Asian women were raped there between 2007 and 2011.

Others, working 18-hour shifts for 61 cents an hour, were regularly beaten and deported.

A 2001 investigation found similar conditions at the Daewoosa Factory in American Samoa, where Target’s Pro Spirit label was produced.

Workers were cheated of wages, beaten, starved, sexually harassed and threatened with deportation if they complained.
In 2000, it emerged workers at the Chentex factory in Nicaragua were paid just 20 cents for each pair of Target Cherokee jeans sewed.

Later that year, the Mil Colores Company, which made Target’s High Sierra range, was slammed for its “sweatshop” conditions.

An investigation by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights found workers were paid “starvation wages” of as little as 20 cents an hour.

Institute director Barbara Briggs said firms must now pass “codes of conduct claiming they protect human rights”.

But she added: “The stuff’s worth wet paper. It has no teeth whatsoever.”

A spokesman for Victoria Beckham Ltd said last night it was liaising with Target but could not comment further.

Target said it is “committed to the highest ethical and legal standards”