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Table of Contents
- The Reasons
- What is this website all about?
- Why this project?
- Why is such a website necessary?
- Who do we want to read this pages?
- Can SOS-announcements on the web really help?
- Do we have grants for this project?
- What do the creators of the project think about prostitution in general?
- Are clients of prostitutes perpetrators?
- Why this name?
- The Background
- What is trafficking in women?
- Women's rights?
- Is this not just a problem in Thailand?
- The Victims
- How do the girls and women get into trouble?
- What are the main categories of victims?
- Why are the girls and women so uninformed and fall into this trap?
- What is the familiar background of trafficked girls?
- How can someone be forced to prostitution?
- Those trapped in the "West", why do they not run to the police and witness?
- OK, she was forced - but now she is maybe not anymore?
- Are East-European women the better lovers?
- How do trafficked women get free?
- What happenes to the women after they escape their misery?
- Do forced prostitutes like to return home after being caught in western countries?
- Are they safe after their return to normal life?
- Does this happen only in Western Europe?
- Why does police not "solve" the problem?
- The Offenders
- Why can gangsters speak here?
- The guys with sunglasses and tattoos?
- Why can make traffickers such a fortune? Why foreign prostitutes?
- What is the price of a girl?
- The Johns
- Why do we want to talk with them?
- Do clients realize if a prostitute is forced to sex or a minor?
- How do clients react when they find out a girl is trafficed, forced or minor?
- How should a client react, when he finds a girl forced to prostitution?
- Do many clients help trapped, trafficked girls?
- Life after prostitution: example Podem
- What is Podem? - locked away and forgotten...?
- Is Podem a charity project of us?
- The Reasons
- What is this website all about?
- Why this project?
- Why is such a website necessary?
- Who do we want to read this pages?
- Can SOS-announcements on the web really help?
- Do we have grants for this project?
- What do the creators of the project think about prostitution in general?
- Are clients of prostitutes perpetrators?
- Why this name?
- The Background
- What is trafficking in women?
- Women's rights?
- Is this not just a problem in Thailand?
- The Victims
- How do the girls and women get into trouble?
- What are the main categories of victims?
- Why are the girls and women so uninformed and fall into this trap?
- What is the familiar background of trafficked girls?
- How can someone be forced to prostitution?
- Those trapped in the "West", why do they not run to the police and witness?
- OK, she was forced - but now she is maybe not anymore?
- Are East-European women the better lovers?
- How do trafficked women get free?
- What happenes to the women after they escape their misery?
- Do forced prostitutes like to return home after being caught in western countries?
- Are they safe after their return to normal life?
- Does this happen only in Western Europe?
- Why does police not "solve" the problem?
- The Offenders
- Why can gangsters speak here?
- The guys with sunglasses and tattoos?
- Why can make traffickers such a fortune? Why foreign prostitutes?
- What is the price of a girl?
- The Johns
- Why do we want to talk with them?
- Do clients realize if a prostitute is forced to sex or a minor?
- How do clients react when they find out a girl is trafficed, forced or minor?
- How should a client react, when he finds a girl forced to prostitution?
- Do many clients help trapped, trafficked girls?
- Life after prostitution: example Podem
- What is Podem? - locked away and forgotten...?
- Is Podem a charity project of us?
The reasons for this project
What is this website all about?
It's about something that happens in your neighbourhood. These days thousands of young women (most of them still minors) get cheated and kidnapped by traffickers and sold to slave traders and pimps in countless countries around whole Europe. They are smuggled to serve as prostitutes, on the street or in the brothels of Holland, Italy, Germany, France, Macedonia, Czechia - and everywhere else where their "owners" can make money with them. This project is here to give you details.
Why this project?
The reason why we created this website is, because we have been looking for something similar and after scanning dozens of NGO (Non Governmental Organization) websites we realized that none of the organizations and groups dealing with forced prostitution and trafficking in women/children ever paid attention to this kind of presentation. We decided to create this website ourselves. So this website is the result of a lack in the internet landscape of NGOs. While the ongrowing subject of trafficking in women and forced prostitution finds the attention of NGOs around the world, the persons behind the problem remain unknown and mute. The NGOs do a great work, but for You, dear reader, there are thousands of memorandums, resolutions, white papers and petitions to read, if you want to understand the problem.
But the "problem" happens in your neighbourhood, maybe next door and it can be as simple as you can imagine. So let those speak, who have been the closesed witnesses to it, who absolved a personal disaster beyond the imagination of many ordinary people.
Why is such a website necessary?
To get a distant looking problem a little closer. The work of NGOs is focused on two areas: the immediate help to women in distress and to influence authorities of all countries effected by the problem. They are of course interested in the attention of the ordinary public as well. Therefore many of the NGOs organize public discussions or make workshops at schools. But it is not surprising that they fail to bring the "problem" closer to the people's mind, to the people's perception because they can only stay the mediators of the problem. They are led by strong principles and responsibility: they will not just bring a minor ex-prostitute to a panel discussion or to a school workshop. Most of these women are in a bad condition or very scared to step into public. They have to stay under protection or are a part of a legal proceeding. And to be honest - a lot of NGO people are simply a little bit too scared to dare something.
It was our intention, to give the women a voice and to collect their stories with their words. It is the beginning of a long search. These accounts are rare. You will find thousands of pages about the topic, but nearly nothing reflecting the victim's own words. But most of the ordinary people will not read all these memorandums of concern, studies and survey reports. Many still think in stereotypes like: "they got into it, so they have somehow wanted it". But these difficult-to-get confessions can provide help to understand the problem. The sources can be various: archives of journalists and NGOs or police files.
Who do we want to read these pages?
Our mission is to inform through first hand eye-witness accounts. We like to inform everybody, especially those people who are not "professional" human right activists. We believe that an intensive collection of testimonies can be an additional hint to people working on various research projects, writing diploma or thesis. Also we would like to inform the "clients" of prostitutes about the current situation and collect their opinions under respect of their wish for anonymity. It seems like many of the so calles "johns" are not aware of the fact that a women they pay for sex can be a slave forced to do it.
Can SOS-announcements on the web really help?
We are absolutely aware of the fact, that most of the women and girls in distress will NOT be surfing the Internet. On the other hand - there is no harm in including it indeed - e.g. for the clients who want to help. Besides that the World Wide Web reaches the poeple in Moldavia, Ukraine or Albania as well. The local internet cafes are becomming a popular meeting point for young people and many of the painful trafficking journeys start there - by finding an online advert offering jobs and marriages abroad. So it would be wrong to say that trafficked girls and women in general have no idea about the Internet.
Do we have grants for this project?
No. Currently this project is financed only private by the authors.
What do the creators of the project think about prostitution in general?
We are not interested in moral verdicts and lately appearing attitudes to regard "johns" as perpetrators. Nor are we trying to banalize the problems around prostitution. Prostitution in general is affected by many milieu-related problems, like drugs, social non-acceptance, violence... But our mission is to deal with forced prostitution: with trafficking, dignity deprivation, kidnapping and murder - characterstics which conventional prostitution doesn't adopt. So we see a necessity to regard forced prostitution and prostitution in general as two separate things.
Regarding the prostitution in general we basically see the eternal problem of the "pimp", as the major source of all illegal trouble. We would welcome prostitution as a business agreement between a sex-worker and a client, without a third party (pimp) being involved.
Are clients of prostitutes perpetrators?
Well in Sweden they are regarded that way - similar tendencies (to punish clients) are discussed in french politics now. We do not see clients as perpetrators. But we cannot deny that on the level of forced prostitution the clients create more demage than useful things. Because they are so hopelessly ignorant and do not want to see the difference between a professional sex-worker and a trafficked girl. The image of the clients would get much better, if they would throw away their blinders, instead of feeding the fat bank accounts of some mafia guys.
So we can answer the question simply: we do not think clients are perpetrators, as long as they go to sex-workers and not to women, which are forced to do it against their own will.
Why this name?
"Ex oriente lux" - from the East [comes] the light - is not meant to be cynical, not even ironic. The title turns against agony and ignorance. Against the demonization of the "East" and against the resignation. The life perspectives of most women who went through the tragedy of being trafficked are very small - but then our work lives from hope. Hope that single women and girls can find back to a normal life (which in fact happens!). This is the light of hope they carry within. This is the light we talk about.
The background
Or why Europe loves to humiliate and torture its daughters
What is trafficking in women?
A growing percentage of prostitutes is not doing it of their own free will. They are forced to it by criminal pimps who treat them as slaves, torture and rape them, give them strong drugs and threaten them. They live in a state of constant fear and horror. And their minus is: they are very young, unexperienced and very alone in their situation.
Women's rights?
It is said that "women's rights" is an unnecessary term because women's rights are also human rights and one term should be enough as an umbrella to all kind of distress and atrocities people around the world suffer. Same could be said about "children's rights". But it is also true that there are specific violations of human rights that are mostly caused by men and suffered only by children and women. Many children and young women wake up in a harsh situation between torture and the loss of dignity. So the problem is very gender specific.
Is this not just a problem in Thailand?
Organized criminality gets more and more involved into trafficking in people. Amongst them are many women and children brought over borders for the brothels/whore houses of whole Europe. What in former years was regarded as a "Thai" problem or an "African" problem has reached a growing new quality since the fall of the iron curtain. The western red light districts are supplied by women from eastern countries like Moldavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania or Ukraina. Many of them are kept prisoner, sent on the streets by violent pimps, secretly offered in anonymous apartmens or forced to act in children pornography. They are prostitutes against their will. It happens in your neighbourhood.
The European situation is unique due to geopolitical facts. It is pretty expensive and complicated to traffick girls from Thailand to Europe (though it still happens). So the trafficking from the Balcans is simple and cheap comparing with that. No airplanes are needed, no forged marriages.
The Victims
How do the girls and women get into trouble?
It's the old classic story: dreaming of a better life. All these girls come from countries struggling with harsh economical problems. And East-European newspapers are full of adverts offering "great jobs in Germany", as waitress, model or as assistant to whatever. It is not wrong to say that many of these girls are very naive and that their governments should do more educational work to warn their kids of this danger. They follow blindly this dream of the Golden West, eager created in these countries during the whole 20. century.
But there are of course far more scenarios. Many girls simply get kidnapped, squeezed into cars. Another trick is the false promise of a "Mail-Order Marriage". But it can even be more perfidious: Sometimes boyfriends turn into devils. There are even cases known where relatives are responsible for the tragedy. Uncles or friends of the family who "sell" the girls into this modern "slavery".
What are the main categories of victims?
By simplifying the situation a little, it can be said, that there are three scenarios:
Category 2 seems to be the most usual one. Category 1 and 2 (which makes maybe 80% of all trafficked prostituted women) would have never agreed to a sex-job if you would have asked them before.
Why are the girls and women so uninformed and fall into this trap?
Indeed there might be a big protion naivity and let's say stupidity. They are young and they have the dreams of young people. Regarding the job-offer-trick: there are of course many girls who come back from au-pair, from these jobs as waitress or at least from doing washing-up in a restaurant in Italy or Germany. So not every add is a fraud. Many come back after having made some money and impress those at home. Therefore it is difficult for the local governments to act here, because these kind of ads are very many and only a small part is a trick.
What is the familiar background of trafficked girls?
Of course nearly all of them come from lower class families - so it is not suprising that many of them already look back on a violent childhood, aggressive father, etc. One of the classical scenarios is: after violence in the family, the girl runs away, lives few days on the street and get picked up by slave traders.
But the slave traders do not "fish" only on the street. They also hang around in the clubs and discos of the Balcans, where a girl can pay a drink and afford to spend her time. So if it starts with kidnapping, it can happen that even a girl from "better family" can get trafficked.
How can someone be forced to prostitution?
Many "involved" experts may regard this as a stupid question, but for many people not familiar with the situation it is a major question, how someone can endure such a situation without running away. It is understandable that the questioner cannot understand that someone is doing and taking this for months or sometimes years.
First of all some do run away. That's why all these NGOs are here to help them. In our link section you can find many references to organizations and groups helping women in this kind of distress. But running away is sometimes difficult, because the women are under strong observation. A long and violent procedure of "brain wash" follows, often combined with strong drugs. You shouldn't forget that a huge part of these "women" are rather kids - in the age of 14 or 15. They do not have the grown-up psyche of a woman of 30. Soon those girls accept that there is only this form of reality and they start to think about, how to make the best out of their situation. The idea of "escape" can get very distant for them. So in most cases only a police operation can get them out of the house.
Those who are trapped in the "West", why do they not run to the police and witness?
- Being locked away and under strong observation.
- Being scared that the pimps take a deadly revenge.
- Being scared of police, because all world is corrupt & could work with the pimps.
- Being scared that police will make things public and the own family will find it out.
- Being scared of the threat of the pimps that they will do something to the family home.
- Being ashamed to talk to strange people about the experiences.
- Being apathic and "brain-washed".
- Being drugged most of the time.
- Being uninformed about their human rights and that something like that even exists.
- Being fatalistic: "That's what life is about. It will never change."
More reasons wanted?
OK, she was forced - but now she is maybe not anymore?
NGO-people hate this question, because they had to answer it too many times. Some cannot even understand how someone can ask this seriously. It's about this endless 'well somehow they have to like it at least a little, because if not, they would run away'. But let's pay to it some attention one more time and describe what we think about it.
It's more a question about: 'What is reality?' - about self-preservation through a distorted perception... The problem, why many western "johns" have difficulties to recognize that a prostitute they pay for sex could be forced to do it, has to do with the way the girls have to deal with their situation. A trafficked girl after months in prostitution of course doesn't behave like a scared innocent. It doesn't whisper to you "Help me, help me..." This could theoretically happen. But it's not usual. Why should the girl trust you? A "john" can always be a good friend of the pimp. And the punisment for such actions can be very harsh.
So the kids develope very strong instincts for survival. But the price is high! It's about adaptation and submission. Too many of them don't know the difference between forced and not forced - in fact they systematically lose the idea that there is another world than this one. That there could have been another life, as a clerk in an office, or working as a tailor or teacher... Having a husband and kids... This all become distant, while the world of pimps, gangsters, horny soldiers and alcohol is a very close measure for things. A strange phenomenon which we could see in Podem (the home for minor ex-prostitutes in Bulgaria, see also below), is that many of these girls - even after being out of prostitution for a while - put posters of nude pinup girls and play mates on the walls of their little rooms. Which is quote odd. You hardly find a 16 old girl who would put this kind of posters over her nursery bed instead of the typical naive boygroup pictures. Except she made this dark and tragic experiences. But this is just one of many symptoms for the systematic distortion of reality and deformation of psyche - done by the traffickers and pimps.
Therefore after a while it's very easy to say about single cases that these girls do not make the impression of being "forced" to anything. They do not cry for help, they do not talk to police and (which can be the worst for their credibility) too many of them return "voluntary" back to prostitution after being set free again. It's the only world they know and it's the price they paid for having survived. Unfortunately those who "free them" (mostly the police) do not have answers or perspectives for them. Once they are exonerated they get thrown back on the street. In western countries they mostly get deported back to their countries, which in many cases means back to same trouble. Only the NGOs are trying to help here, but their means are of course limited by money and law (and there are of course NGOs who generate so much bureaucracy, that there is not much space left for getting prostitutes out of trouble).
Are East-European women the better lovers?
This is the most spread cliché amongst the clients everywhere in West and Middle Europe. We can still read in Internet stories about the "ukrainian whore which had an orgasm with me" - at least few of the guys have some sense of reality by adding a short "is this possible?" to their posting. If it wouldn't be so tragic, it would be worth a laughter. But the opinion of all the clients doesn't come by chance. There are reasons for it.
First of all - let's get this one point clear: prostitutes do not have orgasms with clients. Impossible? It is possible: manned space flight is also possible. But that doesn't mean that YOU are the one who will fly to the stars. The point is, what is the difference between a professional sex-worker and a trafficked girl? If you regard high frequented places like the "Kiez" in Hamburg/Germany, you can see a lot of hardboiled women, which knows how to keep the situation under their control. The rule is "take as much money as you can, for as few service as it is possible". Now if you are not one of these "tough guys" who already visited 100 sex-workers before, you have psychologically no chance to control the situation. She does. After all you may have this feeling like this was not exactly what you wanted. Now regardless the fact if professional sex-workers should act a little bit less cold but more empathic (which is in fact an old discussion), of course you hardly find this amongst forced prostitutes. Girls which have been playing around in the school yard just few months before and who absolved the pimp's school now - they do not know anything about this traditional rule of the Red Light World. Women who are completely broken. "Broken in" as the pimps use to say - making this work themselves. So if you interpret an absolutely broken and mentally destroyed women as a kind of "east-european nymphomania", then it's your problem. But to show you how perfid the situation is: the way you fail to see her in the right light, she fails the same with you. Because she maybe thinks you are here to help her, you like her. Why should she be so naiv? Because you don't beat her in her face, don't kick her in her stomach and don't rape her. It's about getting the things into right perspective. After all the brain-wash and torture done by an albanian, serbian or czech pimp, it can look like quite a luck, to be suddenly "just walking on the street and doing no-condom-blowjobs with Germans", but do you really think you are the big Mr.Lover she waited a whole life for?
We heard all this crap already 15 years ago from Thailand. "Yes, they are prostitutes, but it is amazing how passionate and serious they take their job". "So much love for so few money!" The only fact in this game is, that if you would take a client/john and let him go through the same procedure like thousands of these girls did, and then you would tell him to bark anytime he sees the moon, he would do it - that's for sure. It's about power and control - not about sexuality.
How do trafficked women get free?
Either they run away or they get arrested by police who catches them up on the street or by busting a brothel. The ideal version is when the woman knows a contact to a helping organization and escapes directly there. But this seems to be very rare. Mostly the women get first in contact with the police and then - if lucky - get sent over to an NGO. But there are enough cases where women have simply been arrested for being illegal immigrants or directly deported to the home country. This can have tragic effects: the woman is in miserable psychic condition, prostitution is the only thing she knows and even if she wants to stay away from it - the criminal structures are not for anything called "organized". Many girls just get picked up in their home town again by other pimps. For them she is a valuable "investment" because she is already "trained".
What happenes to the women after they escape their misery?
As described above they can easily get into trouble again, if an NGO is not intervening. But if the women get the help of the right organization, they are supported with medical care, anonymity (many NGOs operate with secret apartments) and psychological care. This can take weeks or months. The NGO of course cannot step over the laws of the local governments, so if there is no residency for the woman, the process of her returning home has to be prepared. The goal is to avoid the relapse into prostitution. Many of the women have the problem that they come from small towns where not even the parents would be able to bear the truth without casting out their daughter.
Do forced prostitutes like to return home after being caught in western countries?
Not long ago we talked about this with active members of NGOs and they told us a major part of the women prefers to return home to their countries. Also some of them have a child there which they haven't seen for months. And then - the only associations they have with countries like Germany, Belgium, Netherlands are very bad. They haven't seen much of these countries: a smoky bar, a dirty room and the everchanging faces of hundreds of foreign language speaking johns above them. This impression seems to be stronger than the traditional dream of the rich West at the beginning of the whole story.
Are they safe after their return to normal life?
They are not. And there are two major reasons for that: a) the orginized criminality in their hometowns and b) their own distorted point of view.
a) For the traffickers and pimps these girls are very valuable. They are an "investment", they are "broken in", they need not to learn the lessons from the real beginning. So as ex-prostitutes they are even more a welcome sacrifice for the pimps. A typical pimp operating with forced or juvenile prostitutes doesn't know the word "ex"-prostitute. For him she first "ex" when she cannot be used anymore - when she is too ill to work, to burned out or dead. In our online archive you can find a lot of references to this tough labour character of their work - 7 days a week, no day off, sometimes more than 20 men a day, no health care, often no safer-sex. And of course - as you can imagine - the governements and police of all involved countries do absolutely nothing about this catastrophical situation.
b) About the normal life. As far as "normal" life is possible after such experiences many try hard to find back to society. But the problem is e.g. the distorted view on values. When they start a simple job as a seamstress or in a supermarket it is very difficult for them to understand why it is necessary to work a whole month to get the same money they could earn in a KFOR-brothel in one night. Remember they all have been minors when it all started and they have not much idea what normal life is about. They are of course aware that all the whore-money passed them by, directly into the pocket of the pimp - but they remember well how huge (from their point of view) the amounts were, compared with a wage somewhere in Bulgaria oder Romania. So money is a temptation for them. Though they are also scared of the gloomy life in the red light district, they are very influenced by the demagogic point of view of their former pimps - which simply is very material. In this dilemma the young women are very alone and it is very difficult for them to find the right way. They hardly can talk with their parents about it - most of them couldn't accept the truth about "what really happened" in Netherlands or Germany or Greece.
Of course it would be wrong to say that all ex-prostitutes are in constant risk of falling back into the milieu. This is not true. Many of them are so scared of their memory, that for years they avoid anything that even looks like "night-life" to them. But a certain part of the especially very young women is indeed in danger of falling back into prostitution.
We have mentioned above that there is a risk of being caught again by the local "Mafia". In eastern countries minors without parents sometimes come in an orphan's home like Podem. Here they are locked away from the immediate danger, but life there is rarely preparing for becoming a "normal" grown-up with a healthy sense of reality.
Does this happen only in Western Europe?
Absolutely not. A women kidnapped let's say in Moldavia can go through countless brothels in various countries. As the witness accounts show, many women get sold from owner to owner and change the countries a lot. Many are brought to Macedonia, to serve in whore houses mostly visited by KFOR soldiers stationed there since the Kosovo conflict. Others come to the unfortunately famous red light Highway E55 in northern Czechia. The rest arrives in Germany, France, Netherlands, UK or even Israel (which is becoming now the new hot market for forced prostitution). But as the witness accounts show, the situation for the women trapped in eastern countries is much harder. Here the problem is in most cases also a problem of children slavery. As you can see and read in the Podem section, the age goes down to 12 or 13!
Why does police not "solve" the problem?
Difficult question. In eastern countries it is mostly the problem of criminal quantity combined with structural lacks in the police departments. In western countries it is sometimes the lack of simpler laws or an own intiative of the officers. Meanwhile all european countries have special bureaus focused only on this special section of organized crime. But truly many officers are not very familiar in dealing with the women. Following strictly the law in many cases do not help the women. First of all they are "illegal immigrants" for the police. They have no passport, speak rarely the language of the country they are in and they are absolutely not aware of their rights. In most of the cases they are in a panic fear, because the pimps told them they are going to get killed when they speak to the police. Fortunately many NGOs have established a good link to the police. So they get called by policemen when they have illegal prostitutes in custody.
The Offenders
Why can gangsters speak here?
Many argue that it's tasteless and wrong to give gangsters a voice within this forum. But we believe these are very weak arguments. Prostitution is a triangle process between pimps, prostitutes and clients. And in understanding the problem, the role of the traffickers and pimps is of a dominant kind. In these days many concepts get discussed how to "reform" the prostitution by eliminating the idea of a "pimp" and leave the prostitution as a dual agreement between the whore and the client. But this (a little bit romantic) idea of decriminalization of prostitution seems to be a long way to go - though already started in some countries like Germany.
The guys with sunglasses and tattoos?
It is up to the criminologists and experienced policemen around the world to talk about the role of organized crime in prostitution. For most of the people the traffickers and pimps are the guys who remain in the dark. Except the police catches them. They are dangerous, never alone, armed, aggressive, leathal, monumentaly ignorant and far too much self-confident. All these are clichés of a very stereotypical idea of a mafia gangster - but a lot of these characteristics are useful to be successful in this area. An idea which turned out to be wrong is that if you are not police, you will never come to talk with them. The journalist Inge Bell interviewed some of these bad guys, even with a camera and asked them about everything she wanted to know. While it might be a difficult thing to talk with balcan traffickers, pimps and mafiosi in western countries like Germany or France (where these guys have to be more careful), it is under certain circumstances possible in East-European countries. The reason might be the hegemonial self-confidence of the traffickers and pimps. They are in perfect control of their environment. They are sometimes a lot of "macho" and want to show a journalist that they do not need to hide or be scared of anything.
Due to that we have now these unique statements of those people who are responsible for the criminal organization of trafficking and enslaving of children and women.
Why can make traffickers such a fortune? Why is there a demand for foreign prostitutes?
There are many answers to that. It's about control. The pimps need to have 100% control over the girls and this is much easier if she is in a foreign land, confused and not aware of the situation. Then it's about the local police and the methods the local police deals with foreign girls: just imagine someone would force thousands of minor german girls to prostitution in german cities. The whole country would go mad. But because the girls are from Albania, Moldavia or Romania, there is just the usual murmur of the NGOs. If you ever needed an example of hypocrisy in the European Union, take this. And this works similar in East Europe as well. Of course there are enough bulgarian prostitutes in Bulgaria and macedonian in Macedonia - but the drastic rule of thumb (for Polizei and Mafia) is, the foreign one you can treat worst. And the last but not least reason is the most known maybe: with prostitutes from foreign countries you can always destroy the price situation - as it happens.
What is the price of a girl?
The price depends on various things. One of it is the location where the trade happens. The deals in Moldavia make less profit than the retail somewhere in the West. The other parameter is the girl's age. Younger make more profit. The third and most important aspect is the beauty. As some witness accounts in our archive show there are real auctions and slave markets going on. Due to witnesses the final price on the Balcans lies somewhere between 500 and 2000$, due to the described parameters.
The Johns
Why do we want to talk with them?
It is our impression that the discussion around forced prostitution (and prostitution in general) happens without involving those who are the "engine" of the idea of prostitution: the clients who go to prostitutes. On the one hand this has to do with the fact that those men are rarely "proud" of it and do not want to step into the public light. Many of them are married or have an honourable background.
It is not the aim of this website project to take part in any of the polarizing campaigns against the clients or the prostitution in general. This project is focused on evidence and witness accounts. As neutral as it is possible, letting the confessions speak for themselves.
The "clients" play an important role in the problem of forced prostitution and therefore we would like to collect their statements as well. We are not interested in their names and their identities - only in what they have to say and what their experiences are. We would like to find out if "clients" are sometimes aware of being in contact with a slave-like prostitute and how much it does matter to them. Or if they would refuse to go with a prostitute if they knew she is in such a distress. It is very few known about this grey area between intentional ignorance and the lack of informations. So the section clients is addressed to men with experiences in prostitution and is giving them the opportunity to say what they have to say.
Do clients realize if a prostitute is forced to sex or a minor?
Due to the few statements we have, it's seems like most of the men are sure they would discover that "something is wrong", but in most cases, when it comes to reality, they do not realize anything. It is difficult to say when somebody doesn't see the symptoms or doesn't want to see them. Some may be able to realize certain symptoms of the girl's distress, but many ignore this. It is not much known about those things and one of our goals is to find out more about clients and their attitude to forced prostitution.
How do clients react when they find out a girl is trafficed, forced or minor?
It is also not much known about that. Basically it can be expected, that:
-- category 1: regards this as an additional "kick"
-- category 2: ignores/represses the facts (but maybe feels bad afterwards)
-- category 3: acts (they go and inform the police (etc.) or at least refuse to have sex with her.
The proportions of these three categories seem not to be known. Risking to be called naive, we believe that our project can take at least a certain influence on the proportion and make those clients who condemn sex with minors, violence and trafficking, better informed and aware of the situation. We don't believe to be able to take influence on the first category, but we hope to get some people from the second category to the attitude of the third. To make men act like men. We don't judge the walk to a prostitute - we talk about being capitalized by the mafia for their greedy games. Of course our effords in this direction can become disappointing - but then, it's an alternative way that has to be tried more intensive. We want to involve clients into the discussion and the action.
How should a client react, when he finds out the girl he paid is forced to prostitution?
Rule number one: think! Or at least try to think. You need not to act like a hero - just try to remembers relavant details around you. Contact an NGO first, they are used to talk with clients (Johns), it's not a big deal for them. Tell them what you have seen or visit their office. Being discreet is their business. Leave the case with them. If the whole thing is important to you, call them soon again and ask what happened. Every day counts. If you are not happy with the results, talk with another NGO or write us an email. You may not be aware of it, but it's possible you are holding a human life in your hands. Forced prostitutes sometimes don't get very old. Think about it.
Do many clients help trapped, trafficked girls?
Unfortunately not. And it is a pity. They are the customers. They are more or less untouchable for the pimps - they are the "money", the reason what the whole thing is about. So they can march in and out the brothels - what NGO-people rarely do. So theoretically clients could be a great help to push sexwork a little bit more back to the middle, away from this degrading perversion it is becoming now. But then - it happens. Because sometimes clients fall in love with a girl. They have been so blind for the signals before - because they did not wanted to see. And suddenly, while emotionally fixed on her, they can see the things clearer. Now they understand the blue marks, the behaviour - and then the girl disappears. Of course. Pimps like to sell girls around. Then the guy panics, runs to police, to NGOs and tries to do everything possible to find her to get her back. In most cases without success. In fact we know cases from Czech border-area or Bulgaria, where a client-in-love only found out that the girl's dead. Killed on escape? Who knows.
Life after prostitution: example Podem
What is Podem? - locked away and forgotten...
Podem is a home for minor ex-prostitutes in Bulgaria. The girls there are in an age between 8 and 18. They have been picked up by the police on the street or arrested during razzias. They have seen many whore houses around whole Europe. Many of them are seriously ill or need a psychological care. While the management of the home tries to do the best, for the government these girls are simply locked away and forgotten. It's not surprising that some run away and it's not surprising either that this life do not offer them much perspectives.
Being involved into the bad conditions in Podem, we try to find solutions and strategies how to help the girls to find at least a little bit of a normal life - as far as this can even be possible. Unfortunately for the bulgarian government itself the problem of forced prostitution does not play a very serious role.
In the Podem section of this website you can find more informations about the home, which represents a very clear example of the countless problems of a "life after prostitution"
If you have ideas or suggestion: feel free to write us. We always need help in our struggle against wind mills.
Is Podem a charity project of us?
No. Podem is a bulgarian governmental "institution". We have nothing to do with the administration. But we are interested to help the girls there, because their existence in the home cannot be regarded as a solution to their problems. You can also check out the webpage of the Sandra hilft Kindern who also tries to help here.
What is this website all about?
It's about something that happens in your neighbourhood. These days thousands of young women (most of them still minors) get cheated and kidnapped by traffickers and sold to slave traders and pimps in countless countries around whole Europe. They are smuggled to serve as prostitutes, on the street or in the brothels of Holland, Italy, Germany, France, Macedonia, Czechia - and everywhere else where their "owners" can make money with them. This project is here to give you details.
Why this project?
The reason why we created this website is, because we have been looking for something similar and after scanning dozens of NGO (Non Governmental Organization) websites we realized that none of the organizations and groups dealing with forced prostitution and trafficking in women/children ever paid attention to this kind of presentation. We decided to create this website ourselves. So this website is the result of a lack in the internet landscape of NGOs. While the ongrowing subject of trafficking in women and forced prostitution finds the attention of NGOs around the world, the persons behind the problem remain unknown and mute. The NGOs do a great work, but for You, dear reader, there are thousands of memorandums, resolutions, white papers and petitions to read, if you want to understand the problem.
But the "problem" happens in your neighbourhood, maybe next door and it can be as simple as you can imagine. So let those speak, who have been the closesed witnesses to it, who absolved a personal disaster beyond the imagination of many ordinary people.
Why is such a website necessary?
To get a distant looking problem a little closer. The work of NGOs is focused on two areas: the immediate help to women in distress and to influence authorities of all countries effected by the problem. They are of course interested in the attention of the ordinary public as well. Therefore many of the NGOs organize public discussions or make workshops at schools. But it is not surprising that they fail to bring the "problem" closer to the people's mind, to the people's perception because they can only stay the mediators of the problem. They are led by strong principles and responsibility: they will not just bring a minor ex-prostitute to a panel discussion or to a school workshop. Most of these women are in a bad condition or very scared to step into public. They have to stay under protection or are a part of a legal proceeding. And to be honest - a lot of NGO people are simply a little bit too scared to dare something.
It was our intention, to give the women a voice and to collect their stories with their words. It is the beginning of a long search. These accounts are rare. You will find thousands of pages about the topic, but nearly nothing reflecting the victim's own words. But most of the ordinary people will not read all these memorandums of concern, studies and survey reports. Many still think in stereotypes like: "they got into it, so they have somehow wanted it". But these difficult-to-get confessions can provide help to understand the problem. The sources can be various: archives of journalists and NGOs or police files.
Who do we want to read these pages?
Our mission is to inform through first hand eye-witness accounts. We like to inform everybody, especially those people who are not "professional" human right activists. We believe that an intensive collection of testimonies can be an additional hint to people working on various research projects, writing diploma or thesis. Also we would like to inform the "clients" of prostitutes about the current situation and collect their opinions under respect of their wish for anonymity. It seems like many of the so calles "johns" are not aware of the fact that a women they pay for sex can be a slave forced to do it.
Can SOS-announcements on the web really help?
We are absolutely aware of the fact, that most of the women and girls in distress will NOT be surfing the Internet. On the other hand - there is no harm in including it indeed - e.g. for the clients who want to help. Besides that the World Wide Web reaches the poeple in Moldavia, Ukraine or Albania as well. The local internet cafes are becomming a popular meeting point for young people and many of the painful trafficking journeys start there - by finding an online advert offering jobs and marriages abroad. So it would be wrong to say that trafficked girls and women in general have no idea about the Internet.
Do we have grants for this project?
No. Currently this project is financed only private by the authors.
What do the creators of the project think about prostitution in general?
We are not interested in moral verdicts and lately appearing attitudes to regard "johns" as perpetrators. Nor are we trying to banalize the problems around prostitution. Prostitution in general is affected by many milieu-related problems, like drugs, social non-acceptance, violence... But our mission is to deal with forced prostitution: with trafficking, dignity deprivation, kidnapping and murder - characterstics which conventional prostitution doesn't adopt. So we see a necessity to regard forced prostitution and prostitution in general as two separate things.
Regarding the prostitution in general we basically see the eternal problem of the "pimp", as the major source of all illegal trouble. We would welcome prostitution as a business agreement between a sex-worker and a client, without a third party (pimp) being involved.
Are clients of prostitutes perpetrators?
Well in Sweden they are regarded that way - similar tendencies (to punish clients) are discussed in french politics now. We do not see clients as perpetrators. But we cannot deny that on the level of forced prostitution the clients create more demage than useful things. Because they are so hopelessly ignorant and do not want to see the difference between a professional sex-worker and a trafficked girl. The image of the clients would get much better, if they would throw away their blinders, instead of feeding the fat bank accounts of some mafia guys.
So we can answer the question simply: we do not think clients are perpetrators, as long as they go to sex-workers and not to women, which are forced to do it against their own will.
Why this name?
"Ex oriente lux" - from the East [comes] the light - is not meant to be cynical, not even ironic. The title turns against agony and ignorance. Against the demonization of the "East" and against the resignation. The life perspectives of most women who went through the tragedy of being trafficked are very small - but then our work lives from hope. Hope that single women and girls can find back to a normal life (which in fact happens!). This is the light of hope they carry within. This is the light we talk about.
The background
Or why Europe loves to humiliate and torture its daughters
What is trafficking in women?
A growing percentage of prostitutes is not doing it of their own free will. They are forced to it by criminal pimps who treat them as slaves, torture and rape them, give them strong drugs and threaten them. They live in a state of constant fear and horror. And their minus is: they are very young, unexperienced and very alone in their situation.
Women's rights?
It is said that "women's rights" is an unnecessary term because women's rights are also human rights and one term should be enough as an umbrella to all kind of distress and atrocities people around the world suffer. Same could be said about "children's rights". But it is also true that there are specific violations of human rights that are mostly caused by men and suffered only by children and women. Many children and young women wake up in a harsh situation between torture and the loss of dignity. So the problem is very gender specific.
Is this not just a problem in Thailand?
Organized criminality gets more and more involved into trafficking in people. Amongst them are many women and children brought over borders for the brothels/whore houses of whole Europe. What in former years was regarded as a "Thai" problem or an "African" problem has reached a growing new quality since the fall of the iron curtain. The western red light districts are supplied by women from eastern countries like Moldavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania or Ukraina. Many of them are kept prisoner, sent on the streets by violent pimps, secretly offered in anonymous apartmens or forced to act in children pornography. They are prostitutes against their will. It happens in your neighbourhood.
The European situation is unique due to geopolitical facts. It is pretty expensive and complicated to traffick girls from Thailand to Europe (though it still happens). So the trafficking from the Balcans is simple and cheap comparing with that. No airplanes are needed, no forged marriages.
The Victims
How do the girls and women get into trouble?
It's the old classic story: dreaming of a better life. All these girls come from countries struggling with harsh economical problems. And East-European newspapers are full of adverts offering "great jobs in Germany", as waitress, model or as assistant to whatever. It is not wrong to say that many of these girls are very naive and that their governments should do more educational work to warn their kids of this danger. They follow blindly this dream of the Golden West, eager created in these countries during the whole 20. century.
But there are of course far more scenarios. Many girls simply get kidnapped, squeezed into cars. Another trick is the false promise of a "Mail-Order Marriage". But it can even be more perfidious: Sometimes boyfriends turn into devils. There are even cases known where relatives are responsible for the tragedy. Uncles or friends of the family who "sell" the girls into this modern "slavery".
What are the main categories of victims?
By simplifying the situation a little, it can be said, that there are three scenarios:
- - 1. The girl gets kidnapped right away
- - 2. The girl follows traffickers due to false promises of a better job abroad
- - 3. The girl had in mind to work in prostitution, but she didn't know, that it will be about raping, beating, torture and slavery
- - 2. The girl follows traffickers due to false promises of a better job abroad
- - 3. The girl had in mind to work in prostitution, but she didn't know, that it will be about raping, beating, torture and slavery
Category 2 seems to be the most usual one. Category 1 and 2 (which makes maybe 80% of all trafficked prostituted women) would have never agreed to a sex-job if you would have asked them before.
Why are the girls and women so uninformed and fall into this trap?
Indeed there might be a big protion naivity and let's say stupidity. They are young and they have the dreams of young people. Regarding the job-offer-trick: there are of course many girls who come back from au-pair, from these jobs as waitress or at least from doing washing-up in a restaurant in Italy or Germany. So not every add is a fraud. Many come back after having made some money and impress those at home. Therefore it is difficult for the local governments to act here, because these kind of ads are very many and only a small part is a trick.
What is the familiar background of trafficked girls?
Of course nearly all of them come from lower class families - so it is not suprising that many of them already look back on a violent childhood, aggressive father, etc. One of the classical scenarios is: after violence in the family, the girl runs away, lives few days on the street and get picked up by slave traders.
But the slave traders do not "fish" only on the street. They also hang around in the clubs and discos of the Balcans, where a girl can pay a drink and afford to spend her time. So if it starts with kidnapping, it can happen that even a girl from "better family" can get trafficked.
How can someone be forced to prostitution?
Many "involved" experts may regard this as a stupid question, but for many people not familiar with the situation it is a major question, how someone can endure such a situation without running away. It is understandable that the questioner cannot understand that someone is doing and taking this for months or sometimes years.
First of all some do run away. That's why all these NGOs are here to help them. In our link section you can find many references to organizations and groups helping women in this kind of distress. But running away is sometimes difficult, because the women are under strong observation. A long and violent procedure of "brain wash" follows, often combined with strong drugs. You shouldn't forget that a huge part of these "women" are rather kids - in the age of 14 or 15. They do not have the grown-up psyche of a woman of 30. Soon those girls accept that there is only this form of reality and they start to think about, how to make the best out of their situation. The idea of "escape" can get very distant for them. So in most cases only a police operation can get them out of the house.
Those who are trapped in the "West", why do they not run to the police and witness?
- Being locked away and under strong observation.
- Being scared that the pimps take a deadly revenge.
- Being scared of police, because all world is corrupt & could work with the pimps.
- Being scared that police will make things public and the own family will find it out.
- Being scared of the threat of the pimps that they will do something to the family home.
- Being ashamed to talk to strange people about the experiences.
- Being apathic and "brain-washed".
- Being drugged most of the time.
- Being uninformed about their human rights and that something like that even exists.
- Being fatalistic: "That's what life is about. It will never change."
More reasons wanted?
OK, she was forced - but now she is maybe not anymore?
NGO-people hate this question, because they had to answer it too many times. Some cannot even understand how someone can ask this seriously. It's about this endless 'well somehow they have to like it at least a little, because if not, they would run away'. But let's pay to it some attention one more time and describe what we think about it.
It's more a question about: 'What is reality?' - about self-preservation through a distorted perception... The problem, why many western "johns" have difficulties to recognize that a prostitute they pay for sex could be forced to do it, has to do with the way the girls have to deal with their situation. A trafficked girl after months in prostitution of course doesn't behave like a scared innocent. It doesn't whisper to you "Help me, help me..." This could theoretically happen. But it's not usual. Why should the girl trust you? A "john" can always be a good friend of the pimp. And the punisment for such actions can be very harsh.
So the kids develope very strong instincts for survival. But the price is high! It's about adaptation and submission. Too many of them don't know the difference between forced and not forced - in fact they systematically lose the idea that there is another world than this one. That there could have been another life, as a clerk in an office, or working as a tailor or teacher... Having a husband and kids... This all become distant, while the world of pimps, gangsters, horny soldiers and alcohol is a very close measure for things. A strange phenomenon which we could see in Podem (the home for minor ex-prostitutes in Bulgaria, see also below), is that many of these girls - even after being out of prostitution for a while - put posters of nude pinup girls and play mates on the walls of their little rooms. Which is quote odd. You hardly find a 16 old girl who would put this kind of posters over her nursery bed instead of the typical naive boygroup pictures. Except she made this dark and tragic experiences. But this is just one of many symptoms for the systematic distortion of reality and deformation of psyche - done by the traffickers and pimps.
Therefore after a while it's very easy to say about single cases that these girls do not make the impression of being "forced" to anything. They do not cry for help, they do not talk to police and (which can be the worst for their credibility) too many of them return "voluntary" back to prostitution after being set free again. It's the only world they know and it's the price they paid for having survived. Unfortunately those who "free them" (mostly the police) do not have answers or perspectives for them. Once they are exonerated they get thrown back on the street. In western countries they mostly get deported back to their countries, which in many cases means back to same trouble. Only the NGOs are trying to help here, but their means are of course limited by money and law (and there are of course NGOs who generate so much bureaucracy, that there is not much space left for getting prostitutes out of trouble).
Are East-European women the better lovers?
This is the most spread cliché amongst the clients everywhere in West and Middle Europe. We can still read in Internet stories about the "ukrainian whore which had an orgasm with me" - at least few of the guys have some sense of reality by adding a short "is this possible?" to their posting. If it wouldn't be so tragic, it would be worth a laughter. But the opinion of all the clients doesn't come by chance. There are reasons for it.
First of all - let's get this one point clear: prostitutes do not have orgasms with clients. Impossible? It is possible: manned space flight is also possible. But that doesn't mean that YOU are the one who will fly to the stars. The point is, what is the difference between a professional sex-worker and a trafficked girl? If you regard high frequented places like the "Kiez" in Hamburg/Germany, you can see a lot of hardboiled women, which knows how to keep the situation under their control. The rule is "take as much money as you can, for as few service as it is possible". Now if you are not one of these "tough guys" who already visited 100 sex-workers before, you have psychologically no chance to control the situation. She does. After all you may have this feeling like this was not exactly what you wanted. Now regardless the fact if professional sex-workers should act a little bit less cold but more empathic (which is in fact an old discussion), of course you hardly find this amongst forced prostitutes. Girls which have been playing around in the school yard just few months before and who absolved the pimp's school now - they do not know anything about this traditional rule of the Red Light World. Women who are completely broken. "Broken in" as the pimps use to say - making this work themselves. So if you interpret an absolutely broken and mentally destroyed women as a kind of "east-european nymphomania", then it's your problem. But to show you how perfid the situation is: the way you fail to see her in the right light, she fails the same with you. Because she maybe thinks you are here to help her, you like her. Why should she be so naiv? Because you don't beat her in her face, don't kick her in her stomach and don't rape her. It's about getting the things into right perspective. After all the brain-wash and torture done by an albanian, serbian or czech pimp, it can look like quite a luck, to be suddenly "just walking on the street and doing no-condom-blowjobs with Germans", but do you really think you are the big Mr.Lover she waited a whole life for?
We heard all this crap already 15 years ago from Thailand. "Yes, they are prostitutes, but it is amazing how passionate and serious they take their job". "So much love for so few money!" The only fact in this game is, that if you would take a client/john and let him go through the same procedure like thousands of these girls did, and then you would tell him to bark anytime he sees the moon, he would do it - that's for sure. It's about power and control - not about sexuality.
How do trafficked women get free?
Either they run away or they get arrested by police who catches them up on the street or by busting a brothel. The ideal version is when the woman knows a contact to a helping organization and escapes directly there. But this seems to be very rare. Mostly the women get first in contact with the police and then - if lucky - get sent over to an NGO. But there are enough cases where women have simply been arrested for being illegal immigrants or directly deported to the home country. This can have tragic effects: the woman is in miserable psychic condition, prostitution is the only thing she knows and even if she wants to stay away from it - the criminal structures are not for anything called "organized". Many girls just get picked up in their home town again by other pimps. For them she is a valuable "investment" because she is already "trained".
What happenes to the women after they escape their misery?
As described above they can easily get into trouble again, if an NGO is not intervening. But if the women get the help of the right organization, they are supported with medical care, anonymity (many NGOs operate with secret apartments) and psychological care. This can take weeks or months. The NGO of course cannot step over the laws of the local governments, so if there is no residency for the woman, the process of her returning home has to be prepared. The goal is to avoid the relapse into prostitution. Many of the women have the problem that they come from small towns where not even the parents would be able to bear the truth without casting out their daughter.
Do forced prostitutes like to return home after being caught in western countries?
Not long ago we talked about this with active members of NGOs and they told us a major part of the women prefers to return home to their countries. Also some of them have a child there which they haven't seen for months. And then - the only associations they have with countries like Germany, Belgium, Netherlands are very bad. They haven't seen much of these countries: a smoky bar, a dirty room and the everchanging faces of hundreds of foreign language speaking johns above them. This impression seems to be stronger than the traditional dream of the rich West at the beginning of the whole story.
Are they safe after their return to normal life?
They are not. And there are two major reasons for that: a) the orginized criminality in their hometowns and b) their own distorted point of view.
a) For the traffickers and pimps these girls are very valuable. They are an "investment", they are "broken in", they need not to learn the lessons from the real beginning. So as ex-prostitutes they are even more a welcome sacrifice for the pimps. A typical pimp operating with forced or juvenile prostitutes doesn't know the word "ex"-prostitute. For him she first "ex" when she cannot be used anymore - when she is too ill to work, to burned out or dead. In our online archive you can find a lot of references to this tough labour character of their work - 7 days a week, no day off, sometimes more than 20 men a day, no health care, often no safer-sex. And of course - as you can imagine - the governements and police of all involved countries do absolutely nothing about this catastrophical situation.
b) About the normal life. As far as "normal" life is possible after such experiences many try hard to find back to society. But the problem is e.g. the distorted view on values. When they start a simple job as a seamstress or in a supermarket it is very difficult for them to understand why it is necessary to work a whole month to get the same money they could earn in a KFOR-brothel in one night. Remember they all have been minors when it all started and they have not much idea what normal life is about. They are of course aware that all the whore-money passed them by, directly into the pocket of the pimp - but they remember well how huge (from their point of view) the amounts were, compared with a wage somewhere in Bulgaria oder Romania. So money is a temptation for them. Though they are also scared of the gloomy life in the red light district, they are very influenced by the demagogic point of view of their former pimps - which simply is very material. In this dilemma the young women are very alone and it is very difficult for them to find the right way. They hardly can talk with their parents about it - most of them couldn't accept the truth about "what really happened" in Netherlands or Germany or Greece.
Of course it would be wrong to say that all ex-prostitutes are in constant risk of falling back into the milieu. This is not true. Many of them are so scared of their memory, that for years they avoid anything that even looks like "night-life" to them. But a certain part of the especially very young women is indeed in danger of falling back into prostitution.
We have mentioned above that there is a risk of being caught again by the local "Mafia". In eastern countries minors without parents sometimes come in an orphan's home like Podem. Here they are locked away from the immediate danger, but life there is rarely preparing for becoming a "normal" grown-up with a healthy sense of reality.
Does this happen only in Western Europe?
Absolutely not. A women kidnapped let's say in Moldavia can go through countless brothels in various countries. As the witness accounts show, many women get sold from owner to owner and change the countries a lot. Many are brought to Macedonia, to serve in whore houses mostly visited by KFOR soldiers stationed there since the Kosovo conflict. Others come to the unfortunately famous red light Highway E55 in northern Czechia. The rest arrives in Germany, France, Netherlands, UK or even Israel (which is becoming now the new hot market for forced prostitution). But as the witness accounts show, the situation for the women trapped in eastern countries is much harder. Here the problem is in most cases also a problem of children slavery. As you can see and read in the Podem section, the age goes down to 12 or 13!
Why does police not "solve" the problem?
Difficult question. In eastern countries it is mostly the problem of criminal quantity combined with structural lacks in the police departments. In western countries it is sometimes the lack of simpler laws or an own intiative of the officers. Meanwhile all european countries have special bureaus focused only on this special section of organized crime. But truly many officers are not very familiar in dealing with the women. Following strictly the law in many cases do not help the women. First of all they are "illegal immigrants" for the police. They have no passport, speak rarely the language of the country they are in and they are absolutely not aware of their rights. In most of the cases they are in a panic fear, because the pimps told them they are going to get killed when they speak to the police. Fortunately many NGOs have established a good link to the police. So they get called by policemen when they have illegal prostitutes in custody.
The Offenders
Why can gangsters speak here?
Many argue that it's tasteless and wrong to give gangsters a voice within this forum. But we believe these are very weak arguments. Prostitution is a triangle process between pimps, prostitutes and clients. And in understanding the problem, the role of the traffickers and pimps is of a dominant kind. In these days many concepts get discussed how to "reform" the prostitution by eliminating the idea of a "pimp" and leave the prostitution as a dual agreement between the whore and the client. But this (a little bit romantic) idea of decriminalization of prostitution seems to be a long way to go - though already started in some countries like Germany.
The guys with sunglasses and tattoos?
It is up to the criminologists and experienced policemen around the world to talk about the role of organized crime in prostitution. For most of the people the traffickers and pimps are the guys who remain in the dark. Except the police catches them. They are dangerous, never alone, armed, aggressive, leathal, monumentaly ignorant and far too much self-confident. All these are clichés of a very stereotypical idea of a mafia gangster - but a lot of these characteristics are useful to be successful in this area. An idea which turned out to be wrong is that if you are not police, you will never come to talk with them. The journalist Inge Bell interviewed some of these bad guys, even with a camera and asked them about everything she wanted to know. While it might be a difficult thing to talk with balcan traffickers, pimps and mafiosi in western countries like Germany or France (where these guys have to be more careful), it is under certain circumstances possible in East-European countries. The reason might be the hegemonial self-confidence of the traffickers and pimps. They are in perfect control of their environment. They are sometimes a lot of "macho" and want to show a journalist that they do not need to hide or be scared of anything.
Due to that we have now these unique statements of those people who are responsible for the criminal organization of trafficking and enslaving of children and women.
Why can make traffickers such a fortune? Why is there a demand for foreign prostitutes?
There are many answers to that. It's about control. The pimps need to have 100% control over the girls and this is much easier if she is in a foreign land, confused and not aware of the situation. Then it's about the local police and the methods the local police deals with foreign girls: just imagine someone would force thousands of minor german girls to prostitution in german cities. The whole country would go mad. But because the girls are from Albania, Moldavia or Romania, there is just the usual murmur of the NGOs. If you ever needed an example of hypocrisy in the European Union, take this. And this works similar in East Europe as well. Of course there are enough bulgarian prostitutes in Bulgaria and macedonian in Macedonia - but the drastic rule of thumb (for Polizei and Mafia) is, the foreign one you can treat worst. And the last but not least reason is the most known maybe: with prostitutes from foreign countries you can always destroy the price situation - as it happens.
What is the price of a girl?
The price depends on various things. One of it is the location where the trade happens. The deals in Moldavia make less profit than the retail somewhere in the West. The other parameter is the girl's age. Younger make more profit. The third and most important aspect is the beauty. As some witness accounts in our archive show there are real auctions and slave markets going on. Due to witnesses the final price on the Balcans lies somewhere between 500 and 2000$, due to the described parameters.
The Johns
Why do we want to talk with them?
It is our impression that the discussion around forced prostitution (and prostitution in general) happens without involving those who are the "engine" of the idea of prostitution: the clients who go to prostitutes. On the one hand this has to do with the fact that those men are rarely "proud" of it and do not want to step into the public light. Many of them are married or have an honourable background.
It is not the aim of this website project to take part in any of the polarizing campaigns against the clients or the prostitution in general. This project is focused on evidence and witness accounts. As neutral as it is possible, letting the confessions speak for themselves.
The "clients" play an important role in the problem of forced prostitution and therefore we would like to collect their statements as well. We are not interested in their names and their identities - only in what they have to say and what their experiences are. We would like to find out if "clients" are sometimes aware of being in contact with a slave-like prostitute and how much it does matter to them. Or if they would refuse to go with a prostitute if they knew she is in such a distress. It is very few known about this grey area between intentional ignorance and the lack of informations. So the section clients is addressed to men with experiences in prostitution and is giving them the opportunity to say what they have to say.
Do clients realize if a prostitute is forced to sex or a minor?
Due to the few statements we have, it's seems like most of the men are sure they would discover that "something is wrong", but in most cases, when it comes to reality, they do not realize anything. It is difficult to say when somebody doesn't see the symptoms or doesn't want to see them. Some may be able to realize certain symptoms of the girl's distress, but many ignore this. It is not much known about those things and one of our goals is to find out more about clients and their attitude to forced prostitution.
How do clients react when they find out a girl is trafficed, forced or minor?
It is also not much known about that. Basically it can be expected, that:
-- category 1: regards this as an additional "kick"
-- category 2: ignores/represses the facts (but maybe feels bad afterwards)
-- category 3: acts (they go and inform the police (etc.) or at least refuse to have sex with her.
The proportions of these three categories seem not to be known. Risking to be called naive, we believe that our project can take at least a certain influence on the proportion and make those clients who condemn sex with minors, violence and trafficking, better informed and aware of the situation. We don't believe to be able to take influence on the first category, but we hope to get some people from the second category to the attitude of the third. To make men act like men. We don't judge the walk to a prostitute - we talk about being capitalized by the mafia for their greedy games. Of course our effords in this direction can become disappointing - but then, it's an alternative way that has to be tried more intensive. We want to involve clients into the discussion and the action.
How should a client react, when he finds out the girl he paid is forced to prostitution?
Rule number one: think! Or at least try to think. You need not to act like a hero - just try to remembers relavant details around you. Contact an NGO first, they are used to talk with clients (Johns), it's not a big deal for them. Tell them what you have seen or visit their office. Being discreet is their business. Leave the case with them. If the whole thing is important to you, call them soon again and ask what happened. Every day counts. If you are not happy with the results, talk with another NGO or write us an email. You may not be aware of it, but it's possible you are holding a human life in your hands. Forced prostitutes sometimes don't get very old. Think about it.
Do many clients help trapped, trafficked girls?
Unfortunately not. And it is a pity. They are the customers. They are more or less untouchable for the pimps - they are the "money", the reason what the whole thing is about. So they can march in and out the brothels - what NGO-people rarely do. So theoretically clients could be a great help to push sexwork a little bit more back to the middle, away from this degrading perversion it is becoming now. But then - it happens. Because sometimes clients fall in love with a girl. They have been so blind for the signals before - because they did not wanted to see. And suddenly, while emotionally fixed on her, they can see the things clearer. Now they understand the blue marks, the behaviour - and then the girl disappears. Of course. Pimps like to sell girls around. Then the guy panics, runs to police, to NGOs and tries to do everything possible to find her to get her back. In most cases without success. In fact we know cases from Czech border-area or Bulgaria, where a client-in-love only found out that the girl's dead. Killed on escape? Who knows.
Life after prostitution: example Podem
What is Podem? - locked away and forgotten...
Podem is a home for minor ex-prostitutes in Bulgaria. The girls there are in an age between 8 and 18. They have been picked up by the police on the street or arrested during razzias. They have seen many whore houses around whole Europe. Many of them are seriously ill or need a psychological care. While the management of the home tries to do the best, for the government these girls are simply locked away and forgotten. It's not surprising that some run away and it's not surprising either that this life do not offer them much perspectives.
Being involved into the bad conditions in Podem, we try to find solutions and strategies how to help the girls to find at least a little bit of a normal life - as far as this can even be possible. Unfortunately for the bulgarian government itself the problem of forced prostitution does not play a very serious role.
In the Podem section of this website you can find more informations about the home, which represents a very clear example of the countless problems of a "life after prostitution"
If you have ideas or suggestion: feel free to write us. We always need help in our struggle against wind mills.
Is Podem a charity project of us?
No. Podem is a bulgarian governmental "institution". We have nothing to do with the administration. But we are interested to help the girls there, because their existence in the home cannot be regarded as a solution to their problems. You can also check out the webpage of the Sandra hilft Kindern who also tries to help here.