The women in these photographs are among many I interviewed for a report on sex trafficking in Eastern Europe. Some of them were fragile; some were very strong; all were trying to leave behind a hated past while still coming to terms with profound emotional distress.

Polina, a girl from Ukraine, shouted at me, ‘My story, do you want to hear my story? You have heard it – over and over again.’ Clearly distraught, she told me how, a year after she came back from the Czech Republic, where she had been sold into prostitution, the police came to the door and started to question her. Her new husband and mother-in-law then chased her away from home. She had not told them that she had been sold as a sex slave by a good friend. Her life was destroyed, she said.

In London I met Svetlana, a young Moldovan who was sex trafficked into Britain. She took me round Soho and pointed to the windows of various flats: the one with a cracked window was a ‘stinky’ place; the one with a red light was a bit less grim. I entered five rooms where the working girls operated. I met two Romanians. One was wearing tiny white socks and a pink robe thrown over a black Spandex costume. She was from a city two hours from my native town.

Sex trafficking is one of the most profitable illegal businesses in both Eastern and Western Europe. In Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, where female unemployment may reach 68 per cent and a third of the workforce lives and works abroad, it is estimated that since 1989 between 200,000 and 400,000 women have been sold into prostitution elsewhere – perhaps 10 per cent of the female population. The country is the main exporter of sex slaves for the continent.

I went to the capital, Chişinău, to find women who had survived and managed to get home. I wanted to know how they lived with the traumas when they reached their home countries, where even their own families might not know what they had experienced abroad; how they lived under a shadow of fear that a mother or husband might find out and throw them out. One survey found that a majority of trafficked Moldovan women had been victims of domestic violence.

I learnt that it may begin with the offer of a well-paid job in a world they have only dreamt about. Remittances from migrants, many sent through Moldova’s ubiquitous Western Union offices, are estimated by the World Bank to be more than half a billion pounds a year, financing consumption that, by local standards, is stunning: a car, a bigger house, better food, better clothes.

The pull of emigration is particularly strong for young people and parents struggling to feed their children. Moldovan women have been sent to more than 40 countries, among them Turkey, Russia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Albania, Italy and Spain, Britain, Israel or Saudi Arabia.

But the horrible reality is this: a girl’s own acquaintances, close friends, relatives or boyfriends may sell her for the equivalent of £100, £300, £1,000, depending on how attractive she is.

The moment she agrees to take the job of a shop assistant, nanny, bartender or something similarly innocuous, the business starts. All documents and travelling expenses will be paid for by the traffickers, but she must repay the debt out of her first month’s income.

Once she reaches her destination the girl is taken into a brothel and forced to work as a prostitute. Her passport is taken away. Such women are supposed to be free after the debt is paid back, but they are invariably sold to another pimp – often in another country – in a vicious circle that generates a lot of money. It keeps the business running and the girls in captivity.

They never receive money from the client or the pimp. They are not allowed to contact anybody. They are isolated, threatened, tied up, or even force-fed drugs to control them. Many speak of being raped, urinated on, badly beaten up. Ninety per cent of sex-trafficked women contract sexually transmitted diseases, hepatitis or Aids. And many suffer psychological trauma – advanced schizophrenia and multiple-personality disorder.

Escaping is not easy. It’s not a simple matter of jumping out of a window and becoming free, especially when some of the regular clients are police officers.

There are countless cases of missing women. A search in Moldovan villages revealed the emptiness of places where the women were formerly a natural presence: there were families living in hope that one day they would see their mother, daughter, wife, sister again; and children who didn’t remember how their mother looked.

In one house I found a little altar built around an old picture of a missing woman; in another the bed of a vanished 15-year-old. When women lucky enough to be repatriated arrive home, a decision has to be made about whether to pursue criminal charges against those who exploited them.

Doing so can be dangerous. Human trafficking rings operate with impunity in Moldova, where they are for the most part under government protection and where a number of local government officials are involved with the rings. No government officials have ever been charged with human trafficking or prostitution offences in Moldova.

Ex-victims turn out to be effective recruiters. Because they are women they tend to gain the trust of their targets more easily than men might, particularly when those targets are their own friends, sisters, cousins or daughters. And, after a successful ‘promotion’ to recruiter, some ex-victims take positions as traffickers or madams. It is the business they know.

Repatriated victims of trafficking are also vulnerable to ‘retrafficking’. They nearly always come home to the same poverty and domestic troubles. They know the same people, often including those who trafficked them.

Some believe that because they now understand the dangers of emigration they will avoid them next time. But many women, having once worked as prostitutes, seem convinced that they are incapable of earning a living another way.

Not Natasha, by Dana Popa, is published by Autograph at £14.95 (amazon.co.uk)

A version of this article appeared in Frontline (frontlineclub.com). Some names have been changed

Having taken a road trip from the U.K. through Eastern Europe in January, I’m now on the road (or the air, more accurately) toward the Love146 Round Home in Asia. I have to move quick while the Icelandic volcano is on lunch break. I found myself in a window seat next to a couple of what my dad would call “hard working lads”: sun-drawn skin from a construction site causing an unnaturally furrowed brow, one in his 50s the other mid-20s.

I’m flying out of the U.K. at a time where the first three pages of most tabloids are still the story of the Cumbria shootings of Derrick Bird which left 12 dead. On the morning I leave, the headline is “Gunman’s Double Life as a Sex Pervert” accompanied by images of a Thailand sex bar with scantily clad girls dancing. My neighbor for the flight introduces himself by showing and tapping his finger on the page, stating, “Now that’s got to be a bar we need to find.” Our destination for this flight is Bangkok, Thailand.

He seemed to assume my travel had similar interests. I commented that I wouldn’t be stopping there, but heading on to the Philippines. “Not been there,” he replied with a grin and a wink, “We’ll have to try that on our next trip.” As though I had superior knowledge as a fellow sex tourist.

As it turned out, this was the older gentleman’s fourth trip to Bangkok. This occasion it was to be a celebration of his divorce. He, followed by some other friends on a later flight, would be spending six weeks in Bangkok to watch England play their world cup matches in tacky English-friendly bars and to have sex with girls. In fact, the five friends’ common denominator was that they all go to the same pub in the U.K. It was clear the guy in front of me had been primary evangelist to the group concerning the draw of sex tourism. He was a true believer, and this, the best possible use of his time and money.

I sat and wondered at how the sexualization of culture and the normalization of sexual exploitation is far from something passive. In fact, it is being assertively pushed along with a nod, a wink and a wry smile. It’s not hidden smoky corners, but around the open public places of life and work. In fact, the U.K. killer in today’s tabloids had often shown his friends video footage of his own sex acts with young girls in Thailand.

I asked the older gent, “Is it true that girls come up to you as soon as you walk into a bar?”

“You bet.” 

“But doesn’t that just get on your nerves?” 

“Only when you have been up all the previous night having sex with them!”

I could tell I was in the presence of a genuine stereotype: a guy who travels for sex because it’s easy, uncomplicated and no longer on his moral compass as even questionable behavior. He was another one of those guys who genuinely feel that the girls he pays for sex want to be there. He believes he is in fact doing them a favor, or worse (such a common statement), that they are there because they enjoy it. He has no comprehension that the smile masking their suffering is to avoid a beating from their pimp for disappointing a client.

I found out later in the flight that these weren’t rough tough co-workers. It was a father and son. Slightly stunned, I sat and pondered our own Western mindset and moral decay where a father would want to share his participation in sexual exploitation as a bonding experience with his own son.

Those who travel for sex tourism undertake a dehumanization of the other, in this instance those who are in the bondage of sexual slavery, either forced by fear of violence or through the oppression of economic poverty. For those of us who live in places where our fellow countrymen are booking sex holidays, we must re-sensitize ourselves to the humanity of these wonderful, beautiful and precious people. We must spread the word that these women and girls are someone’s daughter, sister or mother. Let’s work to abolish myths that tell us they are less than worthy of our high regard and respect. Let’s tell their stories. Let’s honor their lives. Let’s sing and shout about their humanity.

I have been asking myself a lot of questions since I arrived in Manila and will, I am sure, be kicking myself all the way to my next encounter with a sexual predator. The sad answer is no, I didn’t confront their thinking. I have been around pimps, pushers, traffickers and victims in Europe where it is the girls who are crossing borders to a location for sex. Until this moment, I had not had contact with “users,” where it is they who are crossing borders for sex. This was totally new.

Honestly, I was utterly shocked and rattled by the normality of it all for them. My thinking process was dominated not by confronting “them,” or challenging “their worldview,” but by the confrontation taking place within “me,” the challenge to my own worldview. I was very uncomfortable as I realized the stewardess and others on the flight probably thought we were traveling together and may have assumed I was a sex tourist as well. As I looked around the plane, I wondered how many would even care. How many were going for the same reasons. This thought has plagued me since arriving in the Philippines.

Sometimes there are encounters with sexual exploitation where I am an activist; engaging with people and on behalf of people around these issues—where confrontation can be appropriate action. And sometimes there are times, like many this past January driving the trafficking routes of Europe, where I am a painfully silent observer, learning and gathering intelligence for later battles.

Occasionally I walk away wondering if I lost a fight or missed an opportunity. In this instance, I wore the mask of an interested party and gained as much real information as I could. Sometimes I walk away feeling I have failed someone—a victim or a perpetrator. In reality, I have to draw comfort that I did learn and gain understanding and while I may lose some fights, we will ultimately win the war. This helps me sleep at night, on the increasingly rare occasions that I am able. It certainly makes me value those who work covertly on the streets in victim identification and those who work undercover as a primary focus of their contribution to ending child sex slavery.

As I have said above, much of what took place in the interaction with my two traveling companions was about a work going on in me, and trust me, it has and will continue to add fuel to the fire of my own abolition endeavors alongside you.

http://www.youtube.com/iommoldova#p/c/8289B376F44C44C4/10/JneQ0XeoZBI

Go to facebook – search Official Love146 and join to continue to track with us as their european prevention programme.

Thank You
Gaz and Team

We arrived at a very delapidated looking area, not a village as i expected but the outer suburbs, still with apartment blocks but where broken windows are replaced with plastic sheet or even bricks, where your wardrobe is whatever you are wearing right now and where there is never enough wood for the fires, i cannot imagine the harsh winters here. I can in part understand how the government wish to demolish what remains standing of these old buildings, i can understand the natural expansion of the city, i cannot however imagine nor understand a government with no plans to relocate these people, just to render them homeless.
Today we were visiting a survivor of trafficking who has made her way back to her village and back to her family.
Her story starts as many do with someone close by suggesting to you that they ‘have the answer to all of your problems, a job just over the border with great money, you will be the saviour of your family and your drunken violent husband’.
This was not a young woman, not at all the mid to late teens or early twenties we have become accustomed to, this woman was thirty, and i feel it is important to share through her story the diversity of trafficking demand.

Lena was lured by the promise of change and so she took the advice and promises of her neighbour to heart and headed to Ukraine and the port of Odessa to set sail for Turkey. She had her passport taken from her and the nightmare began as she was told not to make a sound, not to draw attention at the border or she would be killed. On arrival in turkey she was taken immediately to the basement of a townhouse where she endured forced prostitution and abuse solidly for the next 2 months. There is not really much that can be said about this, i did not want to ask what took place there any more than she would want to disclose it.
She was eventually freed during a police raid, she had her personal items and her mobile phone returned to her and was placed on the boat back home. On arriving in Ukraine she was offered a safe house and rehabilitation, but instead chose to go home, desperate to see her children. All she had that she could sell was her phone, and instead of buying a ticket home as first priority, she used the money to buy chocolate, chocolate for her 3 young children at home so they would think she had enjoyed a good happy and frutiful trip. She lives to this day next to the person who helped to sell her, but chooses to keep her head down, not to involve the police and attempts to keep the horror of her trafficking hidden from everyone, even her family. I understand a little more now the phrase ‘suffer in silence’.
I am pleased that she has finally found courage to speak of her ordeal.

All i can think about is this radiantly beautiful woman in front of me, with shining red hair swept back in a hair band, a mother returning home bearing chocolate, a smile of joy to see her family, becoming lost in the ecstatic embrace of her children. While at the same time desperately holding her tortured soul together with fragile hands.

Regardless of setting, many parents the world over share concerns for their childrens well being, it would be fair to say our daughters more so.
I can only speculate at the anquish for Lena, who even though time has passed still bears the burden of knowing how harsh the world can be, even as she gave birth to her fourth child, all of them equally radient girls.

I draw some small solace from knowing that she is not alone in her desire to keep these little ones safe.

I am writing today from my hotel room which is conveniently close to a foreboding russian embassy which means i wont get lost. Today i spoke in one school to two classes in two worlds, one class totally russian speaking, dressed in russian,physically different and the other, just 50 feet away was romanian with the same degree and cultural distinctive. The evidence of bygone eras of soviet and romanian rule.
We talked about the highs and lows of western culture and the UK and also that wherever there is need and people wanting to follow a dream, there are those whose personal success is derived from your suffering. So few of them knew about human trafficking and here of all places, the worst place for trafficking in Europe… Moldova.
I know the numbers, i know that 120,000 each year have been migrating, mostly illegally, and if illegally, generally at the hands of traffickers for sex or labour. I know too that 30,000 women and children have gone missing here in the last decade, but when i asked each class today who of them planned to migrate, i was still shocked to see all of them raise a hand without hesitation.
I realise even more now the importance of getting the ESCAPE prevention magazine into each and every hand and witnessed first hand girls recieving them for the first time, with pages about the dangers of travel and how to spot traffickers as well as how to survive and recover from domestic violence, so prevalent here. I felt a small, but significant sigh of relief that they had been armed with information.
People who live in deprivation should still be allowed and encouraged to dream without fear of exploitation and a stolen life.

Hi, Gaz here writing from Moldova where i arrived today at our prevention programme gladly unaffected by the latest blast of icelandic volcanic ash.

I am here with the team who work on the ‘escape’ prevention magazine for youth with its 3rd edition now close to completion. We are looking to use some of the time to put a short video together to bring the reality of this countries youth to your attention as well as the role the magazine has and the impact it is making for individuals at risk.
Tomorrow i am speaking at a state school for older economic orphans, you might recall a previous post where i conveyed how most orphans here are not as the result of dead parents and war, but mass economic migration often involving both parents. One orphanage in the city had 74 young people and 73 of these were economic orphans.
I have to do the same talk twice, split between a russian translation and a romanian translation for this country of historical language and that of soviet opresssion.
I have been asked to talk about the dangers of migration and human trafficking across europe and the realities of not so perfect western ideologies and life. That will be a first for me.
I will seek to balance the possibilties of finding job security with housing estates in the british north with 3000 occupants where people dont open their curtains till 10am as there is nothing to get up for with 2/3rds enemployment. Also the erosion of british family life and individualism which kills community.Not a cheery talk, but a realistic one.
It is important to let them know that many of their future peers are in the bondage of sexual slavery and look at how to avoid this.

An Urgent Action for Romanian Youth @ Imminent Risk of Trafficking

In mid April we received good intelligence from a colleague that the trafficking of Romanians into countries like Greece was at an all time high with a noted current increase in those being forced into prostitution in Athens, with similar intel from other locations like Vienna Austria. To place this in context, there are many hundreds of girls in the brothels of Athens. 2 years ago the presence of Romanians trafficked into brothels was 10%, today it is more like 90%.
The majority of new girls have responded to bogus job offers in a targeted web based campaign in Romania.

The Urgency:
In short we are working with other groups over the next 6 weeks to head off a period of Harvesting which will happen when older school kids and students driven by poverty will answer summer job adverts to work abroad. Many of who will be forced into prostitution having first experienced the indignity of Greece’s ‘Breaking Rooms’ ready for market in Greece and other countries like Italy and Spain.

We are responding with Radio Adverts, a Poster campaign for schools and colleges and Web portal, which will pack up communications and signpost those with concerns to existing support groups.
This will all require money to get these in place in time.
This is a rare opportunity to respond to good Intelligence with a measured and immediate Action.

Donations can be made simply by following this link to our partner group Love146 – European Prevention.

copy and paste this into your search bar:

http://love146.kintera.org/europrevgbp

Give Anything – But Give Something

Michael Leidig

British and Romanian child care organisations and officials have been accused of a catastrophic failure to protect children from poor families in Romania from being trafficked to the UK.

The claims were made by Norbert Ceipek who runs the Augarten Crisis Centre in Vienna, Austria, that takes care of trafficked children caught by Austrian police.

He said the children he was seeing told him the UK was now the number one destination for child beggars because UK officials were not tackling the problem – and because large amounts could be earned on UK streets.

His centre in Austria cares for children who have been brought in off the streets, and he was also responsible for setting up a network of 80 children’s crisis centres in Romania.

He said he had started working with Romanian officials in 2005, adding:
“I went there and at the time there was nothing being done against these gangs. But there was a will to get things done and we opened several crisis centres – eventually there were about 80 . I went there with my team from Austria and we had professional educators to train the staff in Romania.

“But over the last year and a half these people have been dismissed – occasionally even being replaced by unqualified staff who are often in league with the gangs themselves. These people are sometimes even cleaners that used to work at the centres. Romania claims its because of the economic crisis. But as a result all the schemes to educate the children and their families does not happen any more. The kids are handed back and there is no check on what happens to them – no-one cares.

“That means they are straight back in the hands of the gangs. We are seeing the same kids again and again because nothing is done to stop it happening. It is as if they in Romania want to turn a blind eye since they got EU membership. That was when they began laying off staff and cutting funding. Once the EU membership was obtained there was no will to do anything about it.”

He estimates that between 1,300 and 1,500 social workers from the crisis centres have been fired since EU membership. Many of the crisis centres have been closed completely – others are run by untrained amateurs.

And he added that the situation in the UK was fuelling the trade.
He said: “The kids I am getting off the streets here are telling me that the UK is the number one destination because its all so easy there. Not only are the English citizens such easy targets for the beggar kids – with rich pickings to be had – but that there are also no central organisations who are helping these children to safety.

“In London there are so many NGOas that are supposed to be helping but its as if they are in competition with each other. They take the kids for a few days – get the money for looking after them – and then they hand them back to the gang leaders who come and pick them up. There are no controls over who or what they are handed back to.

“The Metropolitan Police do what they can but they are also seeing the same kids again and again.

“I am trying to get the same organisation we have here in Austria set up in the UK but so far nothing has happened.”

Edmond McLoughney, Unicef representative in Romania, said that there is in fact in Romania a network of ten shelters who offer support for victims which have been supported by the state child protection authority for staff and training.

But the financing is a problem.

He said: “There is indeed a shortage of money and a lot more social workers are needed.”

“The big issue at the moment is that the Government doesn’t have the money to invest in the child protection system. We call on the Government to give priority to children matters. Don’t make budget cuts in children matters. But instead increase funding for children, for education.”

He added that the economic crisis meant children were especially vulnerable.

“The local authorities should allocate more time and resources to families, when risk cases are identified, in order to prevent the case from happening again.”

British gang-busting police have arrested more than 30 Romanian mobsters accused of sending an army of snatched children to beg and steal on the streets of Britain.

Police estimate that more then 170 youngsters as young as seven have been trafficked to the UK by the gang.

Scotland Yard officers working with local anti-Mafia cops in Romania yesterday morning (Thursday) took part in a series of raids in Tandarei, a gangland heartland in the south of the country.

More than 300 officers searched 34 homes and properties in the co-ordinated dawn searches.

Police say the modern-day Fagins forced their young victims – snatched from poor gypsy communities – to beg in Britain and go on pick-pocketing and shoplifting sprees.

Mob bosses set them up with bogus documents and homes in London and other big cities and then put them to work on the streets threatening their families at home if they tried to flee.
www.romaniantimes.at/?id=7849%5Cushared