Kay Chernush

Human trafficking: Sex trafficking

Preying on the most vulnerable and gullible in society, traffickers and their agents ensnare their victims with promises of good jobs, education, social standing and the opportunity for a better life. Once uprooted and in a totally foreign environment, the victims learn that there are no legitimate jobs waiting, that there is no bright future, and that they "owe" their traffickers many thousands of dollars before they can be free. In some countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, there are camps where victims are first raped and physically brutalized, then psychologically broken before being trafficked to the cities of Western Europe, the United States and the Persian Gulf. Some victims are sold several times over -- to other traffickers, pimps, massage parlors or brothel-keepers. The reality of their enslavement is driven home by rape, psychological coercion, confiscation of their identity papers, threats of exposure and violence against their families.

This sign outside a Hong Kong nightclub shows how young women are commodified and objectified, like so much merchandise in a shop. Here local Hong Kong girls are advertised along with exotic ones from Malaysia, Russia and Beijing.
   
Foreign as well as Chinese women outside a Macau casino.
   
Bar girls and their Mama-san await business in front of a nightclub on Patpong Road, center of Thailand's sex entertainment industry.
     
  
Skimpily-clad dancing girls, trafficked from impoverished rural communities or neighboring countries, have to entice bar patrons to buy drinks, in order to meet their nightly "quota." If a customer wants more than a drink, he simply pays a fee and takes the girl off the premises, to do with her whatever he wishes.
  
  
Mumbai is estimated to have as many as 10,000 brothels. Each brothel is estimated to keep between 20 and 50 women on average. The brothel-keeper must pay off the trafficker, the protector, the landlord, and possibly a policeman, lawyer, even a judge or politician. The system is sustained by violence, corruption and a criminal network of inter-locking profit centers. Not to mention endless supply and endless demand.
     
  
Young women ensnared in prostitution face daily violence from their pimps and their clients. They are particularly vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases. Since men will pay more to have sex without a condom, the girls will often have unprotected sex if they are short what they owe at the end of each month.
   
As a girl gets older and loses her looks, she is forced out of the brothel and onto the streets. Typically she will have between 10 to 40 clients a day, sometimes charging as little as 60 rupees, about $1.75. After paying off her pimp and paying for her bed, she keeps less than 50 cents.
   
(Left) Nepalese farmer and his wife seek help in locating their daughter, who was lured away from their village with a girlfriend. The daughter was rescued and re-united with her father the night before this photo was taken, but her friend has not been found.
     
  
A desperate mother seeks help in finding her 15-year old daughter, who was trafficked from her village in Nepal into a Mumbai brothel.
   
Girls from impoverished areas of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, having been trafficked by vicious individuals or criminal mafias, enticed by "lover boys" or kidnapped outright, end up working the streets of Western European capitals. Police and immigration autorities tend to see them first as prostitutes, not as terrorized victims.
   
     
  
Lured to Italy with the false promise of a good-paying job, a Nigerian woman finds herself on the street in order to repay a supposed "debt" of $50,000. She also has to pay her Madam $400 a month "rent" for her piece of public sidewalk.
   
Nigerian trafficking survivors gather at IROKO, an Italian NGO that provides psychological counseling, help with police, immigration issues, housing and job training. The women's stories are all roughly the same in their general outlines, horrifyingly diverse in the diabolical details of their enslavement.