Reportage / Women 24.05.2021

The secret border

In the past, girls were sold and then forced into prostitution. But now the situation has changed a lot

Jan Daga

L'articolo The secret border proviene da InsideOver.

Reportage / Women 13.10.2020

A Second Chance

Piedmont is one of the Italian regions with the highest number of Nigerian women forced into prostitution on the streets. Every woman represents a source of income between 35,000 and 50,000 Euros for the criminal organization managing them. It is…

Alessio Paduano

Piedmont is one of the Italian regions with the highest number of Nigerian women forced into prostitution on the streets. Every woman represents a source of income between 35,000 and 50,000 Euros for the criminal organization managing them. It is an enormous business of international proportions, as was proven last year  by the operation carried out by the Italian police which culminated in the arrest of 32 people. Those arrested were operating on behalf of the Supreme Eiye Confraternity and Supreme Vikings Confraternity, the main Nigerian mafia clans in Italy.

In  Asti, an Italian town in the Piedmont region with just over 75,000 inhabitants, there is a non-profit organization which aims to rescue foreign women forced into prostitution. It is called Piam (Integration Project for the Reception of Migrants), an organization founded in 1999 following the encounter between Princess Inyang Okokon, a former victim of human trafficking, with Alberto Mossino, an Italian man who subsequently became her husband.  

Princess entered Italy illegally in 1998 and thanks to the help of a priest of and  Alberto she was able to pay off the debt of 45,000 Euros to her madam, report her exploiters and put an end to that chapter. From 1999 to the present day Piam has saved some 200 women who travelled to Italy with the illusion of finding a job but instead ended up selling their bodies on the streets .

For twenty years Princess and her collaborators have been monitoring the streets of Asti in an attempt to provide women who have fallen into the prostitution trap a second chance. The first approach is vital. It takes sensitivity to slowly win over the acceptance of the women who are mistrustful and often frightened.

“We start by handing out condoms and information pamphlets,” says Princess, “then when the women understand that they have nothing to fear we try to explain to them that a different future is always possible and that they can count on us. It is not a simple job, but if there are women out there  who want to change their lives we welcome them onto our premises, we help them obtain a residence permit, we provide psychological support and we assist them in becoming integrated into Italian society.” 

L'articolo A Second Chance proviene da InsideOver.

Reportage / Society 13.07.2020

Tea, Pop Music and Sex Workers

“An Iranian pastry here in Pattaya, a place that is considered one of the sex capitals of the world?” I thought to myself. She must’ve read my mind. “It’s a gift from an Iranian customer,” she explained with her poor…

Alireza Soltani Koupaei

Komeil Soheili

L'articolo Tea, Pop Music and Sex Workers proviene da InsideOver.

Almost 21 years have passed since the bloody fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Communist dictatorship and Romania is still struggling to find its own place in the world, entangled between the path to Westernization and the will to keep its centuries-old and very particular identity.

Contrarily to the rest of post-Soviet and post-Communist Europe, like Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and the Baltic states, the once-called “Tiger of the East” didn’t pass the test: the pervasiveness of corruption and the never-ending widespread poverty have forced about 5,600,000 thousand citizens to seek a better life abroad. Furthermore, the apparently-extraordinary GDP performance of Romania isn’t actually so extraordinary as it is a proved case of immiserizing growth (where economic growth can result in a country being worse off than before the growth), and the political system is the most unstable in Europe — 9 governments in the last 10 years.

But there’s something more, too.

Romania is plagued by a seedy evil: sex trafficking. It’s Europe’s undisputed sex worker production factory and it might be interesting to understand why.

Romania: Europe’s Top Exporter of Sex Workers

At the beginning of the year 2000, some 120,000 women were trafficked for the purposes of prostitution and sex exploitation in Europe. Some of them were from the post-Soviet space, mainly from Ukraine (7-11%) and Russia (3-5%), but the vast majority was from Romania and Moldova (45%). At that time, women were often kidnapped or convinced by force. Fully 60% reported the family to be behind the “deal,” and only a small minority claimed to be cheated by smart methods like a sham marriage or the lover boy-turned pimp.

Ten years later, in 2010, the United Nations estimated the number of women annually trafficked and sexually exploited in the continent to have increased to 140,000. The increase was due to the arrival of prostitutes from other parts of the world: South America, Africa, Eastern Asia. While the phenomenon of sex trafficking in the post-Soviet space experienced some reduction, the Balkans kept leading the ranking, providing 32% of all the prostitutes working in Western Europe, with Romania in first position followed by Bulgaria.

The demography of prostitution has changed further in recent years, but in the sense that Romania has considerably increased its exposure in the continental panorama, clearly separating out as the leader among the other countries and becoming Europe’s top exporter of prostitutes. According to a 2013 report by the European Commission, Romania and Bulgaria together provided 61% of all the women sex trafficked annually within the EU, with the former in first position. Indeed, four out of five victims were Romanians. Five years later, in 2018, the EU Commission published a new report on the matter, noting that Romania has been indisputably leading the ranking since 2010, and is the origin of 44% of all sex trafficking-related prosecutions at EU level.

The most recent study on the topic, conducted jointly by Europol and Eurojust and published last year, concluded that 7 out of 10 of Europe’s prostitutes are from Romania and it signals a paradigm shift: violence is no longer the principal means used by the sex trafficking-involved crime networks since there’s an increase in the cases of women selling themselves willingly for money. But Romania-based newspapers have challenged such depictions, collecting the witnessed testimony of some former prostitutes which are plenty of violence, abuses, deceptions, forced abductions and forced-sellings.

Germany, Italy, and Other Destinations

In any case, Romanian prostitutes represent the first nationality in most Western European countries. In Germany, according to the most recent and official data, coming directly from the legally-operating sex houses, as of 2018 about 32,800 women worked in the prostitution industry, 26,800 of them were foreigners and 11,400 were Romanians. It means that Romanians represent 35% of all the sex workers active in Germany.

But not all prostitutes choose to register and, according to some projections, in Germany there might be up to 400,00 sex workers. Not all of them, of course, work in the legally-registered sex houses, many still work in the streets while others are independent escorts. It might be interesting to investigate this underground reality in order to understand the real number of Romanian sex workers. The Romanianization of Germany’s sex industry is such that some brothels promote themselves by advertising the potential customers that they are “100% Romanian”, using ads like “Don’t worry, our girls are very beautiful, indeed they are Romanians!”

In Italy, in accordance with the numbers provided by the Association Giovanni XXIII, there are between 100,000 and 120,000 street prostitutes. Romania is the second most represented nationality (22%) after Nigeria (36%). What is truly shocking is that of the alleged 20,000-30,000 Italian-based Romanian prostitutes, the overwhelming majority is made up of minors: 15,000.

In Spain, according to a report by the Ministry of the Interior, Romanian women are believed to be 35%-50% of all the prostitutes working in the country and most of them are proven victims of violent abuses and tortures, kidnapped by criminal gangs in their home cities.

Prostitution in Romania

Romania ranks 11th in the world in terms of per capita prostitutes: 80 per 10,000 inhabitants, that is about 158,000. According to a 2010 report by the Amsterdam-based Tampep, 50% of all street prostitutes in Romania are of Roma origin. The situation is so problematic and widespread that recently the US Embassy in Bucharest downgraded the country from level 1 to level 2 with regard to its fight against sex trafficking and victim protection. The downgrading was motivated by the alleged collusion between authorities and crime rings.

In this regard, it’s noteworthy to highlight the recent case of Alexandra Macesanu. The 15-year-old girl was abducted for unknown purposes on July 24, 2019 in Caracal. She succeeded in escaping a day later and called the police three times but her help request was ignored. Search operations started after 19 hours of her being missing.

Macesanu was found dead and her murderer confessed to the killing of another young girl as well, Luiza Melencu. People went on the streets to protest against the police and the then-Ministry of the Interior resigned. Many people think that there’s something more behind the police’s negligence and that a more in-depth investigation might lead to the discovery of a human trafficking ring involving powerful people.

But collusion can explain only part of the problem. The shocking truth is that Romania became Europe’s sex trafficking factory also because of cultural reasons. The Romanian media themselves to admit it: well-known prostitutes and escorts are VIPs, they are often invited on television programs and shows, their social media accounts are followed by tens of thousands of people, especially youth and the public morality is increasingly tolerant towards prostitution. A rising number of Romanians have started to see them as “smart girls” that have found a way to make money.

Bucharest’s city center is now full of striptease clubs, sex shops, and underground sex houses, while prostitution and procuring are now popular themes of pop music, rap and Manele. The latter is a Roma-originated music genre which is now recognized countrywide and whose singers, mostly of Roma origin, tend to romanticize prostitution, procuring, sexual objectification, misogyny, and criminal lifestyles. The most famous Manelists, like Florin Salam and Dani Mocanu have also dedicated many songs to known and sentenced gangsters who sometimes appear in their videos and their songs are often sources of scandal.

Friends and Family: the Worst Enemy of Romanian Women

According to the most recent reports and studies on the prostitution phenomenon in Romania, families, close friends, and boyfriends are to be considered responsible for the majority of human trafficking cases in the country. A 2019 study has discovered that 49% of trafficked women are “sold” by the family and 9% are sold by the partner, and it’s not unusual for parents to sold their own girls to traffickers when they are still children: the Open Door Foundation (Fundaţiei Uşa Deschisă) has claimed to have even found cases of 9-year-old kids being sold.

Sometimes prostitutes do sell themselves willingly or agree to go abroad for love. This is what the Romanian police ascertained recently in a operation that dissolved a crime gang based in Brăila. The operation covered a 4-year period, during which the police monitored the moves of prostitutes and pimps between 2013 and 2017. It was found that some prostitutes were truly in love with their pimps, who they considered boyfriends, and would send them up to €10,000 at a time via Western Union in the expectation to get married with them in the future.

Some cities seem to be plagued by sex trafficking more than others such as in the case of Galaţi, Craiova and Bacău. In Galaţi, between 2012 and 2017, 70 people were sentenced to jail for sex trafficking-related crimes and in 40 cases the trafficking involved underage girls. 

L'articolo How Romania Became Europe’s Sex Trafficking Factory proviene da InsideOver.

When 17-year-old Amanda* found herself pregnant she was determined to build a better life for her unborn baby. She made an oath to herself to give the child all the love and things that her own childhood had lacked. Fast-forward to 10 years and two children later, Amanda did end up carving out of a different kind of life for herself and her little ones. It was one that she could have never anticipated—not even in her wildest thoughts. Amanda belongs to a new generation of prostitutes born out of an economic austerity that has forced thousands of women in the UK into the sex trade.

‘Sometimes In Life You Don’t Have A Choice’

“This isn’t what a normal person wants to do. Sometimes in life, you just don’t have a choice – especially when all you are trying to do is the best by your kids when you don’t have many opportunities,” Amanda murmured. “But sometimes life isn’t fair like that.”

A combination of desperate financial circumstances, few resources, and limited work opportunities has not only propelled women like Amanda into the industry but also left them unsafe due to ambiguous British laws. Although prostitution itself is not against the law, many activities that surround the trade are deemed illegal.

“I have been robbed, sexually assaulted, and beaten up, but going to the police means I could get into trouble. If I go to jail, who will take care of my kids? The law isn’t set up to protect women like me, so how can I report crimes when they happen? We are treated like the criminals—not the victims,” Amanda said. Amanda further explained that clients knew this and some could use that to their advantage.

When asked if this did not make her afraid to go to work, she responded simply, “Every time I leave home for work, I feel scared. But what can I do? My children need to eat and I have no family or partner to help us. I left school with no qualifications. A minimum wage job won’t even cover the rent for the month. I have no choice. All I can do is pray and hope for the best.”

British Prostitutes Targeted by the Law

The biggest study ever on prostitution in the UK revealed that female sex workers often refrained from reporting incidents of violence due to fears of prosecution. The report, which was published and commissioned by the British Home Office and conducted by the University of Bristol said, “the combination of financial need and the legal and regulatory environment were identified as a ‘perfect cocktail of conditions’ for undermining safety.”

It highlighted a direct correlation between prostitutes and sexual and physical violence. Like Amanda, many women on the survey said that they did not report such crimes because they were too scared of prosecution. The study also revealed that a lot of female sex workers wanted to work with each other as a means of “enhancing safety, of sharing tips, saving on costs, of having a laugh and ‘off-loading’ emotionally between clients”. Under British law, however, this is illegal, as prostitutes are not permitted to work together as a group.

‘People Have Been Left With No Money. This is Particularly Devastating For Mothers’

A representative for the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), Niki Adams, told The Independent:

“A big proportion of women are single mothers. It is also a lot of women in their twenties. Universal Credit has a massive impact on people coming to us. Having to wait five weeks before you get any benefits under Universal Credit is forcing women back into prostitution or into starting prostitution for the first time. People have been left with no money. This is particularly devastating for mothers – how do you get the money for the next meal for your children?

“This report shows sex workers are largely women struggling to get by in very difficult circumstances and goes against the stereotype of the poor victim and the happy worker. We see a lot of women who have suffered violence at the hands of male clients or male thugs who break into the premises where they are working. They are scared of reporting to the police due to the fear of going to prison.”

The Nordic Response To Prostitution

Some have proposed the Nordic Model, also known as the Sex Buyer Law, which decriminalizes the sex worker and instead, criminalizes the clients. In theory, it sets out to safeguard those who felt their only option was to sell sex while providing measures to assist them in leaving the trade. The model hopes to lead to an eventual decline in the demand that drives the sex trafficking industry.

Yet, campaigners against the model have claimed that there has been an increase in violence against prostitutes in countries that have adopted the Nordic approach.

In 2018—a year after it Nordic-style laws were passed in Ireland—the New Statesman reported that there were 900 incidents of violence against sex workers in the year preceding the change, and more than 1,400 since then, an almost 50 per cent rise.

*Name has been changed to retain anonymity

L'articolo Is The UK Government Creating And Turning A Blind Eye To Prostitution? proviene da InsideOver.

A Nigerian pastor is facing trial in France for allegedly running a sex slavery ring. He is charged with aggravated pimping and slavery, which he has denied.

35-year-old pastor, Stanley Omoregie claimed in court last week that he rented out apartments to young women without knowing that they were prostitutes.

“What do you think these women were doing to pay you rents of several hundred euros a month, without working, since they had no residence permit?”, the court president asked.

Omoregie claimed that he only wanted to help people in his community without finding out where his alleged tenants were getting their money from. In a text sent to an unknown number, he asks for “those with beautiful bodies, who can be controlled, not those that cause problems.”

The French-speaking Nigerian is part of an accused twenty-four member family-based syndicate of sex traffickers, including 10 men and 14 women.

One of Europe’s most wanted women, Jessica Edosowman is also part of the accused. She is thought to be on the run in Europe, and will be tried in absentia. Edosowman has been accused of recruiting women in Nigeria and trafficking them to France: in Lyon, Montpellier and Nimes.

French prosecutors estimate that, by selling sex for less than €10, Omoregie’s 7 alleged victims – aged between 17 and 38 – made up to €150,000 a month for the syndicate.

In 2016, illegal migrants from Nigeria made up 21% of more than 171, 000 migrants that attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Italy, according to figures from the Italian Interior Ministry. The United Nations Migration Agency said in 2017 that perhaps 80 per cent of Nigerian migrant women and girls arriving on Europe’s shores in Italy could potentially be sex trafficking victims.

By 2017, the UN Migration Agency in Italy had seen an “almost 600 per cent increase in the number of potential sex trafficking victims arriving in Italy by sea”. Most of these victims, the UN claims, arrived from Nigeria.

In France and other European countries, Nigerian sex workers now outnumber sex workers from other nations, including China and Eastern European nations. Before reaching the Mediterranean Sea, many trafficked victims travel across the Sahara Desert to reach Libya and, ultimately, Europe. According to UNODC figures, 94 per cent of Nigerian women and girls trafficked into Europe come from Edo State, a major trafficking hub in Nigeria.

Many sex workers trafficked from Edo State partake in black magic rituals in Nigeria before their journey begins. During these rituals, they make “spiritual” promises to repay the money incurred towards their passage into Europe. These “voodoo rites” forbid these women and girls from breaking their spiritual ‘contract’ with their traffickers. The fear of the spiritual ramifications of breaking a voodoo contract is used as a “tool of subordination” against trafficked sex workers and “impacts their will to return home without having fully paid their debt”.

”May God kill me now if a girl has worked for me,” Omoregie said in court. The accused sex slavery syndicate covers the entire cycle of sex trafficking activities, from former prostitutes who have paid of their debts and now smuggle in their own sex workers, to violent pimps, drivers of vans in which women performed sex acts for money, and money launderers who handled the money raked in by the sex workers.

Lyon police spent months of wiretaps and surveillance between September 2017 and January 2018, leading to the arrest of the suspects.

The accused face 10 years in jail each, if convicted. It is unclear what would happen to the trafficked women and girls, and whether Lyon authorities would give them full rights as both sex workers and illegal immigrants.

L'articolo Nigerian “Sex Slavery” Ring Goes on Trial in France proviene da InsideOver.

She does not want to reveal her name, but she goes by “N”. When her mother left for Italy in search of work, little “N” was left at home in Romania with an uncle. Her mother would never return. At 8-years-old, the uncle began grooming her for prostitution with the intention of trafficking her to Italy. Beaten daily, bruises and welts – cunningly delivered to places that could be concealed by clothes – marked her small frame. At 12-years-old, “N” was rescued by the charity People Against Poverty and was eventually adopted by a project leader at the organisation. She is now 30-years-old and was happily married last year.

“N” got the fairy-tale ending after all. Yet, thousands of Romanian girls are not as fortunate, and their stories meander into something far darker.

Over the years, Romania has increasingly become Europe’s top sex trafficking location and a large percentage of prostitutes around European cities comprise of Romanian women.

The report, “Behind Closed Doors Organised Sexual Exploitation in England and Wales”, revealed that Romanians made up the biggest percentage of sex workers in the UK alone. Of brothels visited by the police, 86% of prostututes in Leicestershire and 75% of prostitutes in Northumbria were Romanian. And 92% of women caught loitering/soliciting sex on the streets of Redbridge in London were also Romanian.

Since joining the EU, the ease of free movement, soaring poverty, and complicit authorities, have caused countless Romanian women to fall victim to sex traffickers. And according to the “Trafficking in Persons” report, one-third of Romania’s trafficking victims are underage girls.

The Romanian mafia is an intricate network, which spans across Europe, specialising in sex trafficking. One of the main techniques employed by traffickers is known as the “lover boy method”. After singling out his would-be-victim, the trafficker pretends to be smitten with the girl, showering her with attention, affection, and romance. Once the girl has fallen in love with him, he would pretend to encounter financial difficulties and the girl would be coerced into selling her body to help him. Once she is entrapped in ignominy and the seedy web of prostitution, it becomes difficult to escape. Sometimes, the women are blackmailed so that they are too fearful to attempt to break free. Beyond that, it then becomes easy for the girls to be transported to different corners of Europe.

Yet, the traffickers may not necessarily be at the root of the problem. In a society dominated by androcentric values, many officials do not view the epidemic as a serious threat, but rather as a symptom of women with loose morals or as a consequence of certain ethnic groups’ natural gravitation towards prostitution.

Valerie Huxley is the CEO of People against Poverty, an organisation working in the city of Iasi on the Moldovan border, making it the largest area for trafficking in Romania. The children whom they have liaised with often come from the gypsy community and are eking out an existence.

Families live in tumbled-down, rat-ridden ex-communist blocks – barely fit for a dog – with no heating, lighting, sanitation, or running water. Within these flats, they have encountered countless young girls prostituting their services on the streets.

Huxley admitted that Romanian women are some of the most “at-risk” due to economic constraints. She explained: “I really believe that this is due to the poverty problem. These people have literally nothing – they live in makeshift homes of mud and tin. They cannot find work and if they do, it is for daily work making around 50p per day. They see a release from the poverty by prostituting for their next meal.“

The charity has built temporary sanctuary homes that offer relief. Working with families, they address issues such as alcohol, drugs, debt counselling, and get official organisations involved with social workers.

“The Romanian government needs to tackle this problem. These people live amongst ‘normal’ families who have homes – where they can cook, and feed their children. It shouldn’t be this way. They need to work with these people and address their issues. The majority of them have no legal identities. We have a small legal project where we try to address this and provide identity cards and birth certificates for the people we work with,” Huxley added.

Together with Unseen, A UK-based trafficking charity, Huxley said that they run a small programme aimed at young Romanian girls who live in abject poverty.

“They were very shy to begin with, but once they saw what could happen to them and we made them aware of the world around them, they began asking questions. I don’t know if these girls will avoid the trafficking that’s around them, but we do know that we are there for them if they need the help.”

L'articolo Romania: Europe’s Top Sex Trafficking Location proviene da InsideOver.

Mahbuba Mammadzada, a 23-year-old model from Azerbaijan, recently hit the headlines after selling her virginity for £2 million.

The alleged winner was a ‘politician from Tokyo’, while an apparent lawyer from London and a Munich footballer came in second and third in the bidding, respectively. Before the finalisation of the “transaction”, the winning bidder would be able to verify the girl’s claims of virginity via a medical examination.

In a statement, the model said: “I want to sell my virginity on Cinderella Escorts and because I want to have a house for me and for my mum, so, finally, we can live in our own place, and also to travel all over the world with mum.

“I wanna live in the USA and continue my modelling career there with one of the top modelling agencies.

“I love dogs, and I dream to open a shelter for dogs in my country. My mum did everything for me until now, and now it’s my turn to make her proud of me.”

It was not the first time the infamous Cinderella Escorts agency drew media attention. In recent times, the online escort site has sold the virginities of many young, pretty girls to wealthy men around the world. The company reportedly attracts high-profile clientele such as celebrities, footballers, politicians, and wealthy businessmen, and is believed to take around 20 percent of the deal.

Jan Zakobielski, the company’s founder, told Forbes: “I think not everyone has the same reasons for it. But generally, a lot of rich men like exclusive things. What makes things exclusive? That not everyone can have it. For example, a very old wine or a luxury car, which is just produced 100 times. A woman can give just one time her virginity and she holds it for a minimum of 18 years. Further demand determines the offer. There are much more men who want a virgin than virgins who want to give their virginity to older men.”

Over the years, hoards of similar websites, which advertise virgin sales, have sprung up. Yet, the legitimacy and safety of these sites remain questionable for the young women who decide to wade into this arena. Some have even opted to cut out the middle man and resign themselves to other strategies such as finding someone they already know or even advertising themselves on sex sites or eBay.

The reality is that most of the women who do resort to selling their virginity on the Internet will not amass six-figure sums and it is, in fact, a rarity to command such a high fee. The average woman is more likely to earn a few thousand pounds and the final sale is heavily reliant on the girl’s looks. As such, young women may be lured into the notion with unrealistic and naive expectations. And even if it turns out to be a one-off encounter, it is still the act of selling sex, which could constitute a form of prostitution.

Dr. Devi Rajab, the former Dean of Student Development at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a counselling and social psychologist said in an interview with IOL: “The question arises that if you have consciously had your first experience through paid sex, does it mean that you are sold into prostitution later?”

“How will this affect later relations when you have to tell your spouse that you sold your virginity? The implications are quite profound on relationships, trust, morality, self-esteem and self-respect. Moreover, the sale of sex has very little to do with love and romance and one wonders how these women would be affected in their later relationships. There is a basic degradation in selling one’s body for the sake of a satiation in a faceless encounter.”

In times of economic uncertainty and financial swings, young people have become more resourceful and enterprising when it comes to making money. The advent of the Internet has created an unprecedented avenue where any and everything is available for sale. And selling one’s virginity has become one of the more controversial and increasingly popular ways of monetising oneself.

L'articolo The Rise Of Virginity For Sale Online proviene da InsideOver.

“Katherine” (whose name has been changed for anonymity) is a model with a six-figure Instagram following. She even has that all-elusive and much-coveted “verified” blue badge next to her name. Her brown hair tumbles down her back in a mass of perfect locks, and her enviable figure is flaunted in designer bikinis in prime locations all over the globe. Her picture-perfect profile is flooded with thousands of likes and comments from adoring fans who, seemingly, worship the twenty-something-year-old. She makes a fortune from sponsored and affiliated posts, or at least, that is what her fanbase believes. The real truth is that Katherine is part of a new generation of sex workers – one that was manufactured and marketed for prostitution on Instagram.

I meet Katherine at a swanky restaurant in Manhattan, where she tells me that we would dine for free since she “pays” with Instagram stories of herself eating there. In exchange for her glamorous presence and the free publicity she gives the establishment, they are happy to let her eat without charge.

“Most people think Instagram models make a lot of money from ads and sponsorship, but the truth is you don’t really earn that much from it,” she explains, twirling her wine glass with French-manicured nails. “I mean, you don’t make enough from that to jet set to different countries. The reality is that a lot of these Insta-models you see regularly posing on beaches and staying in the fanciest hotels all the time are hired for sex. Everyone in the industry knows, but it’s just kept hidden.”

Katherine gets paid to spend time with affluent men all around the globe. She says that the majority of her clients are wealthy Middle-Eastern men, and she has been flown all over for sex and escapades.

“Basically, these guys contact you on Instagram and they suggest meeting or flying you somewhere. After that, most of the conversation continues on WhatsAspp,” she adds. “Of course, you check out their account and do some research about them first to make sure they are legitimate. Sometimes, you might even know a girl who worked for them before and she might be able to vouch for them.”

Katherine gets paid anywhere between the sum of $5,000 to $15,000 for all-expenses-paid trips, with Dubai and Bali being some of the most favoured destinations. Generally speaking, sex is part of the package – and by her own admission, the money and “extras” earned feel worth it to her. She is unwilling to divulge the details of what is expected sexually. Yet she alludes that she had “tried most things”, but does not disclose anything further.

For many, Instagram can contribute a stream of honest income – in varying quantities. Yet, the reality is that many of the public’s favourite Instagram models and influencers are little more than high-class escorts.

One model wrote about her experience in Evie Magazine and how she was shocked to discover that a lot of the popular models with huge followings – some in the millions – were prostitutes. She said:

“Sure, some models with big followings can make hundreds or thousands per post marketing products. But many brands aren’t lining up to jump into bed with a model whose page is not far from a modern Playboy spread. To be clear, there are MANY legitimate bloggers and influencers who make a living traveling and creating content for hotels and brands in exchange for complimentary stay or fees. Those are not the people I’m talking about. The easiest way to differentiate? The borderline pornographic content they post. These pages, full of sexual teasers, are their advertisements. Their honeypots. Their portfolios, if you will.”

Katherine agrees that the right photos are imperative for the “trade”. On her international debaucheries, she always ensures she gets the best snaps of herself posing in slinky bikinis while draped against some exotic background. She does not reveal where her next travels will be to, but admits that she is currently negotiating two trips with two separate clients.

“I’m only young once, and I’ll only look like this once. Might as well use it to my benefit,” she remarks before asking me to take a photo of her with her chocolate-dusted tiramisu.

L'articolo Instagram’s Prostitution Secret proviene da InsideOver.

Over the past few years, Ghana’s economy has steadily grown. This marked improvement in business dealings means that more foreigners now travel to the West African country. Yet, something disconcerting lurks underneath this international attraction – child prostitution.

It is estimated that there is somewhere in the region of 100,000-200,000 underage prostitutes in Ghana – some as young as 9-years-old.

One such girl: 13-year-old Melphia, who lives in a slum in Kumasi – the second largest city in the country ­– was featured in Spiegel and spoke candidly about her experience. At the time, she had been working as a prostitute for three years.  When she was 10-years-old, Melphia travelled to the city because her parents could not afford to feed her and her 12 siblings. As soon as she got off the bus in Kumasi, a man approached her. Within hours, he had sex with her – an encounter that Melphia recounts as being so agonising that she could barely walk afterwards. That man would later become her pimp.

Melphia’s life has become a humdrum routine of survival and sex. She sleeps for most of the day, and when night falls, she must go in search of men with whom to have sex. There are as many as five or more clients a night – both locals and tourists. Preference tends to be for the latter since foreigners pay more (around 25 euros compared to roughly 5 euros that the locals pay), and are less likely to display signs of violence. One of Melphia’s friends was savagely slashed with a machete. From time to time, girls turn up dead.

Like most pimps in the region, Melphia’s takes almost all of her money. The paltry amount that she is left with goes towards the rent for the tiny ramshackle hut (which she shares with four other girls); her one and only meal for the day; and her 5 minutes showers costing 20 cents in a roofless cement cell. All of her worldly possessions fit into a single black bag.

And it is not only the pimps who profit from the exploitation of these young girls. A seedy web of hotel owners, crooked authorities, and drug dealers are all entangled in the illicit industry.

In some areas, girls are kept in brothels where clients knowingly seek them out. Almost a decade ago, a newspaper ran a story about a brothel, which employed minors. The story sent shock waves around the world, prompting Ghana’s Department of Social Welfare to respond to the widespread furor. They rescued 160 girls and put them into care. Yet, just two days later, the girls were back on the streets. The daunting task of providing shelter for 160 children proved to go beyond their resources.

A report by the ECPAT stated that increased development of Ghana’s tourism industry has made Ghana one of the most popular child sex tourism destination countries in Africa. Lack of reporting mechanisms and poor enforcement of child protection legislation make it an “ideal destination” for travelling child sex offenders and the production of child pornography. Often, Ghanaian children suffer sexual abuse from expatriates and international tourists in exchange for the payment of school fees. It said:

“The government should address the increased vulnerability of children to sexual exploitation within the ongoing phenomenon of street children.

“The immigration status of children should not prevent them from accessing basic social services or otherwise leave them in a position of vulnerability to abuse and exploitation.

“The ICT policies of Ghana should expressly condemn the sexual exploitation of children online and prohibit child pornography.

“Ghana should establish a child sex offender registry and actively share this information with other countries for prevention and monitoring purposes.

“Additionally, Ghana should enhance education efforts to ensure that officials do not blame child victims of exploitation.”

Despite Ghanaian laws that outlaw child prostitution, it continues to prosper in a society, which continually turns a blind eye. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children stipulates that children must be protected from sexual abuse and exploitation. Yet, it appears that little strides are being taken to rectify the issue in Ghana.

Sometimes, desperately impoverished families with many mouths to feed – like Melphia’s – willingly send their daughters so that they can afford to buy food and other necessities. In an exposé documentary, Dr. Apkabli Honu, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, University of Ghana alluded that the breakdown of extended family support systems could also be contributing to the growing number of girls on the street. He said:

“The family as the first point of socialisation is very important and so that is why it is important that we bring children [up] the way we want them to be. The extended family system is diminishing. The family system is becoming more and more nucleated. It boils down to child-rearing practices, particularly, when the child is becoming an adolescent.”

L'articolo Child Prostitution in Ghana is on the Rise proviene da InsideOver.