The United Kingdom has become one of the main and most profitable markets for Romanian criminal gangs involved in sex trafficking.

The latest development — partly resulting from pandemic-driven poverty — involves the growing presence in the British sex market of underage Romanian girls sold by their own families to pedophilia-linked crime networks.

The Shocking Sex Business of Romanian Gangs

The ultimate and terrific evolution of the Romanian sex mafia has been matter of a deep and well-documented investigation by the British tabloid the Sun. The inquiry, based on the collection of police data, witnesses and knowledge provided by Romanian mafia expert Radu Nicolae, comes to a shocking conclusion: more and more Romanian families are selling their own daughters — mostly teenagers — to UK-based sex traffickers working along with pedophiles.

According to Nicolae, Romanian recruiters tend to “target young women, as young as possible, and primarily minors” and it is not unusual that their parents are behind the deals that are made. The trend is mainly due to three circumstances: Romania’s status as Europe’s sex trafficking powerhouse, the pandemic-driven poverty, and the ever-growing expansion of organized pedophile rings in the UK – the number of known pedophiles in the UK has nearly doubled between 2019 and 2020, increasing from 180,000 to 350,000.

EU Report: Children Smuggled Out of Romania is Up Tenfold Since 2016

The European Commission uncovered that the “children smuggled out of the country [Romania]” increased tenfold since 2016, a tendency which is probably linked to the developments taking place in the UK. The business is highly profitable: depending on the age of the sex slave, traffickers can pay the families up to 3,000 euros per girl. The age can be very low: according to law professor Silvia Tabusca there have been documented cases of “girls as young as nine-years-old” smuggled and obliged “to sell their bodies” for money.

The consent of the parents is mandatory because of its strategic relevance: in this way, underage girls can travel abroad as if they were to go on a trip and the horrific reality is kept hidden from the authorities – what occurs in the UK is kept a secret among families, recruiters, children and clients.

When the object of sex trafficking is a teenager, the exploitation can be even more profitable in the light of the possibility to make her work in underground brothels. Estimates suggest that “with each prostitute making between £500 and £700 a day from servicing multiple clients, their pimps can rake in £12,500 a month – or £135,000 a year – from a single girl.”

The most recent data extracted from police operations across the UK, particularly in England, speaks loudly: “86% of women in some British brothels are from Romania.” A large portion of of these women and teenagers are of Romanian ethnicity, but traffickers don’t disdain to also trade girls of Roma origin.

According to the charity Justice and Care, “the vast majority of women we find in brothels linked to organized crime and sexual exploitation are Romanian.” Most of the sex slaves are sent to London, which the Sun defines “the capital of the problem” due to the fact that 49.5% of “human trafficking victims are rescued from there.”

Romania: Europe’s Sex Trade Hub

Romania ranks 11th in the world in prostitutes per capita: 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.

According to a 2013 report by the European Commission, Romania and Bulgaria together provided 61% of all the women sex trafficked annually within the European Union, 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 in 2019, concluded that 7 out of 10 of Europe’s prostitutes are from Romania. Romanian prostitutes represent the first nationality in most Western European countries, from Germany to Spain.

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.

In Spain, according to a report by the Ministry of the Interior, Romanian women are believed to be 35% to 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.

Finally 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.

L'articolo Blood and Pedophilia Along the London-Bucharest Route 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.

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.

Sreypov Chan is a young woman with an infectious smile and a love of American songs. Yet, locked behind her dark eyes are visions that will forever spring to life in her worst nightmares.

Trafficked at seven years old in Cambodia, she was soon sold to her first client with whom she refused to have sex. As punishment, Sreypov was forced to drink the man’s urine. The abuse escalated over the coming days as she continued to reject clients; she was tied up, burnt, and beaten with an electric cable that left a trail of angry welts all over her body.

She eventually relented and agreed to have sex with a customer, but promptly changed her mind after she saw the grown man. Consumed by fear, she sobbed as the gravity of her demise settled into her little body. Infuriated, her pimp stuffed crushed chillis into her vagina, and then took a hot metal bar and shoved it inside her. Muted by the agony that seared through her, Sreypov experienced her first sexual experience – when the client raped her.

Badly torn, she was then stitched up – completely awake and with no anesthetic – to have her “virginity” sold again and again. For the days she could not service enough men out of fatigue, she was shocked with a wire from an electrical socket.

After attempting to flee, she was hauled into a small room where she was hung up by her arms and beaten into a bloody mess. Chillis were then rubbed into her open wounds. Undeterred, she would keep trying to escape – from the various brothels she was sold to – until one day, at 10-years-old, Sreypov finally managed to escape.

Yet, hundreds of children remain trapped in Cambodia’s disconcerting pedophile’s playground. UNICEF reported that around 35% of Cambodia’s prostitutes are children under the age of 16. Minors transmute into little more than sex slaves; they receive food and accommodation, but no wages. Armed guards are hired by the pimps to ensure that their “property” is unable to flee.

Nor does being rescued from the clutches of the brothels address the problem. Relegated to being little more than commodities, it is easy for traffickers to simply go to a poor village and pluck out the new girl to replace the one they lost.

Nicky Mih first met Sreypov in 2009 while volunteering to work with survivors of sex trafficking in Cambodia. Inspired by Sreypov, Nicky went on to co-found Free To Shine – an organisation that works to prevent the trafficking and exploitation of local girls by strengthening the family and community to bolster the safety and education of their children.

Sierra Arlidge, Communications Officer at Free To Shine explained, “In our experience, traffickers often target the most vulnerable girls and families to find victims, travelling to villages in the remote areas and luring girls from families under extreme economic pressure with offers of job opportunities in the bigger cities.”

Grinding impoverishment and a fractured social substructure also mean many desperately poor families sell their own children into the sex trade. In some of the poorest communities, many live on less than $2 a day – and even that amount might be a struggle to earn. With no other resources for unexpected events such as illness or the death of a spouse, a young girl’s virginity often becomes the only asset the family might have.

“Sexual exploitation of child trafficking victims occurs everywhere, but can be loosely divided into the categories of sexual exploitation within business establishments such as karaoke bars, brothels, and massage parlours; and sexual exploitation on the street,” Sierra continued.

There has also been a concerning trend of orphanage tourism within Cambodia, which places minors at further risk for exploitation. The correlation between child exploitation and orphanage tourism/volunteerism is becoming increasingly known and the government has taken measured steps within the past year to prioritise family-based care. Tackling trafficking, however, requires increased awareness within the public sector, which has often gravely overlooked.

“As a tourism hotspot, Siem Reap can benefit from raising awareness on these issues within the tourism sector. As a member of the ReThink Orphanages, Free To Shine participates in awareness-raising efforts and encourages responsible tourism practices through our interactive educational experience, A Mile In Serey’s Shoes,” added Sierra.

Cambodia remains a prime source, destination, and transit country for children victims of trafficking. The trafficking occurs both internally and externally with tourist destinations hotspots such as Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, Siem Reap, Thailand, and Vietnam. With the demand for brides caused by China’s One-Child Policy, trafficking from Cambodia to China for forced marriage is also increasingly being seen as an issue.

Apart from sexual exploitation, children in Cambodia also fall victim to labour exploitation. Vulnerable to trafficking due to breakdowns in family structures, lack of family or social support, and economic pressure, children will be forced to seek out resources on the streets, which in turn increases their vulnerability to exploitation and trafficking.

L'articolo Cambodia’s Shameful Paedophile Ring 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.