Sex Trafficking – Stag Excursions – Ease of Buying Women – BBC

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8457172.stm

 

TWO VIDEOS:

·  ‘We could have bought a
woman’

·  Woman tricked into the sex
industry

 

Prague, Amsterdam, Riga, Krakow, they have all become popular
destinations for the British stag party industry. But some of the estimated
£500m spent each year is also finding its way to criminal gangs trafficking women
for the sex trade.

Visiting a prostitute has become part of many stag weekends

The British stag party has changed in the past 10 years. The drink down the
pub with dad or your mates is gone. It has been replaced with three or four
nights in a foreign city, far from prying eyes and geared to meet the stag
party’s every desire.

And that is often much more than a visit to a strip club. For a large number
of stags, visiting a prostitute has also become part of the ultimate lads’
weekend.

Prague has 70 brothels and numerous strip clubs. It is not hard to find some
of the half a million stag visitors, many British, that the Prague tourist
board say visit every year. I found them at every sex establishment I went to.

There was a strip party bus, lap-dancing, and even a brothel that offers
free sex provided you agree to be filmed. And many of the British stag groups
had at least some, if not all, members buying sexual services.

A local charity worker was in no doubt that British stag parties coming to
Prague had increased local demand for sexual services.

“If a British stag sleeps with women in a brothel or sleeps with her on
the streets it could be a women brought… because of the sex industry, to be
trafficked there from any part of the world.”

Criminal gangs

The Czech Republic has long been a transit point for the trafficking of
women in and out, and I wanted to find out how easy it would be to buy
trafficked women for the sex trade.

Through contacts in the criminal underworld, we managed to arrange an
undercover meeting with a trafficker. Posing as a London brothel owner, I
arranged to meet him at a motorway service station.

As I secretly filmed our meeting, it became clear how straightforward the
deal would be.

“I have two girls here for you now. That I can give to you. They have
papers, they can travel you know, no criminal record, anything,” he told
me.

In the world of international sex trafficking, the leasing of girls has
become common and it is big business.

“One girl makes me 90,000 krona (3,500 euros, £3,119) a month – around
50,000 euros (£44,561) a year. You give me 3,500 euros per month and I will
come and visit you every month in England and collect the money every
month.”

The meeting lasted 20 minutes, and I could have bought two women.

Back alley

In the Latvian capital Riga, brothels are illegal, so the sex industry is
more discreet with back-street brothels and street workers.

One British man told me about a “back alley basement place” his
group had visited.

Like almost all the Brits I met, he did not want to tell me his name or be
identified, admitting they were doing things they would not dream of doing at
home.

But he said they had been shown a group of girls and he thought they were
probably trafficked.

They stood against the wall with a lack of soul, a dead look on their faces,
which suggested that they weren’t necessarily there out of their own free will.

“My initial feeling was they had just been brought out of the cupboard
and they’ve just been released from the shackles and marched out to then have
an hour with someone.”

He told me half the group had seen enough at that point and left. The other
half stayed.

Poverty and desperation

Far from the bright lights of the stag cities is Lunik 9, a decrepit
crumbling estate in the Slovakian city of Kosice.

The centre wells of the tower blocks are six metres (20ft) deep with
rubbish, the windows of the apartments have long since vanished and sewage runs
down the walls and through the streets.

It really has to be seen and smelt to be believed, and it is here, amid this
poverty and desperation, that sex traffickers look for and then exploit their
victims.

Yana
was only 17 when she left Slovakia with a man she thought was her boyfriend, to
start a new life in Amsterdam.

When she arrived, she found she would not be leading the life that she
dreamed of.

Unknown to her, her boyfriend had sold her to brothel owners.

“He led me to a space where there were a couple of men who were saying
that I was beautiful, that I was sexy and they were basically saying that she
is here for us, this is what we want her to do… They tore apart my clothes and
they raped me.”

Yana provides a tragic and deeply emotional testimony of being raped daily
and pushed to the brink of suicide.

It is a story that every stag should hear.

Yana finally escaped after a year trapped in Amsterdam.

Using prostitutes

Tibor, another sex trafficker from Slovakia but working in the Czech
Republic, agreed to be interviewed about his operation.

It is just a regular job where you go to work and you go home at the end of the day Tibor, sex trafficker

It was not his openness that stunned me but his cold, detached attitude.

I asked if he viewed the trafficked girls as his employees.

“More like things that I own,” he said.

He said he felt no guilt about making money from people who were trapped.
“It’s just a regular job where you go to work and you go home at the end
of the day.”

Amsterdam

It is estimated that more than 3 million British people go on stag and hen
parties each year, with more than 70% of them going overseas.

Amsterdam is the most popular British stag party venue. The local sex
industry largely depends on foreign women from poorer countries.

There were nearly 500 women rescued last year according to Dutch police.

“Each year we have more cases,” I was told by a policeman who runs
an undercover team that infiltrates trafficking gangs.

The industry is worth “millions of euros”, he said. “The
recruiters are getting money, the transporters are getting money, the
exploiters are getting that money.”

“Only the girls will get nothing,” he adds.

I disagree with it, but… you can’t do anything about it. You’re just here to have fun, and do things you won’t get away with back home.” British stag weekender

In an attempt to make the area easier to police, the local authorities are
forcibly buying up nearly half of the 482 brothels in the red light district
and closing them down.

But it is not difficult to find a British stag weekender, a bright young man
who had admitted to using a prostitute.

I told him that many prostitutes in Amsterdam had been trafficked.

“I don’t agree with that, I think it’s awful,” he said, but
admitted it probably would not stop him using a prostitute again that night.

“I disagree with it, but at the end of the day it’s just what happens,
like. You can’t do anything about it. You’re just here to have fun, and do
things you won’t get away with back home.”