Human Trafficing - Women and Children sold in to Slavery

[bleedingheart]

I don't know how many of you watched that Lifetime movie but it was truly upsetting. My husband and I watched it and knew that more than likely there are women in our own county who might be sexually enslaved and the key reason is due in part to the fact that there are a lot of men and women who are just plain sick.

Sadly as long as the market exists there will be sickos who will be catering to it.

In fact, my coworker and I were talking about this about a year ago. There was a new "day spa" that opened up in our area and what she and I both noticed was that this "spa" had really odd hours..

It was open as late as midnight...now I am not a "spa" kind of gal most of the time but I do know that spas are not normally open at midnight.

So we sat there at work comparing notes about this place and we both guessed...it is probably a prostitution ring.

Well...about 6 months later it was busted along with about 4 other places. The women arrested were asian and a few were not able to even speak english...so one has to wonder....how the hell did they end up prostitutes in Western PA???

I asked one of the local law authorities about it and he said that they waited to bust the one my coworker had seen because they knew it was a bigger operation.

However...as he said...it would only start up again because as he said..."there are a lot of guys with cash who want to pay for sex"...

[ismnotwasm]

1. They just busted a house up here by Seattle

In a higher end neighborhood. The detectives are in a little bit of hot water for allowing "sexual contact" (which of course is the BIG news)but not mentioned nearly as much is that the women in the house were turned over the INS. It's a big problem and not mentioned nearly enough. It's hard to fight simply BECAUSE the of the men that are demanding sexual access to women when they feel like it. I don't think johns are going to notify to cops when they notice the woman they just bought can barely speak english--if she can speak it at all.
Same ones probably go to the bar and bitch about "illegals" taking jobs.

[bloom]

2. yeah

I ended up watching the show backwards - first I saw the second half and last night I saw the first half....

In an unrelated search - I found this article this evening (this first part about the history of prostitution seems irrelevant to me - since this is more like slavery).... It sounds a lot like the movie:

"The vast majority of women trafficked to Israel for sex come from Romania and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Seduced by agents of organized crime, they agree to be smuggled into Israel, hoping to make good money. The women are usually young girls, like "Anna" (her real name has been suppressed) a 23-year-old Romanian who testified about her experience to an Israeli court in 2002....

When the Hotline first contacted Nomi five years ago to ask for her help, trafficking in women was not even a crime under Israeli law. Nomi, then in law school, wans’t interested. She had studied criminology and was more intrigued by criminals than victims. But she had one skill that was crucial to the Hotline—she spoke Romanian. "Although I had a very hard childhood , I’m very grateful for it now," says Nomi. Without Romanian, she would never have gotten involved....

The challenge is daunting. Demand for prostitution in Israel is enormous, with an estimated one million visits to sex brothels every month. Human rights organizations estimate that 3,000 women are brought into the country as sex slaves every year. The women come primarily from Russia, Moldova, and the Ukraine, where the collapse of social safety nets in post-communist economies has created a ready supply of destitute women. In a Hotline survey of trafficked women conducted at Neve Tirza women’s prison, one third said that they, like Anna, had no idea they would be engaging in prostitution when they came to Israel. Others knew they would be prostitutes, but were promised good conditions by the traffickers. They were told they would have to take only a limited number of customers each day and that they would earn a thousand dollars a month (a massive sum in most Eastern European countries)....

According to the UN Development Fund for Women, trafficking in women for prostitution is one of the fastest-growing organised criminal activities in the world, and follows, in frequency, only the trade in narcotics and weapons. The sex trade brings in $7-12 billion annually."

http://www.israelnewsagency.com/sexisrael69690531.html

[bloom]

3. "Trafficking Human Misery"

"...The Greek government estimates that there are some 3,000 unaccompanied Albanian children in the country, with more coming during the summer months. In oral evidence about the trafficking of Albanian children to Greece, given to the Commission on Human Rights, Terre des Hommes representative Eylay Kadjar-Hamouda said, “A child earns a minimum of €30-€50 per day and gives all the money to his boss. A very small percentage is sent back to his family in Albania but in a very irregular way. Generally several children are exploited at the same time by a boss.”

“In the country of destination, Greece, the children are not considered as victims but as guilty of having illegally entered the country,” Kadjar-Hamouda noted. “Terre des Hommes is particularly concerned that some of the children placed in centres in Greece simply disappear.”

This concern is not limited to Greece ands points to the most sinister aspect of the trade in children.

“We notice that the number of children going missing in the east does not tally with the numbers we trace in Europe”, said Marina Rini of Terre des Hommes in Italy.

“We know that gangs offer children for sale dead or alive. We can only conclude that the missing children die or are killed for their organs.”"<more>

http://www.countercurrents.org/hr-tylor251003.htm