2007 Trafficking in Persons Report - Center for Women Policy Studies

I N T R O D U C T I O N
UKRAINE/
ITALY
Thirty-year-old Mara left her husband
and two children in Ukraine to take a
housekeeping job in Italy. Recruiters
from an employment agency promised
her a high salary. But once there, she
was taken to a brothel where the owner
said he had purchased her for several
hundred dollars. He said she owed
him money for the plane ticket. For
nine months, Mara was controlled by
this trafficker, who beat her when she
Debt Bondage in
Prostitution
A common scenario in labor trafficking cases
is for traffickers to promise people a good
job, even benefits, in order to lure them to
a new workplace. Then, the traffickers add
arbitrary debt as a tool of coercion. A similar
debt scheme is increasingly used to enslave
women and girls in prostitution throughout
the world.
Many women trafficked into prostitution
report a never-ending cycle of debt—first
they are charged exorbitant fees for the cost
of transportation, but daily expenses are
frequently added and mount up exponentially.
Many women trafficked into prostitution
receive no money from pimps or brothel
owners. This becomes a cycle of entrapment.
In the United Kingdom, according to a
leading NGO, brothel keepers and traffickers
force some victims to pay debts that could
range as high as 20,000-40,000 pounds
($39,000-$78,000). Commenting on patterns of
abuse in prostitution of East European women
in London, Detective Inspector Dick Powell
from Scotland Yard told the Guardian, “Some
[women] have sex with as many as 40 men a
day. It’s very rare [for her] to get to keep any
of the money she earns. We’ve seen places
where 300 pounds ($580) a day goes to the
brothel pimp or ‘madam,’ and that’s even
before the woman begins to try and pay off
the ‘debt bondage’ of thousands of pounds
charged to bring her here.” Often, the debt
can never be repaid because costs for food,
rent, medicines, and condoms are added
every day. l
refused a client. If a man complained
about her, the brothel owner
increased her debt. Mara was freed
only when the Italian police raided the
brothel. Charged with prostitution,
she was deported to Ukraine.
“The girl child is often forced to play multiple
roles in the conflict: She is often sex slave,
mother and combatant at the same time.”
— Radhika Coomaraswamy, U.N. Special Representative
for Children and Armed Conflicts.
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