Luring foreign women from their home countries with false promises, traffickers are targeting Ireland to abuse and sell the 'services' of their victims. So why is trafficking not outlawed here, asks Kitty Holland.
When Rose, from northern Moldova, got the chance to move to western Europe, she was sure she was going to a better life. She had lived all of her 19 years in rural Moldova (formerly part of the USSR), but with limited education and no opportunities for employment, the opportunity to go abroad was welcome.
She was introduced by her grandfather to a man in his 30s named Jay, who seemed trustworthy to a young girl who had never travelled far beyond her immediate area. Jay sorted out her passport and made her travel arrangements, and they arrived in Ireland in 2004, though Rose had no idea what country she was in at the time.
Nor did she speak English. All she knew was that this was "western Europe", the place where her life would be better and her friend Jay would help her.
She was brought to an apartment in a rural area of Ireland, which Jay rented, and for the first few days everything was fine. Then one day he brought a man back to the apartment and told her she was to have sex with him. She did not want to do this and protested, but felt she had no other choice in a strange country where she knew no one but Jay.
Then, each day after that, there were more and more men, as many as 10 on some days. The men who came to the apartment were Irish and foreign. When Rose objected to having sex with these men, Jay beat her. She soon stopped objecting.
Jay did give Rose food, but she never got out of the apartment and received none of the money earned through prostitution. Neither medical assistance nor condoms were available to her either.
Rose did not know how Jay operated his business, but it is likely that he advertised on the internet and had a mobile phone number for clients. He seemed to be a sole operator in this business. Rose did not see any other women.
Luckily for Rose, one day he left the apartment and didn't come back. Rose was left homeless and penniless in a foreign country.
She asked for help from people in the street and was able to make contact with a few professional agencies, but due to her trauma she was unable to talk about her experiences, with the result that she was misunderstood and didn't receive the help she needed.
She was eventually referred to Ruhama, the only non-governmental organisation working solely with prostitutes.
"IT'S A STORY we're hearing more and more," says Ruhama spokeswoman Gerardine Rowley. The small charity last year saw 32 women who had been trafficked here for prostitution, 24 of whom were new contacts. They came from Albania, Moldova, Lithuania, Romania, Mongolia, Nigeria and Brazil. "It is important that people realise these figures are only figures for women we have met. Most were in situations with at least five to 10 other women, so multiply those figures and the figure is much bigger.
"We are also reading of cases in the media we know nothing about, so we are certainly only meeting the tip of the iceberg."
Though it is impossible to know the true extent of trafficking into Ireland there is no doubt that this country is being targeted as both a destination and a transit country for trafficking.
"Of its nature it is a very hidden world," says Rowley. "Of those that do come to light, it's usually by chance."
In January a young Romanian woman arrived at the Garda station in Oldcastle, Co Meath, in a distressed state, saying she had been held prisoner in the area since last autumn and forced to have sex with men in the immigrant community.
Two years ago The Irish Times reported the case of an 18-year-old Romanian woman who said she had been held in various flats around Dublin by a Romanian man she had believed was her boyfriend and was bringing her to Ireland to work in fruit-packing. She had been forced to have sex with Romanian and Chinese men here. She became pregnant and was so badly beaten by her captor that she miscarried and was brought to the Rotunda Hospital. It was only then that her case came to light.
Both of these women are now understood to be "safe".
The common themes, says Rowley, are that the women and girls are coming from extremely poor countries and are often introduced to their abusers by someone known to them. They are often naive, coming from sheltered backgrounds, and almost always experience violence and rape.
"Their spirit is absolutely broken," she says.
Insp Pat Lordan, who heads the Garda's Operation Quest - which focuses on the sex industry in Dublin - agrees that "almost all" women now working in the sex industry are foreign nationals. It is an indication perhaps of our increased prosperity that fewer Irish women are now faced with the difficult choice of entering prostitution to make ends meet.
As Linda Latham, co-ordinator of the Women's Health Project - a Health Service Executive clinic for prostitutes in Dublin - says: "There has been a complete turnaround in the prostitution. While it used to be mainly Irish women working on the streets, it's now at least 60 per cent non-Irish women, working indoors. It's much more hidden. Since 2003 we have seen five cases of women who have been trafficked, but I would feel there are a lot more who may not want to tell us, whether for reasons of fear or other reasons."
Europol, which is sending its officer on trafficking in human beings to meet gardaí in Dublin later this month, says, "There is no reason to believe Ireland is not affected by trafficking". In Britain, meanwhile, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, in its latest risk assessment reports, says traffickers' use of Ireland as a transit country between Ireland and the UK, "exploiting the common travel area agreement", is a cause of concern.
THE SEX INDUSTRY in Ireland is booming as never before. Alongside the proliferation of lap-dancing clubs, sex shops and sex chatlines in our newly prosperous economy, is a thriving brothel and escort industry. Prostitution is a "multi-multi-million-euro business here", according to Insp Lordan. "One two-bedroom apartment, using six women to operate it round the clock as a brothel, could net its operator €3 million per year."
The business is also more organised than ever before, and more hidden. On-street prostitution is all but gone, apart from small numbers of more chaotic, drug-using women. The core of the industry has moved indoors, using mobile phones, the internet and private rented apartments to offer a discreet, though surprisingly accessible, "service".
Completely legally, anyone can access numerous websites listing mobile-phone numbers for Ballsbridge, Clondalkin and elsewhere in Dublin, as well as Limerick and Galway "agencies".
"Agencies," explains Insp Lordan, are simply rented apartments operated by third parties "running" up to six women at a time, while "independents" (also apartments working as brothels) are run by women themselves. One website dedicated to Dublin had 10 "agencies" listed this week; another had 27.
Calling one of the mobile numbers this week a male colleague put the phone on loud-speaker and told the woman who answered that he was in Dublin on business and "hoping to meet a girl".
"We have some lovely Russian girls, a Caribbean girl, two gorgeous Spanish ladies," replied the young-sounding woman with an English accent.
"You've no Irish girls?"
"No," she apologised.
She directed him to a pub off the quays, then told him to call again, after which he'd be met 10 minutes later.
Another agency directs callers to a bank in Ballsbridge where customers are met before being brought to an apartment.
Typically the charge is €150 for half an hour and from about €220 to €400 for an hour.
"It's all over the country," says Insp Lordan. "Every reasonably sized town now would have its own brothel." And almost all are run using non-Irish women and girls.
The Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB), however, sees a key difference between "ordinary" prostitution and trafficking. Det Sgt Angela Willis, of GNIB, says the "handful" of cases of trafficking the bureau is investigatinginvolve women who have been trafficked into the country for use by men of their own nationality.
"They tend to be kept in isolation, are used by men of their own nationality and are exposed to beatings and rape," she says. "The nature of it compounds how hidden and difficult these cases are to investigate."
Immigrants tend to be disproportionately young and male, she says, and women are being trafficked to "serve" them.
"It's part of the story of immigration," she says. She agrees, however, that there "are probably exceptions" to this rule and that there "may" be women who have been trafficked who are now working in "ordinary" prostitution.
Rowley completely rejects this assertion, saying that while there are women being trafficked in for immigrant men, Ruhama has worked with "numerous" women who have been trafficked in and then forced to work in brothels used by Irish men.
"To say that these women are only being used by immigrant communities to make a false distinction," she says. "It's letting Irish people off the hook to say that."
GLOBALLY, TRAFFICKING IN human beings is the third-biggest area of organised crime, after drug and firearms trafficking. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in its most recent report, Trafficking In Persons: Global Patterns, published last month, acknowledges the difficulties in measuring the problem, but states that "the number of people globally trafficked across international borders is between 600,000 and 800,000 per year".
An estimated 120,000 people are trafficked into and around Europe each year. Some 80 per cent are said by the US State Department to be women and girls, 50 per cent of them under the age of 18. The consequences for them are devastating.
The amounts of money involved are enormous, particularly given the fact that the "commodity" can be used over and over again, unlike, for example, cocaine. Trafficking is also regarded, says Europol, as a "low-risk, high-reward" crime. Some international gangs are said to be turning to people- trafficking instead of drug-smuggling.
The UNODC's report ranks Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania and the Ukraine as the European countries of origin with a "very high" incidence of trafficking. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia were rated as "high".
The countries ranked "very high" as destination countries are Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Greece. Interestingly, these countries have liberal attitudes to prostitution. Britain is ranked as "high" and Ireland as "low".
A definition of trafficking was agreed by the UN at a conference in Palermo, Italy, in 2000 in its Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. The Palermo protocol makes a crucial distinction between people-smuggling - where consent is freely given by the victim - and trafficking. With trafficking, consent is sometimes obtained "by means of the threat, or use, of force or other forms of coercion . . . [or the] abuse of power or [of the] position of vulnerability" of the victim.
In its analysis of the Palermo protocol, the UNODC says that if coercion, fraud or deception have been used to obtain initial consent, "any alleged consent to the subsequent exploitation is irrelevant".
This is a key point, says Rowley, even in the case of those who come to a country knowing that they will work in some area of the sex industry.
"It is obvious that these women are coming from very, very poor countries, countries like Albania, Romania, Moldova, the Ukraine," she says.
"There is a lack of employment opportunities and they believe they are coming to a country where they hear they can have a decent lifestyle.
"Once they are here they are very vulnerable. They don't have the language, they'll have no say over which men use them, they'll probably have to give over all or most of the money to a pimp. Almost all will experience horrific levels of violence, and rape.
"The fact is, many of these women are flown into the major airports and taken to small towns away from the big centres. They are very isolated.
While strictly they might have agreed to come to Ireland, you couldn't say they 'chose' what has happened to them in the way an educated woman in the west with opportunities would make a 'choice'."
Though Ireland has signed the Palermo protocol it has not been transposed into Irish law. Without it, we have no legal definition of trafficking and so, shockingly, trafficking is not illegal in Ireland. Det Sgt Willis, however, says legislation is in place to press charges for false imprisonment, violent assault and rape.
Also, if a woman is trafficked in from an EU member state, such as Latvia or Lithuania, there are no immigration issues, as she can legally enter the country. One garda working with Operation Quest told The Irish Times: "As far as the law is concerned, you can't be trafficked here from an EU country."
This is in contrast to Britain, where trafficking was defined in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 as "intentionally arranging or facilitating the arrival into the UK" of a person for the purposes of committing an offence against them, including "sexual exploitation".
The legislation also refers to trafficking within Britain and out of Britain. It provides for sentences of up to 14 years and a number of such sentences have been handed down.
The Department of Justice is drafting legislation aimed at punishing traffickers, under the working title, the Criminal Justice (Trafficking in Persons and Sexual Offences) Bill.
"We hope to publish it before the end of the year," a senior source says. The Bill will define trafficking clearly and provide for "very heavy penalties, possibly including life".
However, the Government remains unlikely to introduce legislation to protect the victims of trafficking. Ireland remains one of three EU member states - Britain and Denmark being the others - that has not signed the 2004 EU Council Directive on residence permits, and one of 11 that has not signed the 2005 Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings. Both direct member states to issue residence permits to victims who co-operate with the authorities. They also provide for a "period of reflection" during which a victim may consider what they want to do next. It is feared, says the Department of Justice source, that to implement these rights might act as a "pull" factor for would-be illegal immigrants planning to abuse them.
THE GENEVA-BASED International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which has an office in Dublin, regards such action as a human rights necessity, however. Ryan Nelson, communications officer with IOM Dublin, points out that many who escape their traffickers may not want to stay and help the police, but may "just want to get home".
"Of course, we would like to see this basic human rights issue addressed," he says
Nelson, like the Ruhama organisation, is concerned at the absence of a planned, structured response to victims.
"There is no safe house here for victims," he says. He would like to see something similar to the Poppy Project in London, a safe house for victims of trafficking, run by the Eaves Housing for Women charity.
Rowley speaks of the lack of awareness among ordinary gardaí of how to deal with victims of trafficking.
"There is no special training for the gardaí on this," she says.
Rose's case is typical, Rowley adds. "She was wandering around for several days before she was put in contact with people who could counsel, support and advise her."
In a broader context, there is a sense that the key issue that must be addressed is the evidently growing demand for prostitution.
"Until we look at what is fuelling the demand, we are not dealing with this," says criminal barrister Mary Ellen Ring. She points to the proliferation of lap-dancing clubs, increased sales of pornography and the seeming acceptance of the sex industry as "harmless fun".
"Nobody wants to broach the whole area," she says. "Anyone who raises doubts about how far it's gone, who wants to talk about what is 'decent', is called a prude.
"The fact is, it is all part of one continuum: in the long term we are increasingly making it okay to see women's bodies as commodities, which makes its okay to purchase them, which fuels the demand for prostitution. My concern is what it does in terms of the physical threat to women.
"When women are being trafficked, raped and beaten, there is no doubt it is a human rights issue. And a debate about where the demand is coming from is one we need to have."
- Jay and Rose are not the individuals' real names. They have been changed to protect the woman's identity.