Sold Into Sex Slavery: The Plight Of African Women Migrating To Europe

By LAUREN FRAYER* While reporting on the drama of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, I’ve been startled by how many of them are pregnant or are traveling with a very young child. When I’d ask why, they’d say they wanted to give birth in the safety of Europe. But as I investigated, I learned there could be another, more ominous reason: Some of these pregnant women may be victims of sexual violence on the long route northward to Europe from sub-Saharan Africa — journeys that can take years. “Sex is traded just like money, to bribe border guards or police,” said Encarnación Marquez, a social worker who helps migrants in Algeciras, on Spain’s south coast. “Some migrants sell sex to human traffickers, in exchange for smuggling them into Europe. This is the tragedy no one talks about.” There’s scant access to contraception along the journey northward from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe. Backroom abortions are common, Marquez said. And the abuse doesn’t end when they arrive in Europe. Thousands of African women are sold into sexual slavery that continues even after they arrive in Europe, she said. “We find women who think it’s over, and that they can finally breathe a sigh of relief because they’ve arrived in a country with human rights. But they end up in a dancing bar on the side of the highway, imprisoned in a brothel and unable to escape,” Marquez said. “They don’t know where to go.” Marquez says enslaved prostitutes are often forced give all their wages to human traffickers, to reimburse them for travel costs from Africa to Europe. For months, I searched for a victim who’d be willing to tell me her story. But many recently arrived migrants are so frightened about being deported, they clam up when I ask them about prostitution or sexual violence. Then one day, in a tiny office near a Madrid square known as a hangout for African prostitutes, I met Nancy, who didn’t want to give her full name for fear of retribution. Nine years ago, a man and woman came to Nancy’s native village in southern Nigeria and offered to take her to Europe. She trusted them, because they were acquainted with one of her cousins. The couple met Nancy’s parents, and promised to keep her safe. They even performed a traditional Nigerian ceremony — what some people refer to as voodoo — to seal the deal. Nancy was 18 years old at the time, studying to become a tailor. The couple promised to keep her safe and get her job as a fashion designer in Spain. Nancy and her family pledged to repay them for the travel costs. But barely days into their journey, in the Nigerian megacity of Lagos, the couple told Nancy the truth: She would be forced to work as a prostitute to pay off her debt — first in Lagos, and then in Europe. “You need to use your body to work for that money. You need to suffer for that money,” Nancy said. “And the most painful part is, that money [you earn through prostitution] is not for you. You are working it off to give to another person — a woman like you, or a man.” Nancy’s traffickers told her she owed them the equivalent of about $50,000 for the cost of her travel and fake documents. She’d never been to Europe and had no idea how much such things cost — though a one-way airline ticket from Lagos to Barcelona, the route Nancy took, typically costs around $500. The traffickers threatened Nancy and her family. “They said that if I didn’t pay that money, they are going to kill me — and kill my mother,” Nancy said. “I didn’t have any documents. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have anywhere to go!” Nancy also believed that the voodoo ceremony they performed in her home village bound her to her traffickers irrevocably, until her debt was paid. Otherwise, her family could be struck down by a curse, she believed. So she worked as prostitute for seven years in roadside brothels across Spain. “We started work by 5 o’clock in the afternoon and we ended at 6 o’clock in the morning — every day,” she recalled about her time enslaved in brothels in Barcelona, La Coruña, Valencia and Madrid. “In one night, maybe I would be with five or six people.” She lived upstairs in the brothels, or sometimes in apartments shared by dozens of enslaved prostitutes, to which only their traffickers had keys. They were given food and clothes only when they worked. And all their wages went straight to the traffickers.