Fighting the Vilest Crime

There’s no way you would know it, meeting her for the first time.

Sandra appears a quite average 16-year-old girl – mild mannered, a lover of hip-hop music and yard games, a semi-serious gymnasium student mostly willing to do her homework. She often wears a smile.

She lives a mostly normal life in Riga, capital of the former Soviet republic of Latvia.

Her mother drinks a bit much, but Sandra has a home, and when it gets too rough the neighbours – devout Orthodox Christians – invite her in for warm dinner and conversation.

Everything seems fine with her, but there’s something odd about her eyes. Somehow they betray cynicism and experience far beyond her age.

When Sandra stops smiling, you notice it right away. Her bright personality seems to go into recess.

It might be that she is remembering something, or just daydreaming. There is no way to know. Sandra – not her real name – is a former child prostitute.

Two years ago, she was for all intents and purposes a sex slave in Germany, tricked into it by a crime syndicate.

The police don’t know her story – neither the Germans nor the Latvians. There is no official record, but it is true.

Law falls short

Like most sexually exploited children, Sandra has never benefited from the legal protections in Germany, the European Union and her own country. She slipped through the cracks between legal ideals and brutal realities.

Individuals saved her, not the law.

This is her story, as told to Deutsche Welle Online by a social worker who discreetly works with Sandra, rehabilitating her.

Everyone’s identity is protected in this report. The entire point of the girl’s rehabilitation is to provide her a future as psychologically painless as possible. Keeping her past a private secret is crucial.

Sandra is just one of countless, faceless victims of a vast international trade in children. Their plight is rarely acknowledged and, often, only superficially addressed by governments whose good intentions have proven too weak to snuff out this vilest of crimes.

A world congress against commercial sexual exploitation of children is underway in Japan, run by UNICEF and two non-profit groups, ECPAT International and the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

National efforts to contain the crime are struggling, under heavy pressure from criminal organisations that operate across borders, so officials have decided to come together to compare notes. There is much to learn, much to contain. But the congress in Yokohama, running until Thursday, is only the second of its kind.

Participants have been quick to point out both the importance of tougher laws and the fact that some of the world’s toughest laws are failing, in countries like the Philippines.

European scourge

Organised child sexual exploitation, many Europeans would like to think, is a south-east Asian and African phenomenon. But it thrives here, too, as Sandra’s story shows.

The so-called Iron Curtain has fallen, but an economic divide remains. Lured by the wealth of western Europe, some victims from the east find themselves caught.

Sandra’s mother, short for cash like many Latvians, was tricked into moving to Germany by a phoney job-placement scheme. A job in the West seemed like a ticket to steady income, and moving was easy since most east European citizens enjoy visa-free travel rights in the EU. Once the mother arrived, the daughter followed, thinking everything was in order.

But before long it became clear that this was no ordinary job, and there was no ordinary way out. Often in such cases, unwilling workers are forced to stay and work by employers, pimps, who manipulate them with financial and physical threats.

Victims are generally too scared to call the police, either for shame or because they have been working illegally, without work permission.

In the case of Sandra and her mother, “basically, it took some people to go to Germany and physically take them out,” says a social worker. She refused to go into greater details about the adventure. She shudders when she mentions it.

Germany’s record

If Germany’s government failed these two victims, it still cannot be accused of overt negligence.

In 1998, Germany strengthened its laws against sexual exploitation of children, pornography and sex tourism.

The Federal Republic is a signatory to all the international treaties protecting children’s rights.

Germany is also one of the few countries to have passed a law enabling it to extradite sex tourists arrested abroad for exploiting children. Suspects can be brought back to Germany for trial and potentially harsh punishment.

Yet according to the estimates of watch-dog groups such as ECPAT International, some 10,000 German sex tourists travel abroad each year.

The government has a special working group on “trade in women”, trying to tackle the problem of human-trafficking, especially of women and girls. Protections cover not only the very young but also girls aged 14 to18.

Yet Germany remains a zone of transit for the trade, and a destination. Common borders with Poland and the Czech Republic pose a particular challenge. Germany’s eastern border, in a sense, marks the line between rich and poor Europe.

The victims of trafficking in Germany could be as few as 2,000 per year or as many as 20,000, ECPAT reports. Most but not all are aged between 16 and 25.

The introduction of the euro, a boon to traders of all kinds, may unfortunately also make such trafficking easier. International bank transfers and deals done in cash will be easier than ever.

This fight is far from over, most of all for today’s victims and survivors like Sandra, likely scarred for life.