The Patriots

Stronger witness support

At an international trafficking conference in Berlin last fall, participants revealed that social workers are summoned to court to testify about their clients, a practice that endangers both their own and the victims safety.

 Cecilia MalmstrÃm, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, agrees that a stronger witness support system is needed.

 "Sometimes they're forced to sit in the same court room as the perpetrators, who can lock eyes with them and silently repeat their threats. Girls should be able to testify remotely, and with adequate training the courts will be more competent."

All victims have the right to an unconditional reflection period of at least 30 days before they decide whether to participate in a trial or not, according to the European Council's anti-trafficking convention.

Psychologists suggest at least 3-6 months recuperation from the traumatic experience, which often results in severe health problems such as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The convention has been ratified by 40 member states, including Sweden and Germany, yet NGOs all over Europe reveal systematic breaches.

Leading asylum lawyer Karin Gyllenring has investigated the situation in Sweden.

 "I've discovered that the problem isn't that we don't offer long enough periods, but that we don't even offer the minimum 30 days victims are entitled to."

Gyllenring and her law firm are so concerned that they have created a Swedish civil society platform to assist victims, lobby for greater support and strengthen victims' legal rights.

Across the EU, victims are coerced into taking the stand with the threat of not getting their residence permits. It's a cruel practice by the authorities, as a forced return can mean risking their lives. Many victims dare only go half the distance.

"I told the court that I didn't know [her female trafficker], that she had bought me from someone else," admits one West African ex-victim. 

"The truth is that she's a relative, and the one who brought me to Europe in the first place. But had I exposed her, her men could have hurt my family." 

As so many other traffickers, not least female ones, the woman walked free. Somewhere in Central Europe.

From trafficking victim to perpetrator

It has taken months to make contact with a former Nigerian madame and arrange a meeting.

When Joan finally sits down before us, she strikes us as a beautiful woman, with deep, dark eyes and a soft voice. She can't quite keep her fingers still. Her feet keep wiggling, too. But mostly Joan looks directly into our eyes as she tells a rarely heard story: how she went from trafficking victim to perpetrator.

Joan grew up in Nigeria, with patriarchal structures, oppression and violence, and the belief that there are strong supernatural forces at work: Voodoo, exerted by influential, self-appointed priests. Longing for a better life, she was deceived by a local woman and trafficked to Europe while still very young.

One crucial detail set Joan apart from the other slaves: after a while, she realised that her madame had taken a liking to her. Joan seized the opportunity, deciding to be obedient at all times, no matter how gruelling work was.  Soon, she was teaching new girls how the game worked, reporting their progress and private chatter to the madame. She was rewarded with little freedoms, was treated better than the others and got to keep more money, too.  "A game of stick and carrot," she says today, not without bitterness.

Joan's madame was a master manipulator. She was the chief oppressor, threatening her slaves if they dared talk back, but it was the men on her payroll who were ordered to carry out physical punishments. After the beatings, she would comfort the victims, acting as a surrogate mother to the vulnerable girls, desperate for affection.

"I could see what she was doing. But I had already risen, I was benefitting and I wanted to bring back a sense of control over my own destiny," Joan explains.

She continued climbing, using other victims as stepping stones, until finally she was a madame herself. Using contacts of her old madame, she placed an order for new women to be brought in from Nigeria. She would dress them up, she says, and with the help of a man who became her husband kept a tight leash on them. In a final closing of the circle, she recruited a new Joan, a right-hand woman fiercely loyal because of the possibility of climbing the criminal ladder. 

Today, Joan doesn't want to talk about how much money she earned as a madame. She has spent time in prison for sexual exploitation, but the police were unable to prove all the things she had done. The sentence was slight. She is a free woman now, not yet 40.

Her belief in the powers of voodoo remains strong. She saw it as her duty to fulfill the contract with her madame, as promised to the spirits, and is remarkably proud of having done so. She admits that she is undergoing therapy, to work through my past, and makes a point of distancing herself from the trafficking scene. She doesn't have anything to do with that business anymore, she assures us.  

But whether she is ashamed of the pain she inflicted on innocent women, many of whom are now suffering daily just as she once did, Joan for some reason will not say. 

Driving back to a large European city, young, fresh-looking girls sprout up like flowers on the side of the garbage-strewn road. Who, like Lilian Solomon, hides a deadly disease? Who, like Victoria, carries an unborn child that will prove her salvation? 

The wheel of the modern-day slave trade keeps spinning, constantly fed with new flesh.

This article was first published in Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden) and Spiegel Online (Germany) in Jan/Feb 2014 and is part of series of investigations into human trafficking.The series was made possible by a working grant from journalismfund.eu