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Sex slaves: trafficking of women in Asia

Chapter Four: Seasoning - part 2

Part 2: 4.4: 'Seasoning': disorientated girls and young women are manipulated or extorted and cannot defend themselves -- 4.5: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia, Thailand: virgin girls sold into 'hotel prostitution' -- 4.6: 'Seasoning' with extortion with debt bondage -- 4.7: Girls and women have no idea about their rights -- 4.8: Child prostitution - Asian men are main costumer for this crime -- 4.9: The age of the prostitutes in Asia - mostly from 13 to 25 -- 4.10: Selling virgins: defloration and guaranteed AIDS-free product -- 4.11: The number of customers - from 3 to 20 customers per day -- 4.12: Seasoning - the 'adaption' - with mental scars or even lethal cases -- 4.13: Flight from sex slavery is hardly possible

   

Police in Thailand [16] - there is no further education -- Bangladesh, cheap production with girls [19] - Burmese girl Kham Suk was sold by her parents to a brothel in Thailand for 80 "US" dollars - and is selling flowers here [28] - no chance for a flight, she does not speak the language and spies are at every corner in Thailand...

by Louise Brown

presented and with subtitles by Michael  Palomino (2013)

Literature, suggestions
-- Archavanitkul: Trafficking in Children

4.4: 'Seasoning': disorientated girls and young women are manipulated or extorted and cannot defend themselves

Bemusement, disbelief and shock are the initial emotions that the new recruits experience when they enter the world of the sex trade. They are almost always totally disoriented. While they are in this vulnerable state the seasoning begins.

Example of seasoning in Thailand with rapes without end: from Cambodia to Thailand: family in Cambodia loosing the father - 10 children - 'friendly man and a woman' invite 2 girls for a night in their home - 2 rapes - selling to a brothel in Poipet - transport to Thailand - rapes without end - also Thai policemen raping the 13 years old Cambodian girl

The following story is that of a twenty-year-old Cambodian woman who left her village in search of work and found herself rapidly absorbed within the sex industry. It is the kind of story I have heard repeated on countless occasions (p.108)

all over Asia. She was born near Battamban and her father was a refuse collector [garbage collector] who died when she was thirteen. She had nine siblings [brothers and sisters] and her mother sold vegetables. Even though they worked hard the family did not have enough money, so when she was fifteen she and her sister decided to leave home and look for work in the town. They arrived late in the evening and had nowhere to stay. Then a friendly man and a woman approached them and said that they could help. They offered the girls some food and said that they could stay overnight in their home.

<When we were in the house the woman put me in one room and my sister in another. Then later the man came to my room and raped me. His friend raped my sister. The next day they took us in a car to Poipet (on the Thai-Cambodian border). They sold us both to a brothel for 100,000 Baht (1,600 English Pounds) [4].

[4] This is an unlikely price for one girl but may have been the cost of two. Even so, it is unusually high.

I was locked in a room for three or four days and then I was put into another room with some other girls. A Thai man came and looked at us and he chose me. He took me in a car to Thailand and paid some money to the police to let me in. We went to a hotel but I don't know the place because I was so scared and the man said that if I tried to run away the police would catch me and put me in prison because I didn't have a passport and papers. The man raped me many times and every day for four days lots of his friends did too. Maybe five or six different ones. Some of them were policemen.>

Police in Thailand [16] - there is no further education, mostly they cannot even speak English, but there is alcohol and abuse. Even a group pressure can be admitted, and the police commanders are the organizers of the child abuse in Thai brothels...

Although the minor details in this type of story vary, the structure is almost identical and the outcome is always the same.

Example of seasoning in Calcutta with extortions: a girl from a village is in Calcutta with a 'friend' in 'her house' - the girl getting the first customers - extortion with contact to the village

A family in poverty in Calcutta [17] without chance for a better life because of discrimination and there are no social systems - is it a wonder when some girls go to be prostitutes then? - No! - But add to this the selling methods and extortion methods are absolutely against any personal right!

This was how a sex worker described her initiation into prostitution when she was fifteen years old:

<When I got to Calcutta my friend took me to her house (p.109).

I thought it was very strange because my friend didn't wear her clothes and spent all her time in a blouse and petticoat. I asked her about this and she said, 'Why should I wear a sari when I am at home? Here I can relax and wear what I want.'

She started cooking some food but then a man arrived and asked if she had any time for him. She said yes and told me to finish the meal. Then she took this man into another room and shut the door. I didn't know what they were doing and when they came out I said, 'Who was that man, what were you doing and where has your husband gone?' She laughed and said, 'There are no husbands around here. That other man was not my husband he was my babu [regular client].'

Then another man came and started talking to my friend. And my friend said to me, 'Go into that room with this man and stay with him for a while and do what he wants. He says you are pretty and he wants to marry you. Afterwards he will give you some money.'

She pushed me into the room with the man and locked the door so I couldn't get out. The man started to touch me and he said he wanted to marry me but he said, 'First I have to get to know what you are like.' Then he raped me in that room.

When he was finished he gave me fifty rupees and left and then another man came. I was very upset and crying but my friend said, 'Go with this other man.' I said, 'But that man wants to marry me and he will be angry if another man touches me.' My friend just laughed again. I said I would not do it and I said I wanted to go home but my friend said, 'This is a good job. See how much jewelery I have. If you go with him think how much money you will make and you can have nice things like me.' I didn't want to do it but they pushed me into the room again and the other man raped me.

Then another man came to the house and I refused to entertain him. My friend said that if I did not do it she would (p.110)

tell my family that I was a prostitute and that our family would be shamed in the village. I could not bring shame on my family so then I began to take clients and I did not refuse any longer.>

The two principle extortion methods: extortion with contacts to the girl's family - or extortion with a revenge to the girl's family when a price was paid in advance

Threats to inform a girl's family of her involvement in prostitution are one way to tie her into the trade - and this applies even to those girls who were forced into prostitution. Girls who joined the trade when their families accepted an 'advance' on their earnings are taught to fear retribution [revenge] against their families if they should decide that the work is not something they actually wish to perform. This can range from the threat that a girl's family must repay the advance to threats that relatives will be targeted for physical punishment [threat of murdering relatives].

Example of seasoning in Mumbai with slavery in chains and beatings: 9 years old girl sold in Mumbai - cruel woman brothel owner with torture - dark room with a chain - toilet with a guard - chain undone for customers - beatings without end - 5 years in chains - after a rescue action she is living with AIDS in a safe house

Mumbai center [18] - the proud is great, and child abuse in secret brothels is dark...

Brothel owners and managers use varying levels of brutality to season new girls. Arati has yet to reach adulthood. She was sold into prostitution in Mumbai when she was nine years old. She is now living with the first stages of full-blown Aids in a safe house after being rescued from a closed brothel. This is how she described her experience:

<The malkin [brothel manager] was from Nepal and she was very cruel. She liked to torture me. I was put in a little dark room with a chain around my ankle. I could only go out of the room to go to the toilet. Then one of the guards would undo my chain and take me and watch me. The other time my chain was undone was when the customers came to my room. My first customer was a very old man. He beat me very hard and then he had sex with me. Some of the customers were not cruel but others liked to hit me. The malkin hit me many times so that I would be good with the clients.>

Arati remained chained in her room for five years. She was never fully seasoned and she will never live to be an adult. Her story is one (p.111)

of the worst I encountered but it is by no means unique. It is a horrifying personal tragedy and, if it was an isolated horror story, we could explain it as the terrible product of a few sick minds. Shockingly, there are repetitions of Arati's experience and countless echoes of her terror all over Asia. We cannot dismiss [hide] these girls' ordeals [tortures] as awful but unrepresentative cases that distract [divert] us from analysis of the broader patterns and themes in sex work. It is unforgivable to concentrate on the economics of prostitution as if the people at the sharp end of this trade are a nuisance [molestation] and a distraction from the big picture.

They are the big picture. Sexual slavery is not really something that is best analysed simply in terms of statistics. Human misery is not a substance easily measured by plotting [install] numbers on a graph. When the stories of girls and young women like Arati are analyzed together they amount to a damning indictment [accusation] of prostitution and the principles that sustain [support] it.

Example of seasoning in Dhaka in Bangladesh with beatings: factory with low salary - kicked out of the room - 'a woman' finds her giving her food - 2 more women show her the city and sell her to a brothel - first customers rejected - beating during 5 days - and then

Bangladesh, cheap production with girls [19] in a town without family around makes girls vulnderable for other job offers pushing them into prostitution...

The following story is that of a young woman initiated into prostitution by a combination of acute poverty and physical force. It is a common story and comes from Dhaka in Bangladesh:

<I worked at the factory for about three months and I earned about 500 taka a month (6 English Pounds). I shared a room with another girl but then she said she did not want to share with me any more because I did not have enough money. So then I had nowhere to live. I was feeling very bad and was walking in the street when a woman started to talk to me. She said that she would look after me and find me a good job so I went with her. She took me to a room and gave me some food and then two fat veiled women came in and the woman told me to go with them because she said that they would show me the city.

It was dark and they put me in a scooter. We went to a very busy place and it was very gloomy [dark]. There were many girls there wearing strange clothes and they wore makeup. When we walked down the alley and one of the women pulled off my (p.112)

orna shawl and said, 'You don't need to wear it in this place.' They took me into a big building and talked with another woman about me. I was very frightened. They gave me a tablet and asked if I felt dizzy. I didn't but then they left me to sleep for the night.

In the morning lots of other girls came to talk to me. They told me that I would be all right if I did what I was told and that I would get used to it. I didn't know what they meant. They said it wasn't so bad in this place and that you got good food and clothes to wear.

That night the woman who was in charge locked me in a small room and after a while a man came in and tried to rape me. I fought with him and he was very angry and said, 'I have paid for you, so do as I want.' The madam was so angry that she beat me all over my arms with a stick so that they were bruised and swollen. Some of the clients were good. When they saw that I did not want to have sex with them they would not say anything to madam. But most were bad. They complained to madam that I did not give god service and so madam would start to beat me again. She shouted, 'How long will it take you to accept this?' After five days of beating I accepted it.>

4.5: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia, Thailand: virgin girls sold into 'hotel prostitution'

A hotel in Bangkok [20] - arquitecture is wonderful, but what is behind it is sometimes only black energy of prostitution

Even in benighted [not so intelligent] Bangladesh the sex sector is undergoing a metamorphosis. Girls are sold into prostitution - but not necessarily to a traditional brothel. Instead they are initiated into 'hotel prostitution'. This is something of a misnomer [wrong word] and it gives a misleading impressing of the scene in Bangladesh. It should read 'grubby [dirty] little lodge' or 'large unsanitary hostel prostitution. The structures of the trade are exactly the same as in traditional brothel prostitution but the business is movable and more discreet. Clients are saved the embarrassment of visiting notorious areas. Instead the girls are delivered to them.

A similar pheonomenon is found in (p.113)

Pakistan where girls from brothels are delivered to hotels for the enjoyment of the guests. During one of my stays in a luxury hotel in Lahore a distraught [with dispair] thirteen-year-old girl was taken away from the hotel lobby. She was the daughter of a sex worker from the main red light area and the event was supposed to be her initiation into prostitution. Her clients were two wealthy local businessmen in their sixties and they were haggling [discussing harshly] over the price of the deal with the girl's own grandmother. Clearly this sobbing [crying] girl was not the kind of exciting sex partner the two men had in mind.

This type of sex work is an extension of the virgin purchase in Cambodia and Thailand. All countries in Asia have this system of hotel prostitution, but in some instances the girls have a measure of freedom in part because they cater to a higher class sector of the market. In impoverished Bangladesh this higher class sector is very small.

Example of seasoning in the hotel rooms with a guard (no indication of any location)

Instead, this is one girl's experience of seasoning within the hotel prostitution scene. It comes from an eleven-year-old girl who was promised a job as a domestic servant but whose cleaning job never materialized.

<The husband of the lady who employed me said, 'You don't have to do jobs in the house. I have a much better job for you.' The next day he took me to an agent and sold me. This agent took me to a hotel where there were some other girls. Most of them were older than me but there was one that was just the same as me. I was taken to a room in the hotel and a young man came in. He was about twenty or twenty-one. This man made me have sex with him. Every day after that I was taken to hotel rooms and men would visit me in the room. All the time I was guarded. There were guards who watched us eat and took us to hotel rooms. We were never alone.>


4.6: 'Seasoning' with extortion with debt bondage

Traffickers bringing women into debt bondage

In societies in which prostitution is becoming an open business (p.114)

the more sophisticated players in the sex market do not need to use physical force to tie young women into prostitution. Market forces achieve this and the owners of the sex establishments can relax and keep their hands clean. In Thailand, for instance, many bar and club owners do not want to sell the sexual services of girls who have been coerced into prostitution. Instead they recruit girls who are gradually absorbed into the industry as a result of peer [of same grade] pressure and, crucially, because they have acquired some unexpectedly high debts to pay off [5].

[5] Archavanitkul: Trafficking in Children, p.44

Remarkably, these debts have to be paid to the bar or club owner [debt bondage]. Initially therefore they may work in a fringe trade - as a waitress for instance - but within a short time they too become sex workers.

Example of seasoning by debt bondage extortion in Nigeria: From the Philippines to Nigeria - the girls have to pay back the air tickets and brothel fees

World map with Philippines and Nigeria in Africa [21]

One of the Filipina women who was trafficked to work in a brothel in Nigeria catering to the Asian community explained how she and her friends were coerced into selling sex:

<We were sent into a big compound surrounded by high fences and it was very heavily guarded. There were three houses in the compound and all were filled with other Filipinas who looked at us. We were told that we had to work in a club so that we could pay back our airfare and the money that the club owner had paid for us. We had to entertain the clients because how else could we pay back the debt?>

This strategy of burdening a girl with a massive amount of debt is commonplace. The girl is then given only one realistic way of clearing the debt: she has to sell her body.

Example of seasoning by debt bondage extortion in Japan: From Romania to Japan - the woman has to pay back training and the air ticket

Japan with it's martial arts like karate [22] is an incredible proud nation - but is also abusing foreign women with extortions

A Romanian woman trafficked to work in a Japanese sex club described the methods that the club owners used to encourage her into prostitution:

<For the first few months we weren't given any wages for being dancers. They said we had to pay back the expenses for our training and airfare. We just had a tiny amount of money - (p.115)

not even enough to buy food, and I was always hungry. If we wanted some more money we had to go with clients and then we could get some tips. We couldn't leave because we had a legal contract to stay at the club, and besides we had no money to pay for the airfare home.>

Principle: debt bondage is arbitrary because the brothel owner can manipulate the debt as he or she wants

Debt bondage is the name given to this system. It is a widespread practice throughout the global sex industry and is common in Asia. At its best it can be seen as a way a girl can secure an advance upon her earnings. At worst it is akin [similar] to sexual slavery because the brothel and club owners manipulate the debt. The debt is not fixed and it expands at the whim [mood] of the brothel owner or manager. In essence debt bondage is used to force women to become prostitutes and to make them accept customers and comply with sexual acts that they would otherwise refuse.

Debt bondage extortion in Calcutta in India: 'chukri' system - girl has to pay back costs for all requirements - and debt of fees - and something for the owner - and some jewelry for her - and the girl never knows how high is the debt!

Girl's prostitution in Calcutta [23] - mostly the girls have to serve men for paying debts back but often they don't even know how much!

Some of the worst examples of debt bondage are found in South Asia. In Calcutta a system known as chukri operates among new entrants to the profession. A brothel owner buys a girl from an agent. The girl then comes under the complete control of this owner. The owner pays for all of the girl's requirements - her food and clothes and general living expenses. These costs are added to the girl's debt together with various other unspecified sums that are at the discretion of the owner. The new prostitute must then repay this nebulous debt by servicing customers. The trouble is that she will rarely know how much she owes, how much will be deducted per client and how much will be added for her expenses and the 'gifts' which the brothel owner will give her. It is not uncommon, for example, for a girl to be given some cheap jewelry that she will then have to pay for with the sale of her body. The chukri system is sexual slavery.

Debt bondage extortion in Mumbai in India: the girl gets 50% but has to pay off her debt - taking many years

Very similar arrangements are found throughout the [Indian] subcontinent. In Mumbai's Kamatipura a girl will receive half of the fee the customer pays for sexual services. Out of this she must pay for her (p.116)

living expenses including rent, electricity and food, and she must also pay off her debt. For some girls this will take many years.

Debt bondage extortion in Bangladesh: the girl has to work 4 to 5 years paying off the debt

In Bangladesh it is not unusual for the debt to be settled only after four or five years. During this time the young prostitute works as a kind of apprentice under the control of the [mostly woman] brothel manager. She is not free to leave and she must service all clients that are given to her.

Debt bondage extortion in Thailand: From Burma to Thailand - paying back the debt with 100% interest

The basic structures of the debt bondage system are identical in South-East Asia. The costs for trafficked girls, for instance, usually have to be repaid with 100% interest [6].

[6] Archavanitkul: Trafficking in Children, p.48

A Burmese girl who is trafficked across the Thai-Burmese border may cost the brothel owner around 10,000 Baht, but the girl herself will have to repay the [Thai] brothel owner 20,000 Baht. She will have to repay this sum by selling sex. Half of the customer's fee will be given to the girl and from this she is expected to pay off her debt [with 100% interest, in a THAI brothel].

4.7: Girls and women have no idea about their rights

Principle: the girls and young women cannot resist anywhere to the debt bondage extortion system - and even accept their new "owner"

Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the debt bondage system is the way that it is accepted as inevitable by those girls who have experienced it at its most vicious and exploitative. In the initial phases of my research I found it almost incomprehensible that a young woman should believe that a third party had the right to sell her. I expected them to be outraged or at least angry at the fact that they had been sold. Very few, however, questioned either their sale or the debt bondage system. When they did express an opinion it was to state their obligation to clear the debt.

A Bangladeshi sex worker in Calcutta, for instance, thought that it was unjust that a neighbor had sold her into prostitution when she was a child, but she did not question the need to repay her debt to the brothel owner. 'I hated the work,' she explained, 'but I had to repay the money.'

I have heard similar views from Cambodian sex workers who felt bitter that friends and relatives had sold them to brothels but who, at the same time, never, ever questioned the fundamental assumption that they could be bought and sold.

Principle: the girls and young women do not know about their rights because they never had any rights during their childhood either

After a while it made sense to me: these girls do not question the principle of their sale because they accept what they are. They are a commodity to the traded. They are not (p.117)

angry at being dispossessed of their rights because they never had believed in those rights in the first place.


4.8: Child prostitution - Asian men are main costumer for this crime

World map with the size of penis world wide [24] - in Asia mostly men have the shortest penises, and therefore adult women are not satisfied and men are abusing children so much - as it seems!

Principle: sex with children is established in Asia and Asian men are the principle consumers - and some Western tourists are not making any essential change of range

The second - and most profound shock I had during the fieldwork for this book was the ages of the girls involved in the sex trade. In recent years the Western media has placed a spotlight upon paedophilia. In the West it is an acknowledged problem and the perpetrators of this evil are known to travel to Asia, as well as to other less-developed parts of the world, to liberally indulge [have a good time] themselves in a vice that demands far greater discretion while they are at home. From coverage in the Asian press you would suppose that paedophilia was a perversion confined to the West and perpetrated upon Asian children only by Western tourists and expatriates. I want to be the last person to defend these pathetic and deeply sad men, but the Asian media should be more honest. Paedophilia among Asian men exists on a large scale, but the problem of men's sexual attraction to children is simply not acknowledged. In some countries this is because sexual relations between men and children are institutionalised.

Child marriage - is it child prostitution or not?

To give an example: there might be public distaste in Bangladesh when twelve-year-old girls are prostituted. But this is because prostitution is stigmatised and not because twelve-year-olds are having sex with adult men. Why should there be outrage? In Bangladesh ten-year-old girls become wived in consummated marriages. Fifteen per cent are married at twelve or younger and 57% are married by the age of fourteen [7].

[7] M.N. Islam and H.K.M. Yusuf: 'Fertility and Reproductive Health Status of Married Adolescents in Rural Bangladesh', unpublished paper, 1990

In South Asia girls are sold into prostitution when they are children and they are married [in certain Muslim states] when they are children. What is the difference?

Principle: preferential sex abusers (looking for girls) and situational sex abusers (taking girls because they are available)

To be fair, we have to make the distinction between preferential sex abusers and situational sex abusers. Preferential paedophiles are those people who seek sex primarily with prepubescent children. Situational paedophiles are those people who have sex with children but who do not necessarily seek children out as victims. I believe that most of the customers of Asian child prostitutes fall into the (p.118)

second category. They have sex with children because they are available and, once the girls' virginity has been sold, they are also cheap. When men do wish to have sex with a girl they tend to desire those who are pubescent [having period and breasts] as opposed to those who are prepubescent [without period and without breasts].


4.9: The age of the prostitutes in Asia - mostly from 13 to 25

Principle: youth and puberty do not exist

Youth center in Gorbitz in Dresden in Germany [25] - in Asia there is no youth mostly because it costs too much for the poor but children are working from 10 years on or sold to brothels...

In Bangladesh, like in other developing countries, there is no recognized intermediate stage between childhood and adulthood. Instead there is a sudden transition, which takes place at either puberty or marriage - whichever is the sooner.

[This means that there is no youth work, there is no youth education, there are no youth books, there are no youth reviews, but occupation for youths of poor families is only work in the family without learning anything, and when the family is poor prostitution is one of the solutions for getting a little bit richer for more consumer goods for more prestige - or an early marriage of the daughter or selling the daughter to a man is another solution].

Prostitution begins with under 14 already, example Rajasthan in India

Similar patterns apply in the rest of South Asia. The age profile of sex workers within the region illustrates the early age of initiation into prostitution. A study of two hundred child prostitutes in Rajasthan by the Indian National Comission for Women found that 64% of these girls had entered prostitution before they were fourteen [8].

[8] national Commission for Women: The Velvet Blouse, p.23

The overwhelming number of prostitutes entered the profession as children and most at around the age of puberty [9].

Example Bangladesh: prostitutes mainly between 14 to 25 - also customers want this like this

In 1999 Bangladesh's Department of Social Services undertook a survey of over one thousand women in the Tanbazar and Nimtoli brothels. Four hundred and fifty of these inmates were in fact children. Similarly, in a survey of street prostitution in Dhaka, involving over 180 women, almost 30% were found to be under sixteen. A counterpoint to this is that there is a dramatic decline in the number of prostitutes who are in their mid-twenties. There are virtually none above the age of thirty [10].

[10] Salma Ali: 'Children in Prostitution / Children of Prostituted Women'. Paper presented at the regional meeting of the Coalition Against the Traffic in Women. Dhaka, Bangladesh, 25-29 January 1999, p.8

This is not because the women have found a happier and more socially acceptable occupation; there is simply no one prepared to buy them.

Example Phnom Penh in Cambodia: over 25% of prostitutes are under 17 years old

This point is worth repeating and illustrating. Reports suggest that over a quarter of the prostitutes in Phnom Penh are under seventeen [11].

[11] Estimates based on interviews with Chanthol Oung, Executive Director of the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center, Men Sedharoat, Director: "Agir pour les Femmes en Situation Précaire" ["Action for women in hard situations"]; Phnom Penh, and Yim Po, Director, Cambodian Center for the Protection of Children's Rights.

This may even be an underestimate because many child prostitutes are not visible and therefore not calculable.

Examples in Malaysia, Nepal, India, Indonesia

In Malaysia virgin girls who have not yet reached puberty carry a premium [added special price] [12].

[12] Lin Lean Lim: The Sex Sector, p.89

In Nepal 48% of sex workers enter the profession between the ages of ten and fifteen [13].

[13] UNICEF: A Situation Analysis, p. xiv

Twenty percent of those who are trafficked to India are thought to be below fifteen [14],

[14] UNICEF: A Situation Analysis, p.xv

and in Indonesia a quarter of all (p.119)

brothel-based prostitution begin work when they are under seventeen [15].

[15]

Example Philippines: Filipino men in "casa"-brothels - young girls in brothels are "tried out"

Children are analysing garbage in Ulingan, Philippines [26] - when there is such poverty and when there are no contraceptives it's no wonder parents are selling their children as a last solution of familiar financial problems - or children are kidnapped. The country is called "catholic"...

The girls who are found in casas, the closed brothels of the Philippines, are also very, very young. Seventy percent are believed to be under twenty, with the majority being in the twelve to eighteen age group.

A mama-san [brothel owner] with extensive experience of various sectors of the sex industry in the Philippines, and who had managed a casa for several years, explained that the girls in the brothels were from very poor families. This is how she described the demand for them:

<Things are the worst for girls in the casas. They have lots of clients, especially on Friday and Saturday nights when they have ten to twelve men. It's especially bad for the new girls becasue all the regulars want to try her out. Twelve to fifteen is considered the best age. They are called 'cherry girls' [virgin girls] but only the richest customers can afford to buy her 'cherry' [as a virgin].>

Example Thailand: child prostitution is changing to "more discreet locations" - normal brothels remain with less customers

In the past few years there has been a crackdown on child prostitution in Thailand. This inititiative does seem to have had some impact - but not necessarily in the way intended. Child prostitution has been moved out of many brothels and is now made available in more discreet locations. I have therefore heard complaints from Thai sex workers that there are fewer customers visiting the brothels because the clients are going elsewhere in search of younger girls. This belief is corroborated [confirmed] by a survey by the International Labor Organization, which noted claims by brothel owners that the ban on hiring women under eighteen was bad for business as most customers wanted to buy sex with younger prostitutes [16].

[16] Lin Lean Lim: The Sex Sector, p.144

Principle: fear of Asian men about AIDS as a "reason" for sex with children

It is often suggested that the emphasis upon very young prostitutes is a product of fears about Aids. According to this argument clients are demanding sex with younger prostitutes in the belief that these girls will have had less exposure to the virus and so will be less likely to be infected. This is certainly true in South East Asia where the average age of girls on entrance to prostitution has been declining. In South Asia (p.129),

however, there has always been a premium placed on very young girls. Traditional religious prostitution such as the devadasi system [with a girl dedicated to a temple without support of anything making money with prostitution aside] demanded induction [initiation] into the trade by puberty at the latest. Today's emphasis upon teenage girls therefore has a long pedigree [prehistory] and the contemporary worries about disease are a convenient additional justification for men's desire to have sex with girls who are children.


4.10: Selling virgins: defloration and guaranteed AIDS-free product

The premium for defloration - and the premium for having a guarantee for not having AIDS

A major selling point for virgin girls is that they are not infected with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The health-conscious consumers of virgin prostitutes therefore pay a premium not only to deflower the girls but also to enjoy them without nagging [big and lasting] doubts about unpleasant diseases. [The surgeon installing a second or third hymen is the manipulator in the background...]

But the customer is a danger for the girl

Condoms are therefore disposed with. But of course this safety assurance applies only to the clients. The girls, on the other hand, are highly vulnerable to infection because they are having unprotected sex on a critical occasion with a man who is likely to have had multiple sexual partners.

Principle: "Fresh young girls" are tried out by masses of men and will not be "fresh" any more

Fresh young girls who find themselves in a cheap brothel will not stay fresh for very long. This is because there is greater demand for the services of younger and newer girls.


4.11: The number of customers - from 3 to 20 customers per day

Calcutta: 2 to 10 customers per day
A study of sex work in Calcutta found that prostitutes usually serviced between two and ten clients per day, with the average number being three [17].

[17] Department of Epidemiology: Assessment [rating] of the Sex Trade in Calcutta and Howrah, p.11

[Mumbai]: Nepali girls with 10 to 15 customers per day
However, there was a very wide variation, with some unfortunate Nepali girls servicing as many as ten to fifteen clients [18].

[18] Department of Epidemiology: Assessment [rating] of the Sex Trade in Calcutta and Howrah, p.52

Principle: younger girls have more customers
Invariably the younger girls have the most customers. It is a similar scene everywhere.

Cambodia: teens forced to take any customer - 7 to 15 customers per day - extreme with 20 customers per day

Cambodia brothel owners force teenage prostitutes to take anything between seven and fifteen clients a day. This is far more than the numbers serviced by adult sex workers. I met one girl who had been blessed with features considered to be highly attractive in Cambodia: she was pretty, plump [little bit round] and fair-skinned [white skin]. During her captivity in a Phnom Penh brothel these desirable qualities also blessed her with twenty customers a day and HIV.


4.12: Seasoning - the 'adaption' - with mental scars or even lethal cases

[Lethal sex is happening when the penis is too big for the vagina and there are injuries with heavy bleedings which are not detected or cannot be stopped any more so the girl is killed by bleeding. This hapens regularly in Thailand and in certain Muslim areas. Other girls can be saved but they loose their fertility because certain elements cannot be repaired any more. Principally sex with children before fertility is coming is not common even with monkeys, so why are men doing something what even monkeys are not doing? Even in Biblical times there was a child protection until menarche was coming, and menarche in those times often came only with 16 or 17 and men were hunting. Louise Brown says]:

Seasoning can take anything from a few weeks to a few years. Some entrants to prostitution do not need to be seasoned because they (p.121)

have chosen to sell their bodies. But for many others there is a period of adaptation. This also applies to girls who knew that they would sell sex but did not know of the conditions under which they would have to do the selling. They must all adapt to captivity and to the psychological and physical toll that prostitution will take upon them. Their will to resist has to be broken.

Scars of brutal initiation in the soul of the girl

For the younger girls, the physical scars of a brutal initiation into prostitution can never be healed. They suffer irreparable internal injuries.

Calcutta: vagina manipulations with skin of a citrus fruit

Efforts are made by brothel owners to prepare younger girls for prostitution. In Calcutta, for example, dried and tightly packed pith [skin of a citrus fruit], which expands when water is applied to it, is used to widen the vaginas of young girls who are to sell sex to adult men.

Calcutta: lethal cases with young girls having sex with adult men

But even this is not sufficient to stop serious damage. The staff at Sanlaap, an NGO working with child prostitutes in the city [of Calcutta], has evidence not only of maiming [mutilating] and grievous injuries to young girls but also of their deaths.

[Lethal cases with child prostitution can also be found in criminal Thailand and in certain conservative Muslim regions].

Psychological conditioning is every bit as brutal as the physical coercion of girls and women into the trade. Its long-term effects are often just as serious.

Principle of seasoning: changing the name - contact with parents forbidden - the brothel will be the center of life

A principal tactic in the brothel owner's battle to turn reluctant prostitutes into willing sex workers is to strip them of their previous identities. They are often given new names and they are denied contact with their homes and families.

Until they are seasoned their whole world will  be centered in the brothel. This has the effect of isolating the girl and making her feel vulnerable while simultaneously divorcing her from the patterns of thinking and feeling that make her hostile to the idea of sex work. She is provided with a new pattern of behavior.

Principle of seasoning: resistance is answered with beatings, torture, or even killings - psycho terrorism whispering about killings

Women who refuse to adopt these new patterns are beaten, tortured and sometimes killed. How often such killings take place is unknown because the women who are the victims are invisible once they have disappeared into the opaque [dark] world of the sex trade. Virtually every sex worker will tell you that she knows a woman or girl who refused to comply with her brothel owner's expectations and was killed as a result. Whispers about (p.122)

killings and a regular dose of beatings by pimps are marvellous incentives [stimuli] to keep prostitutes working.

Principle of seasoning: extortion by debt bondage extortion and threats of violence

Most new recruits, however, do not have to endure months of sadistic torture. Burdened with debt [debt bondage extortion] and threatened with violence, they adapt to their new situation. They have to if they wish to survive.

Principle of seasoning: girls are locked in rooms - wards - gangs controlling everything in the red light district catching the girl during her flight

Escape is impossible for the victims of sexual slavery. Brothel owners have paid for the new recruits and they are unlikely to let their investment simply walk away. The girls will only be free once their purchase price has been recouped and a substantial profit has been made. Until then they are watched and guarded. This involves far more than simply placing a tough guy on the door. A red light area is home to a large network of criminal gangs and people who are affiliated with the trade. So if a girl manages to escape from her brothel she will rarely get very far. She will be picked up by some of the local youths who patrol the streets and who can be found loitering [enjoying doing nothing] at every street corner. Nervous girls and disoriented young women are very easy to spot as they try to make a hurried or confused getaway.

Principle of seasoning: transport across borders into foreign countries making the girl helpless

One of the great advantages of using trafficked girls is that they rarely know where to escape to. This is especially true for those who have been trafficked over substantial distances and particularly across international borders. They may not know the language and they may not know the city they are in.


4.13: Flight from sex slavery is hardly possible

In 1987 the Burmese girl Kham Suk was sold by her parents to a brothel in Thailand for 80 "US" dollars - and is selling flowers here [27] - a flight is impossible because the streets in Thailand are watched by spies at every corner - by the taxi drivers and secret service in taxi driver's uniforms, and because the girl does not speak Thai. And these 80 dollars the girl had to repay by sexual services for customers... - “Children in Darkness,” Sara Terry, Christian Science Monitor, 30 June 1987. When governments are supporting poverty deliberately and contraceptives are rare then the result is prostitution without end. And Asien governments like it like this and are doing this deliberately as it seems...

Example Japan: Thai women without language - no knowledge about the location - no air ticket

The HELP Asian Women's Shelter in Tokyo gives assistance to women in prostitution and receives telephone calls from trafficked Thai women pleading for help. Some of these women are so isolated that they do not know where they are. They have been brought to Japan and sold to a 'snack' in some Japanese town. They do not speak the language and cannot read any signs. They do not even know which part of Japan they are in. They have seen the telephone number of the shelter in a Thai newspaper and have run away from the snack to make a call from a public telephone box. Even those women who know where they are and how to get back to their own countries are stopped (p.123)

from doing so by a basic law of economics: they cannot afford the airfare home.

Example India: Nepali women without orientation outside the brothel

Nepali women who have been trafficked to brothels in Indian cities report that they did not know how to get home. Many are unfamiliar with urban life and are confused by the environment outside the brothels. Inside the brothel are many horrors but, for some, this may be preferable to taking their chances in the unfamiliar and hostile world outside its doors.

Principle of threats: after being picked up from the flight a worse brothel will come - arrest will come because of illegal status - [and more rapes will come by policemen and military men]

Brothel owners frighten trafficked women by telling them that they will be identified as sex workers and picked up and then sold to another even worse brothel if they try to escape. Alternatively they are told that the police will arrest them for being illegal immigrants. This is a real threat for many women trafficked to countries such as [criminal] Thailand and Japan and they have good reason to be fearful [because kinky police and military men for example in Thailand will also rape them].

Successful seasoning: girl and women think that there is 'no alternative' for being a prostitute

The seasoning process is completed once the woman accepts that she has absolutely no alternative but to be a sex worker. At this point some will seem genuinely to embrace their profession. This is because they are survivors. They have been forced to become prostitutes and, as they have no other options, they make the very best of the situation.

[In connection with slavery this thinking is a trap. In connection with a free choice and self administration this is a manner making money when the prostitute is successful].

Principle in South Asia: prostitutes loose any reputation - official 'social death' - but inoficial supporter of the family

This process can be seen at its most poignant [painful] in South Asia. In most parts of the subcontinent there is no way back to 'respectable' society for a woman who has sold sex. How she entered the profession is seen as totally immaterial. She is marked out for social death. However, once they have been seasoned and have come to accept that they are locked into the trade, women can be very philosophical about their lives and their work.

The attitude expressed by this successful prostitute in Calcutta is typical:

<I did not want to do this work. I was sold to a brothel and then I could not go back to my village and live like an ordinary woman. I could not have a husband and a family. But if I can't return to society then I can support my family. My life (p.124)

is ruined but at least I can help my mother and my brothers and sisters. I am good at my job and I have a lot of regular clients who are generous to me. With the money I earn I have paid for my sister to be married. I gave her a dowry and my brother is going to school.>

Principle: factors poverty - debts - violence - threats

Women can be conditioned to accept even the most dehumanizing prostitution as their occupation if they are pushed by poverty and by debt and if they are coerced by violence and by threats. They will survive and accept sexual exploitation and brutality. And most will do so with dignity and, eventually, with a perceptive humor.

Principle: prostitutes are used and stigmatized and banned from social life

But in many parts of Asia they become, in the process, irredeemably stigmatized. They are a group of social outcasts [banned persons] fashioned [produced] from poor and vulnerable women. The societies that create them condemn their very existence. The men who enjoy them will be exactly the same men who, once back in their roles as model family men and good citizens, will recoil [make a step back] with distaste from such moral degradation [downgrading]. No wonder Asia's prostitutes have to be seasoned so well.

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Sources

[16] police in Thailand: http://www.thaiphotoblogs.com/2011/07/thai-police-uniform/
[17] a family in poverty in Calcutta: http://www.worst-city.com/Slums/Squalor-Living-amidst-the-rubbish-A-Family-Inkolkata-Calcutta.htm
[18] Mumbai, center: http://www.timescontent.com/tss/showcase/preview-buy/128500/Feature/South-Mumbai-Skyline-Mumbai.html
[19] Bangladesh, cheap production with girls: http://www.ibtimes.com/despite-low-pay-poor-work-conditions-garment-factories-empowering-millions-bangladeshi-women-1563419
[20] hotel in Bangkok: http://www.venere.com/de/wohnung/bangkok/wohnung-viva-garden-by-bliston/

[21] world map with Philippines and Nigeria in Africa: http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/africa/ng.htm
[22] karate group in Japan: http://www.jkd-shotoha.de/JKD/index.php/karate/shotokan-karate-
[23] girl's prostitution in Calcutta: http://bakudaily.az/xeber-thousands-of-calcutta-girls-are-forced-into-sex-work-t3140.html
[24] world map with size of penis world wide: http://bodygeeks.com/2011/04/the-world-according-to-penis-and-breast-size/
[25] youth center in Gorbitz in Dresden in Germany: http://gorbitz.sjr-dresden.de/kontakt/
[26] children analyzing garbage in Ulingan, Philippines: http://www.fotovisura.com/user/lisawiltse/view/charcoal-kids-of-ulingan
[27] Burmese girl sold to a Thai brothel for 80 dollars - now selling flowers: https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/tag/shopping-for-girls/

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