What is trafficking for sexual exploitation?

 The key elements of trafficking are the movement of a person; that this movement is brokered by another person through abduction, deception or coercion; and that the movement is for the purpose of exploitation - that is, the exploitation through the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation.

Do the women know what they are getting into?

 Taking the biggest group of women trafficked into Australia, Thai women, as an example, we know the group includes both those who are totally deceived about the fact that they will do prostitution in Australia (the minority) and those who know they will do prostitution but are deceived about the conditions of that prostitution (the majority). The former group think that they will be employed in a sector outside the sex industry, for example, a restaurant, in the travel industry etc. The latter group of women may be given the impression that they will be working in a karaoke bar, will be able to pick and chose who they have sex with and will only have a small number of prostitution clients. This group includes both women who have done prostitution previously in Thailand and/or abroad, and women who have never done prostitution before.

Both groups of women are likely to be told that they will have a debt to the traffickers, but will be deceived about the size of the debt and/or how quickly they will be able to pay it off.

How are women trafficked?

 Traffickers in destination countries access women in a range of ways. Some traffickers operate organised chains that cover the entire trafficking process - they recruit women in source countries and prostitute them in their own brothels (or through escort arrangements) in Australia. Other traffickers engage in only one part of the trafficking. For example, they may recruit women and bring them to Australia, and then sell them to another trafficker. This sale may be based on a 'pre-order', or involve traffickers coming to look at women once they are in Australia and picking the one/s they wish to buy. Some traffickers have many women in a range of locations across states and territories and at times countries, others may be so-called 'mum and dad' traffickers who buy a half share in a woman.

How many women are trafficked to Australia?

 Project Respect estimates that there are typically up to 1,000 women in Australia under contract at any one time. This refers to women still paying off a 'debt' and does not include women who have finished their 'debt' but remain in Australia.

However, the number of women trafficked for prostitution to Australia is difficult to estimate for four main reasons. Firstly, trafficking is illegal and therefore may occur undetected. Secondly, victims of trafficking may be unwilling to speak about being trafficked either because they fear retribution from traffickers, are traumatised by the experience, or, and this was common in the past, they had bad experiences of DIMIA or the AFP and so didn't think anything good would come from talking. Thirdly, there has until recently been a lack of cooperation with agencies that may know of trafficked women, and who could calculate the number of trafficked women in Australia. Finally, until recently, there was no clear mandate for any one government organisation to actually go out counting.

In the absence of firm figures around numbers, however, estimates about the scale of trafficking, in human and dollar terms, have and can be made, including estimates related to police operations in Sydney in the mid-1990s, a case in Melbourne in the late 1990s, and those presented by the government when it introduced the 1999 Slavery and Sexual Servitude Act.

Adding to these, Project Respect has made estimates based on a range of other information, including statistics from the Refugee Review Tribunal, Department of Immigration removal statistics, sex industry estimates, observations in brothels etc.

Most women trafficked to Australia are from South East Asia and China, however there are also indications that women are at times trafficked from Europe and Latin America. The majority of women trafficked to Australia in recent times appear to be Thai women.

What happens to trafficked women once they are placed in debt bondage?

 Once women are in Australia the next stage is the 'breaking-in' stage. Women who were deceived about the fact that they will be doing prostitution are frequently subject to significant and systematic violence upon arrival in Australia. This will often involve multiple rapes and threats of harm to the individual women and their families.

This violence serves two functions, one more obvious than the other. Firstly, obviously, pre-prostitution violence aims to break women's will and impress upon them their powerlessness in the face of the traffickers' demands. It aims to stop them from running away or seeking help in other ways, such as by telling customers their situation. Secondly, this rape teaches women how to do prostitution sex, and impresses on them that they must 'satisfy' their 'customer' and cannot refuse types of customers or sex (including sex without condoms). Women who know they are coming for prostitution (but not the terms and conditions of the prostitution) may also be subjected to pre-prostitution violence.

During their initial period in Australia, trafficked women are frequently stopped from leaving their residence (often the traffickers' own home, or a residence guarded by the traffickers or the traffickers' associates), or are chaperoned if they are permitted to leave. However, the preconceived idea that women are changed to their beds is unlikely.

The next stage is the exploitation of women through prostitution, and it is at this point that traffickers in Australia start to make a return on their investment in the woman. Trafficked women generally pay off a 'debt' that is calculated in terms of dollars, 'jobs' or months. A typical debt for a Thai woman is between $35,000 and $50,000. 'Job' requirements are typically between 500 and 1,000. Some traffickers may also require women to stay on after the debt is paid off, for example for an additional twelve months.

Women are prostituted for many hours a day, frequently seven days a week. Some women may be given a 'free' day during a quiet period, and will be allowed to keep a portion of this money. Women typically try to send as much of this money home to parents or children, but also use the money to pay for food and other expenses in Australia as these are often not provided by the trafficker.

Within 45 days of a woman's arrival in Australia, traffickers frequently make bogus applications for protection visas for women, thereby securing work rights for the woman while her bogus application is processed. Women are often unaware that this application has been made, or what it means, and at times are told simply that they have a working visa. As women are told that prostitution is legal in Australia, some women genuinely believe that they are legally entitled to do prostitution in Australia.

Why do trafficked women stay in prostitution?

 Traffickers routinely respond to women's initial complaints, including their requests to return home, with sexual, physical and psychological violence. Threats can include threatening to send a woman's child a pornographic picture of her. As with women deceived about doing prostitution, this violence aims to teach women that they have no other option, cannot access help and cannot escape. One of the great skills of traffickers is their ability to move beyond simply brute force. In this way, women can be effectively imprisoned with well-applied and strategic physical violence, that may appear minimal to outsiders, cemented by devastating psychological violence. Traffickers engage ­ albeit criminally and brutally - with women's psychology. They learn what women value, and work to their strengths and weaknesses. In between the violence, they are at times kind and considerate, and when the violence decreases, women begin to hope that it was all just a terrible nightmare that will now go away.

Traffickers use both the violence of customers and their own strategic violence to control women. Women report being sent back to violent customers if they leave the room and being made to have sex without a condom if the customer asks for this. Women are hunted down and beaten and locked up if they run away.

Women are also subjected to arbitrary and unpredictable violence from traffickers, simply because the trafficker is angry, tired, loses at gambling - this serves to increase women's sense of the traffickers power.

Overt physical and sexual violence is a very obvious method of control. Traffickers also use other tactics: they take women's passports, they withhold information about where they are and how to move around, they control their money, they threaten to tell immigration where the women are, they say they have paid off immigration, they say the police are corrupt and won't help women, they withhold food and medicine, they threaten to hurt the women's families, to show them pornographic photos or film, to tell their kids or parents they are prostitutes. They show women photos of what happens to women who run away. They encourage drug dependencies and gambling, in short, they make them feel there is no way out.

As the contract period proceeds, women will be given more and more freedom. By the end of the contract, many women will have no physical constraints on them at all. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, women have learnt that they will be punished if they run away, and are scared that the traffickers will hunt them down even if they return home. Secondly, women hope to pay off their 'debt' and then be able to make some money for themselves and their families. Thirdly, women have learnt that there is little support for women who run away, and are told that they will be deported if they contact Australian authorities. Finally, women at the end of their contracts are less 'valuable' to traffickers, as profit has been extracted from them and they are no longer 'new faces'.

How long does it take for a woman to pay off her debt?

 Many women pay off their debt very quickly, often between two and six months, for two reasons. Firstly, traffickers make women do prostitution for long hours and will not allow them to refuse customers, as they wish to maximise their profit as quickly as possible. Secondly, once women have been made to accept that they must pay off their 'debt' and cannot escape, many women try to pay off the money as quickly as possible so they can escape the trafficking situation. They see no way out of their situation other than accepting the traffickers' conditions. Many hope that once they have paid off the debt they will be able to make money to send home - their initial objective in coming to Australia.

What is the relationship between domestic violence and sexual trafficking?

 Domestic violence is increasingly being identified as a 'push' factor - one of the things that make women susceptible to trafficking. For example, women attempting to leave domestic violence may opt to travel overseas as a way both to leave their abusive partner and to secure an income for dependent children or parents. This trend is also apparent among trafficked women in Australia. Women hope that going overseas to work will put them out of harms way - it does the opposite.

Trafficking injures women just like domestic violence does. Each stage of the trafficking process exposes women to serious state and federal crimes. For example, women are exposed to the 'breaking in' stage where they subjected to frequent and systematic violence which impresses upon the women their powerlessness and teaches them how to do prostitution sex.

Traffickers often operate like domestic violence perpetrators because following intense violence, they often use kindness and freedom from violence as a tool. Having exposed women to terrible and seemingly endless violence, they can maintain real control by easing back, by making women feel that things are getting better, that if they only do what the trafficker wants everything will be okay and they wonąt be raped, beaten and threatened again. Under these circumstances many women will put up with things they would not have imagined accepting only weeks before.

Trafficking is like domestic violence in the way we respond to women. We used to ask why women stay. Now we know that women frequently do everything they can to resist, change and escape violence in the home, and only give up after they are regularly let down by police, doctors, neighbours, family. Trafficking is the same - it is not trafficked women's acceptance that is the problem, it is ours.

Like domestic violence, we can only stop trafficking if we stop men's right to control, use and injure women. There are many reasons why women are susceptible to trafficking. What is clear is that they absolutely will not be trafficked if there is not a market to absorb them.

What makes Australia appealing for traffickers?

 Project Respect believes that the demand for trafficked women is fuelled by:

Another related factor is the sheer profitability of trafficking. While traffickers can operate with virtual impunity, and without fearing loss of assets or income, trafficking will continue unabated. An integrated and effective government response must address these 'pull' factors. It is important to note that regardless of how poor or desperate a person might be, if there is no market for them in a destination country, they will not be trafficked.

What is the impact on women who are trafficked?

 Trafficking for prostitution exposes women to a range of negative impacts, including:

These vulnerabilities are consolidated by problems such as women's limited English skills, lack of knowledge of the Australian legal and immigration system, lack of support networks, and misinformation about consequences of cooperating with authorities.

Trafficked women engage in many strategies to avoid or minimise the violence and exploitation they are exposed to. It is important to recognise that many trafficked women actively attempt to change their situation. The difficulty is not that they accept the violence they experience, but that the rest of the community does. In this, we see many parallels with the experiences of other women who experience violence, such as domestic violence.

MORE INFORMATION

If you have further questions about trafficking, see our Resources page for Project Respect publications, and links to other relevant organisations.