The Domitiana highway was built in 95 A.D. as a thoroughfare, leading north up the boot of Italy from the bay of Naples. Now it is something like a one-stop sex supermarket where up to 600 Nigerian prostitutes can be found at a time along a 30-kilometer stretch of the pot-holed road.
Across Italy, Nigerian women are forced into the sex trade, essentially kept as slaves who are bought and sold and moved according to a moribund supply and demand. Some of the prostitutes are young girls, just 13 or 14 years old. Others are in their 20s or 30s. Many have children. Some are still married to men in Nigeria. They usually sit on white plastic chairs under umbrellas to protect them from the rain in the winter and the harsh sun in the summer. The highest concentration of Nigerian forced sex workers is in and around Naples, but they are not limited to the southern reaches. On Thursday, in the central region of Abruzzo, four Nigerian gang members and an Italian taxi driver who allegedly procured prostitutes across the country were sentenced to between nine and 15 years in prison for making 23-year-old Nigerian Lilian Solomon prostitute herself even though she was in the late stages of lymphoma cancer. The court in Teramo ruled that the Nigerian band prohibited the young woman from seeking treatment and should be held responsible for her death. She was represented in court by members of “On the Road” association against sex trafficking, which alerted authorities about her plight. Solomon testified under oath against the band before she died in 2009. The sentence, four years after her death, won’t bring her back, but it is one small step toward holding the sex traffickers accountable.
According to Renato Natale, a local Neapolitan doctor who is a former anti-mafia mayor of Casal di Principe, the majority of the Nigerian girls and women who are sex slaves were sold for around $50,000 by their parents or husbands in Nigeria, often to pay loan sharks or to get families out of debt. Some women paid sums of more than $13,000 out of their own pockets in exchange for the promise to find legitimate work in Italy with the goal of sending money home or even eventually bringing their entire families over. Natale says when they arrive in Italy, they are often raped into submission and plied with drugs and turned into prostitutes. Many of the women have scars on their bodies from a voodoo-style initiation ritual where they pledge allegiance to their pimps out of fear of torture. Full story...
Related posts:
Across Italy, Nigerian women are forced into the sex trade, essentially kept as slaves who are bought and sold and moved according to a moribund supply and demand. Some of the prostitutes are young girls, just 13 or 14 years old. Others are in their 20s or 30s. Many have children. Some are still married to men in Nigeria. They usually sit on white plastic chairs under umbrellas to protect them from the rain in the winter and the harsh sun in the summer. The highest concentration of Nigerian forced sex workers is in and around Naples, but they are not limited to the southern reaches. On Thursday, in the central region of Abruzzo, four Nigerian gang members and an Italian taxi driver who allegedly procured prostitutes across the country were sentenced to between nine and 15 years in prison for making 23-year-old Nigerian Lilian Solomon prostitute herself even though she was in the late stages of lymphoma cancer. The court in Teramo ruled that the Nigerian band prohibited the young woman from seeking treatment and should be held responsible for her death. She was represented in court by members of “On the Road” association against sex trafficking, which alerted authorities about her plight. Solomon testified under oath against the band before she died in 2009. The sentence, four years after her death, won’t bring her back, but it is one small step toward holding the sex traffickers accountable.
According to Renato Natale, a local Neapolitan doctor who is a former anti-mafia mayor of Casal di Principe, the majority of the Nigerian girls and women who are sex slaves were sold for around $50,000 by their parents or husbands in Nigeria, often to pay loan sharks or to get families out of debt. Some women paid sums of more than $13,000 out of their own pockets in exchange for the promise to find legitimate work in Italy with the goal of sending money home or even eventually bringing their entire families over. Natale says when they arrive in Italy, they are often raped into submission and plied with drugs and turned into prostitutes. Many of the women have scars on their bodies from a voodoo-style initiation ritual where they pledge allegiance to their pimps out of fear of torture. Full story...
Related posts:
- The plight of Zurich's Hungarian prostitutes...
- India's sex slaves face lifelong cycle of abuse...
- Vietnam workers kept like slaves at Vinastar factory in Russia...
- Abandoned Thai wives in Norway end up as prostitutes...
- Ugandan girls with college degrees tricked into becoming prostitutes in Malaysia...
No comments:
Post a Comment