Sexual exploitation

Of all the forms of human trafficking, sexual exploitation is probably the most brutal and violent, because all of the participants are, by definition, breaking the law – the victims as well as the perpetrators.

So how could any self-respecting woman get involved? Not willingly, of course. It happens first by deception and then by manipulation or abusive control.

Typically, women, and even girls, are recruited in their homeland by scouts promising respectable work. For one reason or another, the victims (or their parents) are usually desperate to earn money – so desperate they’re prepared to agree to work abroad, or to send their child abroad.

Ruthless gangs

Ruthless, well-organised international gangs traffic the women across borders. They’re passed along a chain stretching from the country where they’ve been recruited to the country where they will be exploited. The women travel by plane or by road or by sea under a cover story. Agents in the destination country provide false evidence of sponsorship.

The standard story is that the victim will be engaged as a domestic servant. It’s a lie that most of the women being trafficked actually believe to be true.

The lie is revealed when the women get to their destination. The gang takes their passport and papers, imprisons them without pay, often without food, until they agree to prostitution. An isolated, frightened young woman, kidnapped in a foreign country and threatened with dire consequences or even violence if she doesn’t cooperate, has little option but to give in.

No way back

And once the victim gives in, there’s no way back. She knows she’s in trouble with the police. The threat of exposure ensures her silence and forced cooperation. She’s also very aware of the shame that would fall on her and her family if they found out what was happening.

Sometimes the controller in this situation will be a woman who fell into prostitution herself in the past. She’s a pimp, a procurer,  but she may still cast herself in the role of protector. It doesn’t matter if the pimp uses psychological manipulation rather than physical violence to enforce compliance, the result is the same.

Hidden immorality

The trafficking gangs rent an apartment for a short period and bring their male clients to them discreetly, before moving on at regular intervals to new premises.

Other businesses may also be used as a front for prostitution rackets – beauty salons, massage parlours, gyms, nail bars and other businesses.

The victims of sexual exploitation rarely receive more than a fraction of the money paid by men to have sex with them. Most is pocketed by the pimp or prostitution gangs.

Drug problems

Drugs and addiction often complicate the situation. The emotional distress caused by prostitution makes welcome the temporary escape that drugs offer.

Prosecutions for sex trafficking are rare in Oman, but not unheard of. Women forced into prostitution end up accused in court, alongside their persecutors, though it might be fairer to think of them as victims more than criminals.

A few cases around the region have – shockingly – even involved the girls’ parents, who collude with the traffickers for profit, usually to escape crippling debt. When underage girls are sold, the fraud often includes false promises of marriage to older men.

Lucrative trade

All this may sound improbable and unbearably wicked, but it is going on – all around the world. Much more so than we would care to think.

Why should this be so? Because it pays shockingly well.

After drugs and the arms trade, human trafficking is reckoned to be the most profitable business for organised crime – worth an estimated US$32 billion a year globally.