Forced prostitution

The term forced prostitution refers to control over a person who is forced by another person to perform sexual acts on third parties. Victims of forced prostitution are both coerced and commercially exploited. Not only are they forced to perform sexual acts against their will, but they are also cheated out of (part of) the proceeds. This is therefore a double criminal offence. Often there are also other aspects, such as becoming addicted to drugs. According to international law, forced prostitution is illegal and punishable in all countries of the world. This differs from voluntary prostitution, which is allowed in various countries. The prostitution of children, on the other hand, is also illegal everywhere in the world. The forced prostitution of children is therefore to be classified as particularly bad. Forced prostitution often occurs through human trafficking, especially trafficking in girls and women. This almost always ends in sexual slavery. By definition, human trafficking is the forcible exploitation of people through coercion, which can take many forms. It is about gaining control over people through manipulation, use of force or exploitation. Victims of forced prostitution often have no means of extricating themselves from their situation on their own.

They live under constant control, in a climate of great fear and violence, often in a foreign country. They have been threatened, abused and/or promised the moon. Some pimps also make the girls emotionally dependent by making them fall in love with them. Especially girls from poor Eastern European countries as well as from Asia are lured to richer countries with promises of wealth and work. The victims are usually very young (around 20), some even underage. In Germany, experts estimate that more than 10,000 women are forced into prostitution and/or exploited every year. The number of women affected by human trafficking and exploitation in Europe is in the hundreds of thousands. About 70 percent of all trafficked women come from Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Southeast Europe. Since prostitution is legal in many European countries, the difference between forced prostitution and voluntary prostitution cannot usually be determined exactly. Where pimps and traffickers put direct pressure on sex workers, forced prostitution is obvious. But so many of the so-called voluntary prostitutes are indirectly forced into prostitution by poverty, poor education, drug addiction and other personal problems such as unemployment. Alarm signs are mainly clear physical signs of abuse as well as an absent, spaced-out impression. If the payment and delivery is done through a pimp and the girl is supervised all the time, these are also clear signs of illegal forced prostitution. If she speaks virtually no German, she is probably in Germany illegally and also knows nothing about her rights as an independent sex worker. If the prostitute lets everything happen to her without negotiating or setting limits, this is also untypical of self-confident voluntary prostitutes.

A client has a free choice and can choose a hooker he likes. A forced prostitute does not have this choice, she has to go prostituting whether she wants to or not and accept every suitor. As in any market, demand determines supply in the sex market. If clients do not choose obvious forced prostitutes, they disappear from the market eventually. So, the responsibility clearly lies with the clients. Clients who observe forced prostitution, or have even spoken to the girl and know that she has been trafficked, can report this (anonymously). If clients report forced prostitution, they can expect immunity from prosecution. Clients of forced prostitutes who do not do so can be sentenced to imprisonment from three months to 5 years.