Forced prostitution increasingly digital | tagesschau.de

The Covid pandemic has permanently changed prostitution and sex work in Germany: more and more processes are taking place online. This makes it more difficult for counselors and investigators to help those who are being sexually exploited.

Astrid Fehrenbach heads the “Amalie” counseling center in Mannheim, which has been looking after women in prostitution for more than a decade. Since then, she and her colleagues have established contacts in the red light district and earned the trust of the women. But since the Covid pandemic, prostitution in Mannheim has become increasingly organized digitally.

“This is a huge challenge.” Brothels would gradually lose their importance, many women would now change location and city every few days and would therefore have less contact with the outside world. “The constant change makes it increasingly difficult to establish contact. We notice that many women are at the mercy of pimps.”

Fehrenbach and her colleagues reacted to the situation. Women are now increasingly being addressed digitally, including in the forums in which they offer their services. But direct contact with women, which is often the only chance to leave the milieu, is now more difficult. “Probably also because we don’t reach the women through the cell phone numbers provided, but rather the pimps.”

Shift into the dark field

The digitalization of human trafficking for sexual exploitation not only poses problems for Astrid Fehrenbach, but also for specialist advisors all over Germany. Some are trying to offer their outreach work online, like “Amalie” in Mannheim, but it is difficult to do justice to the new situation.

This is suggested by dozens of conversations with those affected, advice centers, health authorities, public prosecutors and investigative authorities, the reporters from NDR, WDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” have conducted in recent months. It is not always possible to draw a clear distinction between sexual exploitation and sex work; the latter is legal in Germany as long as it is voluntary.

However, the research made it clear that digitalization is permanently changing both areas and that the corona pandemic has significantly accelerated this development. The fact that sexual services are increasingly being offered online is just one development that experts are observing. At the same time, sex work is increasingly taking place in private homes and hotels.

Destination country Germany

The Internet is also becoming increasingly important when it comes to recruiting women. As early as 2022, a study commissioned by the Federal Coordination Group against Human Trafficking (KOK) found that human traffickers use the Internet in every phase of the exploitation process. Perpetrators recruit new victims via social media and websites and use messenger services to organize logistics and transport.

They control and monitor those affected around the clock using their smartphones, send them threatening messages, blackmail them with nude photos – also to prevent them from making statements to the police. “Almost no sexual exploitation takes place without the Internet,” says Nenad Naca, head of the human trafficking department at Europol.

The research supports this assumption. An evaluation of more than 45,000 online advertisements makes it clear that women are specifically recruited for prostitution via online advertisements. The ads that NDR, WDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” together with international media such as “Pointer” from the Netherlands, “Direkt36” from Hungary and the “Tages-Anzeiger” from Switzerland, analyzed 33 websites from several Eastern European countries from the past two years.

Unrealistic promises

They were found on the websites of regional newspapers, international job exchanges and relevant portals. They are often aimed at women in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria or Poland and advertise jobs in Germany.

The layout of some texts and the contact details provided suggest that there are also agencies behind them that organize themselves professionally across borders.

Some of the advertisements sound identical in content: they are looking for “pretty, sophisticated girls”, help with administrative procedures, offer “absolute discretion, security and cleanliness”, “affluent regulars”, “very good working conditions” and, above all, a lot of money. The range of promised profits ranges from several hundred to a few thousand euros per day. Some advertisements even promise several million euros a month and free accommodation.

This often has nothing to do with reality. Several sex workers confirmed this in discussions, saying that it is absolutely unrealistic for the accommodation to be free or for the women to be able to keep all of their earnings. In some houses you can only change the bed linen once a day, you still have to clean and tidy up after work, take out the garbage and disinfect the clients’ slippers.

Many specialist advice centers are not aware of this form of recruitment on request; some say that perhaps a quarter of all women are recruited through such advertisements, others say even half. It is unclear how many of these advertisements actually involve sexual exploitation. In any case, the Federal Criminal Police Office found that in 2022 around a third of the victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation came from Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, followed by 28 percent from Germany.

Central importance of Facebook

A comparatively old online platform is still present: Facebook. Specialist advice centers say that young women are being contacted via Facebook with the aim of sexually exploiting them.

The women often come from Hungary or Romania, have financial problems or want a better future. Maria, now 24 years old, had this experience. She received a friend request from Cornell on Facebook, the two wrote messages to each other, she soon confided her worries to him, and he spoke of love.

Two weeks later he picked her up from Romania to go to Munich together, then everything happened very quickly. Cornell was aggressive, he locked Maria in an apartment and threatened her: “You prostitute yourself now, otherwise I’ll throw you out the window.” We have changed both names to protect Maria and those around her. The 24-year-old says today: “I definitely didn’t see myself as a victim of human trafficking. I was just aware that I was being cheated.”

Investigative authorities also confirm the importance of Facebook for recruiting purposes. When asked, Meta, which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, refers to its own guidelines on human exploitation and sexual abuse and writes: “Human trafficking is terrible and is not allowed on the Meta platforms.”

The law is to be evaluated by 2025

Improving the working conditions of sex workers by tightening controls on brothels was one of the goals of the Prostitute Protection Act of 2017. Another was to identify those who are being sexually exploited more quickly through regular check-ups with health and regulatory authorities in order to help them. However, one fundamental problem remains unaffected: investigations in Germany often depend on the willingness of those affected to testify.

International agreements such as the Cybercrime Convention, which allow electronic evidence, have long existed. “With law enforcement authorities, especially the police, we see that there is a lack of resources,” says Dorothea Czarnecki, author of the KOK study on the digitalization of human trafficking. Recognizing the Internet as a crime scene would then also relieve those affected.