NCJ Number
199165
Journal
The Journal of Sexual Aggression Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Dated: 2002 Pages: 43-58
Date Published
2002
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the trafficking of young women for prostitution in the Netherlands.
Abstract
Following a brief discussion of the international problem of the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation, the authors describe their study, based on police records, of the processes of grooming, incorporating, and maintaining 16 adolescent prostitutes. Discussing demographic characteristics of the 16 young women forced into prostitution, the authors describe 56 percent of the women as Moroccan in origin and 44 percent as Dutch in origin. Furthermore, 75 percent of the young women had started vocational training, 81 percent had run away from home, 31 percent were minors when they first entered prostitution, 60 weeks was the average amount of time for engaging in prostitution, and the young women often had to hand over all the money they earned to their pimps. After briefly describing the grooming or recruiting of new victims, the authors detail the incorporation process by addressing deception, rape, and blackmail techniques used by pimps in order to integrate women into prostitution. Discussing conditions that lock young women into prostitution, the authors explain emotional dependency, deception, fear of violent reprisals, social isolation, a lack of economic alternatives, shadow of pride, and police as the enemy as ways that prostitution is maintained by the young women themselves, and internal and external protection, as ways that prostitution is maintained by the pimps. The authors conclude this article arguing that running away from difficult family situations increases the chance of young women ending up as prostitutes and that interventions to end prostitution require a holistic approach in which a wide range of social, emotional, health, accommodation, educational, or employment problems are addressed. References