Women Affairs

Nigeria's porous border with its northern neighbor Niger is being exploited by traffickers smuggling teenage girls to Europe where they will work as prostitutes, immigration officials told IRIN. "Our 910 kilometer boundary with Niger is too much for us to police which provides human traffickers an advantage to conduct their trade of smuggling young girls to Europe for prostitution," Oemi Bio Ockiya, head of the Nigerian immigration department in Kano told IRIN. Ockiya said girls are transported from the southern part of Nigeria to Kano from where they are driven to Libya through Niger and then shipped to Europe, their final destination, for prostitution. The traffickers convince the girls and their parents that lucrative jobs await their victims, but force them into prostitution once in Europe by holding on to their passports. The trafficking of young women to Europe through Kano has been a common occurrence. Hitherto the traffickers would smuggle their victims through Ka...

Deborah Jeane Palfrey while awaiting sentencing for running a prostitution ring catering to Washington's elite has been found dead in a storage shed at her mother's home in Florida. Police in the Gulf Coast town of Tarpon Springs said the 76-year-old mother of Deborah Jeane Palfrey woke from a short nap and began to search for her daughter. She found Palfrey's body in the shed next to her mobile home, police said. "Hand-written notes were found on scene that describe the victim's intention to take her life, and foul play does not appear to be involved," Captain Jeffrey Young said. Palfrey, 52, was found guilty last month of running an escort service that earned her at least $US2 million ($2.12 million). She had not yet been sentenced but media reports said she could have faced up to 50 years in prison. The scandal over the woman dubbed "the DC madam" ensnared Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, whose number was discovered in her telephone r...

Cherry and Kay Kay walk into room Number Two of a Rangoon karaoke bar, where a man waits alone for them on a brown leather sofa. "Come on, girls. Sing, please," he says, as they flick the karaoke machine to a Burma folk song they hope he likes. The scene may not be uncommon in many parts of Asia, but was until recently rare here in isolated Burma, where economic desperation is increasingly pushing young women into a sex trade that hides behind the facade of karaoke bars and massage parlours. At the bars, known locally as KTVs for "karaoke television," young women in their late teens and early 20s entertain clients in private air-conditioned rooms furnished with sofas and karaoke equipment. Waiters enter only when customers order food and drinks, or if the women ring a bell to alert the management that a client is getting out of hand. Workers at KTVs say sex is not necessarily on offer, but they add that in the private rooms boundaries can be vague. "It's ha...

Life has not been easy for Lisa Ann Taylor since her guilty plea deal to several charges and her sentencing to seven years of probation. The former Penthouse pet who had been accused of running a brothel out of her million-dollar home has put the mansion up for sale. Lisa Ann Taylor has put the red-brick mansion, which sits in an exclusive suburban Atlanta subdivision, up for sale for $1.2 million. Taylor, who has also performed under the name Melissa Wolf, became known as the Mansion Madam after being arrested along with another woman last year on prostitution and drug charges. As part of a plea deal, Taylor was sentenced to seven years probation and fined $150,000. If the fine isn't paid before Oct. 10, Gwinnett County can seize her home. But Taylor said Tuesday that outcome is not likely. "It's a good thing I put all that money away all those years ago," Taylor told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Taylor said she owns several other properties, including a house i...

A mother in Tainan County, southern Taiwan, was found to have allegedly forced her three young daughters to serve as prostitutes for more than two years. The woman and five patrons were arrested and questioned by police just before Chinese New Year, local news media reported yesterday. The illegal operation was exposed after the eldest daughter, now aged 13, told her school teacher several days before Chinese New Year's Eve on Feb. 6. The student said that since October 2006, her mother had forced her and her two younger sisters to serve as prostitutes, with patrons mostly men aged over 60. At the time, the three sisters were aged 6, 7, and 10. Following initial investigations, police found that men paid NT$500 to NT$1,000 for each incidence, and some patrons asked to be served by the three sisters simultaneously. The police have already located 8 suspects involved in the cases, and have taken six into custody after interrogations, including the mother and five patrons. The Tainan ...

Minna and Fariba are neighbours and good friends. They support one another. Both have to live under the pervasive curtailment of women's rights and the double standards of today's Iranian society. They make a living walking the streets looking for men. They have a choice between leaving their small children at home alone or bringing them along when they have sex with men. The film is a sympathetic portrait of the two women, exploring their day-to-day life and the workings of prostitution in a country that bans it and prosecutes adulterers, sometimes with the penalty of capital punishment. Many of the clients find a way to buy sex and still comply with Muslim law: they marry the women in what is called 'Sighe', a temporary marriage sanctioned in Shia Islam. Sighe can last from two hours up to 99 years. Both Minna and Fariba enter into Sighe with clients, and Fariba is in a Sighe marriage with a neighbour, Habib, that lasts six months. Giving his perspective on temporary ...

Geesche Jacobsen A MAN has been accused of forcing his new Egyptian wife to work in a brothel so he could buy a flat, before sending her back home empty-handed. When the man, FS, brought his bride to Sydney in July 2000 after an arranged marriage in Cairo, he told her she would help him pay back money for her visa, a jury has been told. The woman, now 27, has told the District Court that soon after she arrived he took her to the Hideaway Brothel in Banksia. "You're going to stay here and you're going to do whatever they ask you," he had told her. She said she did not speak any English and did not understand what was happening. She objected but she said he told her he knew members of the Mafia, so she was frightened. FS is charged with procuring his wife as a prostitute and keeping her in sexual servitude. When she got pregnant, FS allegedly forced her to have an abortion, and she was told to go back to work at the brothel after a few weeks. She also told the court, th...

Aarti Nagraj Chennai - A Chennai-based man, Liaqat Ali, who was arrested on Tuesday by the Chennai police on charges of cheating, is now facing more serious allegations. Liaqat had allegedly duped around 40 girls from across the country by posing as an IAS officer looking for an alliance - he had even married four girls. However, the Chennai police now claim that that wasn't the worst he did. Police say they have retrieved some deleted files from his laptop, which prove that he also made and acted in pornographic films- featuring minor boys and girls. Says Joint Commissioner Chennai Police, M Ravi, "We have found that he drugged the girls and in the semi-conscious state, he forced them to do such activities." Liaqat Ali had been arrested in Trichy last November on charges of making porn films, but was released on bail due lack of evidence. Police now say he was guilty, and continued making the films after he got out of jail. Liaqat is also alleged to have sold DVDs of the...

Wendy Ellis, a former New Orleans prostitute who will be featured in Larry Flynt's Hustler magazine appeared at his office Tuesday to accuse Sen. David Vitter of having a sexual relationship with her in 1999. Wendy Ellis told reporters that Vitter visited her two to three times a week for sexual relations between July and November 1999. Flynt produced parts of an Aug. 22 polygraph test that he said confirmed her account, but Ellis could provide no financial records, photographs or other evidence to support her assertion that the Louisiana Republican was a client during that time. Vitter has denied those claims. "I want the truth to be known," Ellis said. "It was a pure sexual relationship. He would come in and do his business." Story Continues Below Ellis declined to comment when asked if she was being paid or reimbursed for her statement regarding Vitter, but she later said she would appear in Hustler magazine in January. She would not say if she is bein...

Police have arrested scores of men and women who engaged in group sex encounters arranged through a commercial website. They include a substantial number of social leaders such as professors, doctors, civil servants, middle school workers and senior executives of a large corporation. Married couples and lovers engaged in partner swapping through the website, police said. Police on Tuesday booked a 42-year-old website operator identified as Kim who they say arranged the group sex parties and collected participation fees. They also booked 53 male members who had group sex and 11 females who prostituted themselves through Kim's website. According to police, Kim opened the website in November and gathered 4,000 members through May. He also arranged 20 group sex parties at hotels in and around Seoul. Police say about a thousand of the 4,000 members participated in the encounters. Men paid W100,000 to W1.5 million (USD $1=W939) to join in the illegal sex parties. Each was found to have e...

Foreigners continue to swarm the alley behind Jalan Petaling in Kuala Lumpur seeking the services of prostitutes. Harian Metro reported recently that it was a normal occurrence for hundreds of foreigners to gather in the alley like they were having a "sex party" there. It said that the 200m-stretch of prostitute dens, believed to be the oldest in Kuala Lumpur, was filled with Myanmars, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indonesians and Nepalese. Story Continues Below In a three-hour check by the tabloid, it found that charges were as low as RM40, which caused some foreigners to be willing to queue in long lines for their turn. They were seen crowding the area from as early as 8am. The area became busier at 11am, when they entered the dens in groups. The tabloid said that while the customers were made up of foreigners, the prostitutes were locals. It added that customers came from as far as Hulu Selangor, Malacca, Perak and Seremban for "entertainment," and to meet up with...

In an attempt to escape poverty, women in China are increasingly turning to prostitution and competition for clients has reportedly resulted in lower pay and more dangerous conditions for China's estimated ten-million sex workers. Although prostitution is technically illegal in China, freelance sex workers operate openly throughout the country at every level of society, the International Herald Tribune reports. They work in bars and state-owned hotels as well as in poor neighborhoods. Although open prostitution in China is common today, it was nearly nonexistent a quarter of a century ago, reports Asian studies scholar Jinghao Zhou in China: an International Journal. The recent resurgence of prostitution, he says, comes from economic changes that have taken place in China over the last three decades -- rapid urbanization due to globalization, and the reform of China's market economy. Sociology and AIDS Policy Professor Jing Jun told the Washington Post that China's thrivin...

Many Asian women in Bahrain are being duped into working as sex slaves for men who lure them with promises of marriage, according to Thai Ambassador Phithak Phrombubpha. He says victims are put up in apartments and visited once a week by their boyfriends, who brainwash them into believing they will eventually live together and start a family. Mr Phrombubpha said women who want to escape are powerless to act as their passports are confiscated and once their visit visas expire they become illegal residents who rack up huge overstay fines that they have no means to pay. His comments come after one victim of human trafficking, who managed to escape from her captor, came to the embassy seeking help. The 25-year-old, whose identity is being protected, is being kept in an emergency accommodation in Zinj until she flies home on Friday. "These people come to Bahrain because of an economic problem and they want to earn money," Mr Phrombubpha told the GDN. "People recruit them by ...

It was midnight and I was coming back from the party, the celebration of my sister's birthday. I needed to buy some water. Asked the taxi driver to stop on the crossing of Sovietskaya and Toktogula street. What I saw absolutely shocked me. I never witnessed it from such a close distance. A bunch of extremely young girls in revealing, short dresses and excessive make-up gathered in front of an internet cafe "Alfa" and were having vulgar chats and selling themselves in the sex trade. The whole situation reminded me of one young girl who once came from a small and remote village to the capital in the search of a better life. She was so young and unexperienced in life that she did not notice that one day the profession she had was the 'oldest profession' as it has been dubbed. But she never considered herself as a prostitute, or a sex-worker. She said it perfectly suits her as she likes her way of life. Her parents have no suspicion about their daughter's way of ...

A number of Latin American women who were victimized in what federal officials say was a major prostitution ring are living in safe housing, getting psychological counseling and other assistance, and may qualify for special US visas for sex trafficking victims who cooperate with law enforcement. The steps are just the beginning of a recovery process that could take a lifetime, said Linda Miller, executive director of the Civil Society in St. Paul, Minnesota, one of several Twin Cities organizations that works with victims of sexual violence. "It's not possible to change people back to what they were before the crime," said Miller, "but it is possible to stabilize them and get them into a situation where they can deal with the present and the future. They will probably carry the scars their whole lives." The women were rescued during a law enforcement sweep last month that uncovered eight brothels in otherwise ordinary-looking houses and apartments in Minneapolis...

Amidst the din of the celebration of International Women's Day on Thursday, sex workers in the capital yesterday opposed legalising their profession, saying it will spell disaster for the society. "What is the need to legalise this profession? Do you wish the human body to work like a machine? Legalising it will add to more confusion and trouble for everyone including us," said Rajshri, a representative of the sex workers of the red light district of G B Road area. "Many girls may choose to take up flesh trade and end up in these cages." The sex workers said all they want is a better life for their children. "All we want is that our children should be taken out from here. There needs to be some arrangement for their growth away from here," Rajshri said. "What Women's Day? What help would be this reservation? Can you guarantee that we would do better if women rule? All we want is that the government should help us free our children from these c...