last week of forcing a Nigerian
cancer patient, Lilian Solomon,
into prostitution. The situation is
worse that we think.
Read a report from Daily Beast about
how Nigerian girls, as young as 13,
are sold and forced into séx slavery
in Italy...
Across Italy, Nigerian women are
forced into the séx trade, essentially
kept as slaves who are bought and
sold and moved according to a
moribund supply and demand. Some
of the prostitutes are young girls,
just 13 or 14 years old. Others are in
their 20s or 30s. Many have children.
Some are still married to men in
Nigeria. They usually sit on white
plastic chairs under umbrellas to
protect them from the rain in the
winter and the harsh sun in the
summer.
The highest concentration of
Nigerian forced séx workers is in and
around Naples, but they are not
limited to the southern reaches. On
Thursday, in the central region of
Abruzzo, four Nigerian gang
members and an Italian taxi driver
who allegedly procured prostitutes
across the country were sentenced
to between nine and 15 years in
prison for making 23-year-old
Nigerian Lilian Solomon prostitute
herself even though she was in the
late stages of lymphoma cancer.
The court in Teramo ruled that the
Nigerian band prohibited the young
woman from seeking treatment and
should be held responsible for her
death. She was represented in court
by members of "On the Road"
association against séx trafficking,
which alerted authorities about her
plight. Solomon testified under oath
against the band before she died in
2009. The sentence, four years after
her death, won't bring her back, but
it is one small step toward holding
the séx traffickers accountable.
According to Renato Natale, a local
Neapolitan doctor who is a former
anti-mafia mayor of Casal di Principe,
the majority of the Nigerian girls and
women who are séx slaves were
sold for around $50,000 by their
parents or husbands in Nigeria, often
to pay loan sharks or to get families
out of debt. Some women paid sums
of more than $13,000 out of their
own pockets in exchange for the
promise to find legitimate work in
Italy with the goal of sending money
home or even eventually bringing
their entire families over. Natale
says when they arrive in Italy, they
are often raped into submission and
plied with drugs and turned into
prostitutes.
Many of the women have scars on
their bodies from a voodoo-style
initiation ritual where they pledge
allegiance to their pimps out of fear
of torture. "Frida," 26, is a former
prostitute who now works at a
shelter for abused women in Rome.
She says her initiation included
vaginal penetration with a hot
candle. She has scars on her inner
thighs from the hot wax. She worked
on the Via Domitiana for three years
before she ran away with one of her
clients who she befriended. She said
many of the women on the
Neapolitan highway try to convince
the clients to take them away, but
they often get caught and the men
are threatened never to return.
"Even the police sometimes pay for
séx," she told The Daily Beast. "There
is no protection there from anyone.
There is no one you can trust."
She says she was required to pay the
Nigerian mafia dons $400 a month for
one-square-meter of highway to
work off the $50,000 investment.
Natale says the Nigerians, in turn,
pay a fee to the Casalesi clan of the
Camorra organized-crime syndicate,
who run the séx trade around
Naples. Natale says the women are
not allowed to charge more than $13
a trick—the market rate for street
séx in the impoverished south—and
they are not allowed to refuse
customers. Frida says they were
afraid to charge more. "They
watched us all the time," she says.
"They would drive by or send spies
to make sure we stayed in line."
Prostitution is not illegal in Italy as
long as the séx workers are over 18,
but it is illegal to pick up a prostitute
on the street. Recently, police have
been enforcing the client crackdown
on roadside prostitution by fining
the clients, so the mob has started
buying up apartment blocks along
the Via Domitiana and in other parts
of the country. They have started
moving the women off the streets
and into the villas where drugs are
sold in the basement and séx is sold
upstairs. Natale used to visit the
women on the streets and give them
medications for STDs. He says the
move to put the women in the
houses is far more dangerous and
life-threatening. "These people are
treated like merchandise," he says.
"Now they are being kept in these
houses that are protected by armed
guards. They were somewhat safer
on the streets because at least there
we could check on them."
There is little hope to stop the
illegal séx-trafficking racket, says
Natale, because most of the women
are illegal immigrants and do not
have documents and are not in the
Italian state system and therefore
"nonexistent" in the eyes of the
authorities. But there is also a bigger
problem in that there is no
authoritative government entity
currently involved in stopping séx
trafficking in Italy. All the work is
done by non-governmental
organizations with limited funds and
virtually no power. "We are like
ghosts," says Frida, who recently
legalized her living status in Italy
and wants to help other Nigerians
get off the street. "We are literally
shadows on the highway."
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