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Dreams Enslaved by Prostitution
By Karolina Povedych, Florida
When I first learned that I was moving from Vinnitsya, a small town in Ukraine to live in the US I was overwhelmed with excitement. Freedom, the opportunities to get a great education and become fluent in a third language was a dream come true.
"Although Ukraine is considered a somewhat developed Eastern European nation, many people are quite poor. Even those with a higher education often find themselves living on the streets, begging for food and money just to survive another day. These conditions cause many to fall victim to sex traffickers who promise a better life." -Karolina Povedych
But sometimes life is stranger than fiction. I had come all the way to the US only to learn in school about a serious problem that affects girls my very same age in Ukraine.
Delving into the topic of human trafficking for my participation in Model United Nations I came across the memoir of a girl, whose ambitions were similar my own. Like me, she had dreams of getting a good education but sadly these dreams were beaten out of her.
Sonya thought she was being granted an opportunity of a lifetime - an all-paid for education in England. Her initial excitement upon arrival - "I was taken to a nice house and was treated well - in the first week they gave me a tour of London. I was very happy"- changed into a nightmare overnight.
Questions about when she would be starting school were met with her sponsors' demands for reimbursement for her travel. "We spent a lot of money bringing you to the UK," they told her. Sonya soon came to understand that she would be reimbursing these expenses by becoming a prostitute.
"I was crying - I said, I can't do that. I said I can do any other job to pay the money back. [But] they beat me and treated me very bad." In her expose I learned that her defiance was met with violent kicks and punches on many occasions. When she could no longer handle the abuse, she succumbed to what had been her preordained fate. She was taken to an apartment where she would start her "new job."
Sonya worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week satisfying customers - "sleeping on the floor under the coats" when she was allowed to go to sleep. She lived with 10 other Eastern European girls. They were forbidden to talk amongst themselves. No one was permitted to keep any of the money they earned, not even the tips. If they were discovered pocketing money they were beaten.
As one of the more rebellious girls, Sonya was beaten often. Her sponsors threatened to kill her if she didn't do exactly as she was told - after all killing her wouldn't be a problem because she was in England illegitimately and as far as the authorities knew, she didn't exist.
As it turns out, Sonya was one of the lucky ones. She escaped from the brothel when it was raided by police. She contacted the Ukrainian embassy and the authorities helped her return home to the Ukraine.
But I don't understand how these girls could not anticipate this dangerous liaison. The reality is shocking. According to various studies most women actually know they are expected to prostitute themselves but they innocently believe that they will be earning between $1000 and $2000 a week - almost 40 times more than what they could earn in the Ukraine. Clearly these financial rewards are lies, too.
Although Ukraine is considered a somewhat developed Eastern European nation, many people are quite poor. Even those with a higher education often find themselves living on the streets, begging for food and money just to survive another day.
These conditions cause many to fall victim to sex traffickers who promise a better life. Many young women travel thousands of miles away from home to countries like Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Portugal, German, Austria, the UAE, Lebanon and Turkey where they are trapped in rings of commercial sexual exploitation. Escape is difficult at best.
The Ukraine has the highest number of women who have fallen into the web of human trafficking in all of Eastern Europe. Although the Ukrainian government is aware of this, it has done little to prevent it.
In 2007, Ukraine was ranked Tier 2 Watch List for failing to protect potential victims of human trafficking and for not harshly prosecuting traffickers. Although the Ukrainian Constitution has many laws pertaining to punishing people who enslave others, there is little or no enforcement of these laws.
Indeed there are many countries either not in compliance or which don't crack down on existing national and international regulations that prohibit sex trafficking. Turning a blind eye to this burgeoning problem will only cause more lives to be ruined. The more people know about sex trafficking, the better chance we have of saving potential victims from falling into the hands of exploiters.
Sources: http://www.sos-sexisme.org/English/east.htm
http://antislavery.eserver.org/narratives/contemporary/sonyanarrative/
