Sex trafficking is the new slave trade and we ignore it at our peril

ROY KEANE has quit Sunderland and there was a torrent of abuse that he had walked out again, as he had walked out on Mick McCarthy.

It would be nice to see somebody set the record straight.

Yes, Roy threatened to walk out in Japan and he did so briefly, but he came back only to be sent home. In the end he didn’t walk out; Mick McCarthy kicked him out.

The story of Keane quitting as manager of Sunderland will probably command the airways for a few days, but it was hardly a surprise, and it was his own decision. Tens of thousands of people, who had no choice, lost their jobs in recent months.

There have been so many of them that the individuals did not make any news, with the exception of Rody Molloy, who also quit. We seem to have our priorities rather confused. The Keane story is being allowed to obscure much more important matters.

My grandmother used to tell about a friend from Ireland who became incensed when a prostitute appeared in the film of an Irish play in a New York cinema. Her friend announced to the whole cinema that there were “no prostitutes in Ireland”.

She then abused the manager for showing such filth. When my grandmother reminded her that there were prostitutes in Ireland, she agreed, but said that they should not admit it to the Americans.

There was a case some years ago when a senator was arrested after leaving a brothel in Dublin. On being asked about this on Questions & Answers, Charlie McCreevy was positively dismissive. He did not think he should comment on the matter, but added, with a laugh, that he never paid for it himself.

Over the years the attitude to prostitution was almost the same as that towards excessive drinking — it was frequently just laughed off. A friend told me he lived next door to what amounted to a high-class brothel growing up in Tralee. The customers were some of the wealthiest men in town.

Late one night there was a knock at their front door and his father, a pillar of the local Dominican choir, answered to find one of the town’s more distinguished businessmen outside. “God, Dinny, I didn’t know you came here, too!” the man exclaimed in surprise, not realising he was at the wrong house.

Half a century later the man’s son was still laughing at the incident. People could laugh at such stories, but they were a far cry from some of the things uncovered this week following raids on nine brothels around the country — in Drogheda, Cavan, Athlone, Mullingar, Sligo, Kilkenny, Enniscorthy, Newbridge and Waterford.

A week earlier the gardaí raided a house in Tralee where several foreign women were found.

Prostitution was never confined to Dublin or Cork. Back in the 1960s just about everyone was singing about ‘The Holy Ground’, which is about a brothel, but there is something really sinister and particularly vile about the current trafficking of women.

Many have been coerced into the sex trade and they are modern-day slaves. On RTÉ’s Prime Time on Thursday night it was stated that human trafficking is the second biggest earner, behind only the arms trade.

The global trade is worth $42 billion a year, which is more that double what Coca-Cola makes annually.

Most decent people would be appalled at such conduct, but society is essentially turning a blind eye. There has probably always been a sneaking toleration for what is often called “the oldest profession”.

Trafficking of people is something vastly different. The real victims are being victimised by the legal establishment, which makes a mockery of any sense of justice.

In the case of a vehicle being used to smuggle goods, the State can confiscate it. In the case of property being used for prostitution, the State should seize it, whether it is owned or rented by the pimps.

In the case of rented property, it would certainly prompt landlords to be more discerning about their tenants.

People who avail of the services of those coerced into the sex trade are effectively engaging in rape, but they get away with it by claiming they did not realise the women was coerced. That is just another variant of the rapist saying, “I thought she really wanted it”.

People availing of the service of anyone coerced into prostitution are accessories to a vile crime and the only mitigating factor should be the level of their co-operation in helping to incarcerate the pimps behind such coercion.

The brothel raids took place on the same week that the Royal College of Physicians released figures showing there has been a veritable explosion in the instances of sexually transmitted infections (STI) in this country since 1990.

There were almost 10,000 cases of STI in 2006, which amounted to an increase of some twenty-fold in the rate of infection.

Syphilis went up by 2,720% in the period. Of course, it was starting from a very low base of just 10 cases in 1990, so 282 cases in 2006 should not cause public panic, but they should set alarm bells ringing because syphilis is a nasty disease that drives victims mad before eventually killing them. It can kill anyone in society. Winston Churchill’s father died of syphilis back when it was an incurable disease.

With the advent of penicillin it was easily cured for many years, but there are now certain strains of the disease that have become resistant to all known antibiotics.

People should not make the mistake of thinking that STI is confined to brothels in Dublin. The highest per capita rate of infection is in Munster.

There was a time when the bishops would have caused uproar over such figures, but their influence has been seriously undermined in recent years by all the disclosures in which they were essentially ignoring paedophile offences while lecturing everybody else — sometimes on absurd lines.

AGAINST the backdrop of what is currently going on, the Late Late Show controversy over “the bishop and the nightie” seems all the more absurdly ridiculous.

In February 1966, Gay Byrne had a bit of a skit in which he interviewed husbands and wives separately and then compared their answers. One question was what colour nightdress did the wife wear on their wedding night.

One woman answered that she did not wear anything that night. The thought of a naked bride apparently sent Bishop Thomas Ryan of Clonfert into spiritual convulsions. He publicly denounced the programme, and the usual suspects lined up in support.

Loughrea Town Commissioners denounced the Late Late as “a dirty programme that should be abolished altogether,” and Mayo GAA County Board and the Committee of Vocational Education in Meath passed similar resolutions.

Eamonn Andrews, chairman of the RTÉ Authority, quit over the political pressure. “I have tried to compromise to the point beyond which honesty will not permit me to go,” he wrote to Taoiseach Seán Lemass.

Past absurdities should not cloud or confuse the sense of moral outrage that all decent people should feel towards human trafficking, a 21st century form of slavery. We ignore it at our own peril.