City ‘gateway for traffickers’ as foreigners forced into prostitution

MORE than 200 prostitutes are working in Cork and around 90% of them are foreign, according to an organisation that wants to protect women who are trafficked into the city from Eastern Europe.

Mary Crilly, director of the Cork Sexual Violence Centre, said the city is known as a gateway for traffickers, adding that her organisation had come across women working on the streets who have been trafficked.

She also believes that some of the sex industry’s foreign workers are minors.

Yesterday, Ms Crilly urged victims of sex trafficking to contact her organisation, which will try to help them escape the brutal trade.

Ms Crilly said it was worrying that a new Sex Trafficking Bill, which will come into effect next year, has nothing in it to protect victims.

“If somebody who has been trafficked is caught, they are sent back to the country they came from, possibly straight back into the arms of the traffickers,” Ms Crilly said.

Because of this omission, the centre is collecting a petition, which will be handed to the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, calling on him to insert safety clauses for victims. Ireland is the only EU country which doesn’t have such safeguards.

Ms Crilly believes that sex trafficking is being facilitated by Irishmen behind registered companies, which are providing visas so women can get into Cork.

In some cases, Ms Crilly said, it is also possible that women are being smuggled through the port in lorries and vans. Most of the Eastern European sex workers are employed by brothels in the city, although some are in the county.

“If the average Irishman didn’t want it [sex], it wouldn’t happen,” she said.

Ms Crilly added that she believes there could be up to 40 boys working in the sex industry, although the majority of those are believed to be locals.

According to the Irish Refugee Council, over 300 unaccompanied children arriving in Ireland have gone missing, and many are feared to have fallen prey to traffickers.

Gardaí said yesterday they are very concerned that women are being forced into the sex industry, especially those trafficked from abroad.

A spokesman said gardaí are conscious of the fact that some foreign sex workers, who may be here illegally, are afraid of the police, especially if they have had a bad experience in their own country.

He said that organisations like Ms Crilly’s offered valuable help and advised trafficked women to go to them.

Eighty officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) recently raided 17 premises, a number of which were brothels.

They are looking at the bank accounts of a number of people, including a man in his 50s who is believed to control a large portion of the sex trade in Cork, Limerick and Waterford.

People who want to sign the petition relating to altering the Sex Trafficking Bill can do so at www.sexualviolence.ie