The exact part of the Dutch law I'm referring to is article 273F section 1 sub 3. The law is somewhat of a copy of a similar rule from the human trafficking law as defined by the United Nations. With one big difference however. Where the UN's version of this trafficking law requires prostitutes to be either forced or exploited to be seen as victims, this isn't the case in the Dutch version.
This is the version UN's version of the same rule under article 3 section A:
"Trafficking in persons" shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs;
Yet the Dutch law states under article 273F 1.3
"The person who recruits, takes along or abducts another person with the intention to make that person available in another country to carry out sexual acts with another person in exchange for payment;"
Now, in the case of the version of trafficking from the United Nations, you cannot recruit or transport someone for prostitution if you coerce them, exploit them, deceit them etc. But the Dutch law states none of these things. Simply taking someone with you across the border is already enough to call it trafficking, even if there's no coercion whatsoever, no exploitation of any kind, and the prostitute in question is doing it completely out of her own free will, without being deceived or whatever.
Now, the United Nations would not call this trafficking, since all human trafficking is based on the concept of some form of coercion and exploitation. But the Dutch law does see this as human trafficking when there's no form of coercion or exploitation involved, as also the National Rapporteur explains in her reports.
Let's make an example to make it more clear. Let's say you're driving through Germany, and somewhere along the road you come across a girl that asks you if you can give her a ride to Amsterdam. Why? Because she wants to work in the Red Light District. She's alone, she's not being coerced or exploited, and you're a kind person, so you agree to give her a lift to Amsterdam.
Now, as soon as you cross the border with her, you have officially become a human trafficker and a criminal under the Dutch law, and the prostitute has become your victim. Why? Because you took her along with you with as a goal so she can become a prostitute in Amsterdam.
It doesn't matter that you didn't coerce her, that you didn't try to exploit her, that you didn't even ask money for the ride. Giving her a free ride across the border is enough for the Dutch law to make you into a criminal.
Under the same law from the United Nations however, there's nothing wrong with it. According to their law, you are not a criminal when you do this. Why? Well, you didn't deceit, coerce, exploit or do any of the other things mentioned in the law which would make it a criminal act.
But now let's take another example. Let's say I have a friend back in Romania. I know her very well, and she's looking for a quick way to make a lot of money. So I say to her she should come here, to work in prostitution. I'm not forcing her, I'm nearly telling her it's a good option. Now let's say she actually takes the step and does it. She moves to Amsterdam and starts working here in prostitution, because of my recommendations for it. In that case you could say that I've recruited her. Just like other people recruit people to work in a call center for example, or anywhere else.
Now, under the United Nations I'm save. She's not a victim of trafficking, because I didn't force or exploit her. And I'm not a suspect or perpetrator, since I didn't do anything illegal by the law of the United Nations. The Dutch law however doesn't require there to be any form of coercion or exploitation to be present in these kind of cases, meaning in this case it is human trafficking! Yes, it's weird isn't it? By international law I'm not a criminal in this case, but by Dutch law I am.
As you can see there's no need to be coerced or exploited in Holland to be counted as a human trafficking victim. While the United Nations make it clear some form of coercion or exploitation has to take place, the Dutch law doesn't require this for human trafficking when you take a prostitute with you, or when you recruit her.
Now, you may be thinking this law is perhaps old, or doesn't get used much. Well, think again. In 2010 in in total 19 trafficking cases the public prosecutor used this law to try and convict people for helping prostitutes, which in 11 cases were even found guilty. The National Rapporteur calls that 'unjust', since in 8 of these cases people were not convicted for trafficking, because according to the judge there was no form of coercion or exploitation. In short, the National Rapporteur calls out to convict people for not coercing or exploiting prostitutes. She wants people to go to jail for human trafficking, even though they did not exploit or coerce the prostitutes. And perhaps this may also explain the often heard complaint that 'prostitutes don't see themselves as victims', and don't want to cooperate with prosecuting the other person. And to give you an idea, in total there were 83 convictions of human trafficking in 2010, of which 11 were for this specific law that does not require any form of exploitation or coercion, that's about 13% of the cases, in which people are being convicted for something that doesn't require any form of coercion or exploitation.
On top of that also each year the Dutch Royal Marshals (KMar), which operate mostly at the borders and at the airports, report annually about 300-400 'possible victims' of these specific kind of cases a year. That's right! Each year 300-400 prostitutes get reported as possible victims of human trafficking which doesn't involve any kind of coercion or exploitation! Free prostitutes are registered as so called 'presumed victims', and also presented as such by CoMensha and the Dutch National Rapporteur Human Trafficking.
On top of that also each year the Dutch Royal Marshals (KMar), which operate mostly at the borders and at the airports, report annually about 300-400 'possible victims' of these specific kind of cases a year. That's right! Each year 300-400 prostitutes get reported as possible victims of human trafficking which doesn't involve any kind of coercion or exploitation! Free prostitutes are registered as so called 'presumed victims', and also presented as such by CoMensha and the Dutch National Rapporteur Human Trafficking.
The most interesting part is the fact that these reports of these kind of cases has been increasing heavily since around 2010-2011. In fact, right around the same time as the number of presumed victims of human trafficking in prostitution seemed to explode all of the sudden, was the same period when un-coerced an un-exploited prostitutes where increasingly being reported as victims of trafficking. The below figure states the number of possible victims of trafficking in prostitution in Holland. The orange figure shows all the reported 'possible' victims in total, including prostitutes of whom they suspected weren't forced or exploited in any way. The blue figure however shows you what happens if you take out the cases that fall under this rule, which victimizes prostitutes that are neither forced or exploited in any way.
In fact, if you look at these numbers, and take the record amount reported ever, including only 'possible' exploited and forced prostitutes, and not cases that don't require prostitutes to be forced or exploited, you come down to a very low percentage. On the estimated 20.000 sex workers in Holland, 789 was the highest reported possible victims of exploitation and coercion in prostitution ever. That's a little bit less than 4% of all the sex workers in Holland. And that was the record number!
Dutch version
Dutch version
I haven't written anything for a while anymore. The reason? I'm tired of it. I'm tired of politicians talking with sex workers but not listening to what they have to say. I'm tired of doing interviews with students, which in the end doesn't achieve anything. I'm tired of constantly being reminded of the fact that they city doesn't want us anymore, but claiming to 'help us'.
The constant claim people make on us is that they are helping us, but really what they're doing is just dumping more shit on us. They don't really listen, they just talk with you so they can say they talked with you and listened to you. But in reality they don't listen. If they really would've listened to us, the city government would've immediately stopped buying up more windows than the more than 100 workplaces that we've already lost. But they don't. In fact, they're still continuing.
Yeah, sure, now they claim they're closing down 'less' windows. Woohoo people! This solves everything! Because closing down less windows is completely different from euh... closing down windows...? Wait, not really!
Yeah, they're closing down less windows. In stead of 83 windows, now the city decided to 'only' close down 37 windows. Yes, it saves 46 windows. It's like getting a discount on how many workplace we will loose. But that doesn't mean those women in the 37 other windows won't loose their workplace anymore! In fact, the 37 windows they want to close down is pretty much the busiest and most prostitutes filled part of the entire Red Light District, called the St. Annenkwartier. In fact, based on clients reviews on hookers.nl which visited girls in the past few months in this area, there are at least 135 women working in this area, including myself! And many girls I know that work there don't even have a review there, which would bring the number of women loosing their workplace even higher.
So sure, it's only 37 windows. But those 37 windows does give work space to at least 135 prostitutes, and is the busiest area in terms of prostitutes working there. These 135 women will come on top of the estimated 375 women that already lose their workplace, bringing the total to more than 500 women. At least the brothel owners get a thick paycheck for it when they sell the windows. But what do we get? Nothing! We loose our workplace, without any compensation. We don't get any money. We don't get a new workplace. We can't work elsewhere, because all over this country they're closing down legal workplaces for prostitutes. In fact, between 2006 and 2014 in total 40% of all the legal prostitution businesses closed down. Between 2000 and now, 729 prostitution windows alone closed down. That's more than 1/3 of all the prostitution windows in this country! And than they're still surprised that illegal prostitution is a growing problem?!
Here's an overview of all the windows that we had back in 2000, how many there are now left, and how many closed down in Holland:
Today an article in the Guardian gave some attention to this 'gentrification project' we have in Amsterdam, mentioning myself in the article. And although the article is really good, you can still see how little people understand about real human trafficking and what's really going on. The city's move to try and criminalize brothel owners as the traffickers, or at least as those responsible for trafficking, apparently paid off.
In the article for example they talk about Eastern European brothel owners who moved into the area during the 1990's. I was puzzled when I read it, because there are no Eastern European brothel owners, and there never were. It took me a while before I realized the article was talking about pimps that moved into the area, but these people aren't brothel owners.
It's a testament to the brainwashing the city of Amsterdam did in order to gentrify this area. People can no longer tell the difference between a legal business and a criminal. Brothel owners who run the window brothels in Amsterdam are all legitimate business owners, all of them Dutch. None of them are Eastern European or ever where. But the brainwashing of Amsterdam worked so well, that people can't even tell the difference anymore between a brothel owner or a human trafficking. So the goal of Amsterdam, to brand the brothel owners as criminals who allow and even support human trafficking, has worked well. It has worked so well, that everyone now believes the brothel owners are the traffickers, and that's why the windows have to close down. But that's not true.
But the success of this lie worked so well, that other cities starter to adopt it. Alkmaar closed down 60 windows using human trafficking as a reason to close it down. Utrecht lost more than 160 windows with the excuse of human trafficking. And more recently Groningen closed down 50 windows down, 1/3 of the total amount, using again human trafficking as an excuse. Meanwhile also Amsterdam closed down last week more windows, 11 in total. The women that worked there I knew personally, as some of them were working directly in front of me. These women now don't have a job anymore, not a place to work, nothing to do, no income. I'm sure that helps those women a lot! And we still have 37 more windows to go, 135 more girls to loose their workplace, including mine.
Meanwhile more businesses that have nothing to do with the Red Light District are moving into the neighborhood. An 80's style arcade game hall has taken over where Sexyland used to be. I'm sure all those kids feel right at home between the prostitutes! A 'Hangover Information Center' opened up a while ago a few windows next to my own window. Hardly any people go in, as nobody takes this scam serious. And now they're opening up a lunchroom where they closed down 6 windows last year. Great, because Amsterdam didn't have enough of those yet!
In one of the smallest allies in the neighborhood, which used to be an all prostitution area, a small shop opened up a while ago in the middle of the street. I don't know what kind of shop it is, but not many people go in there, since nobody's going into that ally, because it's a prostitution area. The business owners who run those places complain in the newspapers that they get less customers then they expected and were promised. Jeez, I wonder why? Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that you're completely out of place in an area like this, right?
And while those businesses are complaining about the lack of customers, the same is happening to us. Less and less customers come into this part of the Red Light District anymore. The bright lights from the other shops shuns them away. All the girls are complaining the work is getting less and less, and for me it was a reason to move from there after having worked there for 3 years.
The busiest area for a prostitute to work in the Red Light District is loosing customers quick, while the other businesses which scare away our customers, are complaining about not having many customers as well. In short, both aren't happy with it, and it simply doesn't work.
Ah well, at least it will be over soon, and the entire area will soon be a place of small shops, to which few people go into. After all, the allies are narrow and dark, and doesn't feel exactly like a safe place to be. Not really the kind of place you'd like to go shopping, but perfect for customers of prostitutes who like to avoid being seen going inside with a girl.
Soon another 135 women will have lost their workplaces, with thanks to the city council. They won't have a place to work anymore, they aren't being offered a new place to work, or any compensation whatsoever. They're simply putting these women out of a job. While at the same time they're subsidizing small businesses which open up shops, which without their subsidies would never be able to survive because of the lack of business for them in this area. But it's not just the area that kills these businesses. Look at most of the boutiques, 'designer' shops and other crap they opened up. It's no wonder these businesses get few clients, they're selling garbage as 'fashion'.
What I don't understand, is why the city keeps subsidizing these businesses which are clearly out of place, and without subsidizing would never be able to survive, simply because they're selling stuff nobody wants. After all, if you want a high class establishment, as the city has as a goal for this area, you'll go to the famous P.C. Hoofdstraat in Amsterdam, not to the Red Light District!
Dutch version
The constant claim people make on us is that they are helping us, but really what they're doing is just dumping more shit on us. They don't really listen, they just talk with you so they can say they talked with you and listened to you. But in reality they don't listen. If they really would've listened to us, the city government would've immediately stopped buying up more windows than the more than 100 workplaces that we've already lost. But they don't. In fact, they're still continuing.
Yeah, sure, now they claim they're closing down 'less' windows. Woohoo people! This solves everything! Because closing down less windows is completely different from euh... closing down windows...? Wait, not really!
Yeah, they're closing down less windows. In stead of 83 windows, now the city decided to 'only' close down 37 windows. Yes, it saves 46 windows. It's like getting a discount on how many workplace we will loose. But that doesn't mean those women in the 37 other windows won't loose their workplace anymore! In fact, the 37 windows they want to close down is pretty much the busiest and most prostitutes filled part of the entire Red Light District, called the St. Annenkwartier. In fact, based on clients reviews on hookers.nl which visited girls in the past few months in this area, there are at least 135 women working in this area, including myself! And many girls I know that work there don't even have a review there, which would bring the number of women loosing their workplace even higher.
So sure, it's only 37 windows. But those 37 windows does give work space to at least 135 prostitutes, and is the busiest area in terms of prostitutes working there. These 135 women will come on top of the estimated 375 women that already lose their workplace, bringing the total to more than 500 women. At least the brothel owners get a thick paycheck for it when they sell the windows. But what do we get? Nothing! We loose our workplace, without any compensation. We don't get any money. We don't get a new workplace. We can't work elsewhere, because all over this country they're closing down legal workplaces for prostitutes. In fact, between 2006 and 2014 in total 40% of all the legal prostitution businesses closed down. Between 2000 and now, 729 prostitution windows alone closed down. That's more than 1/3 of all the prostitution windows in this country! And than they're still surprised that illegal prostitution is a growing problem?!
Here's an overview of all the windows that we had back in 2000, how many there are now left, and how many closed down in Holland:
In the article for example they talk about Eastern European brothel owners who moved into the area during the 1990's. I was puzzled when I read it, because there are no Eastern European brothel owners, and there never were. It took me a while before I realized the article was talking about pimps that moved into the area, but these people aren't brothel owners.
It's a testament to the brainwashing the city of Amsterdam did in order to gentrify this area. People can no longer tell the difference between a legal business and a criminal. Brothel owners who run the window brothels in Amsterdam are all legitimate business owners, all of them Dutch. None of them are Eastern European or ever where. But the brainwashing of Amsterdam worked so well, that people can't even tell the difference anymore between a brothel owner or a human trafficking. So the goal of Amsterdam, to brand the brothel owners as criminals who allow and even support human trafficking, has worked well. It has worked so well, that everyone now believes the brothel owners are the traffickers, and that's why the windows have to close down. But that's not true.
But the success of this lie worked so well, that other cities starter to adopt it. Alkmaar closed down 60 windows using human trafficking as a reason to close it down. Utrecht lost more than 160 windows with the excuse of human trafficking. And more recently Groningen closed down 50 windows down, 1/3 of the total amount, using again human trafficking as an excuse. Meanwhile also Amsterdam closed down last week more windows, 11 in total. The women that worked there I knew personally, as some of them were working directly in front of me. These women now don't have a job anymore, not a place to work, nothing to do, no income. I'm sure that helps those women a lot! And we still have 37 more windows to go, 135 more girls to loose their workplace, including mine.
Meanwhile more businesses that have nothing to do with the Red Light District are moving into the neighborhood. An 80's style arcade game hall has taken over where Sexyland used to be. I'm sure all those kids feel right at home between the prostitutes! A 'Hangover Information Center' opened up a while ago a few windows next to my own window. Hardly any people go in, as nobody takes this scam serious. And now they're opening up a lunchroom where they closed down 6 windows last year. Great, because Amsterdam didn't have enough of those yet!
 |
| A map of the Red Light District as it stands today. The red windows are going to close down. The windows with an X in them were closed down after August of 2012, before already 66 windows were closed down in recent years. |
And while those businesses are complaining about the lack of customers, the same is happening to us. Less and less customers come into this part of the Red Light District anymore. The bright lights from the other shops shuns them away. All the girls are complaining the work is getting less and less, and for me it was a reason to move from there after having worked there for 3 years.
The busiest area for a prostitute to work in the Red Light District is loosing customers quick, while the other businesses which scare away our customers, are complaining about not having many customers as well. In short, both aren't happy with it, and it simply doesn't work.
Ah well, at least it will be over soon, and the entire area will soon be a place of small shops, to which few people go into. After all, the allies are narrow and dark, and doesn't feel exactly like a safe place to be. Not really the kind of place you'd like to go shopping, but perfect for customers of prostitutes who like to avoid being seen going inside with a girl.
Soon another 135 women will have lost their workplaces, with thanks to the city council. They won't have a place to work anymore, they aren't being offered a new place to work, or any compensation whatsoever. They're simply putting these women out of a job. While at the same time they're subsidizing small businesses which open up shops, which without their subsidies would never be able to survive because of the lack of business for them in this area. But it's not just the area that kills these businesses. Look at most of the boutiques, 'designer' shops and other crap they opened up. It's no wonder these businesses get few clients, they're selling garbage as 'fashion'.
What I don't understand, is why the city keeps subsidizing these businesses which are clearly out of place, and without subsidizing would never be able to survive, simply because they're selling stuff nobody wants. After all, if you want a high class establishment, as the city has as a goal for this area, you'll go to the famous P.C. Hoofdstraat in Amsterdam, not to the Red Light District!
Dutch version
 |
| One of the ex-brothels now offered to sex workers to run for themselves |
Back in February of this year, the city of Amsterdam announced they wanted to investigate the possibility of sex workers running their own brothel. They had 18 windows at their disposal for sex workers who wanted to form their own corporation. And thus the city began investigating if sex workers would be interested in running a brothel for themselves.
To the media this project was being sold as 'a way for prostitutes to work without pimps', implying that we would be working with pimps at this moment. It was a way for the city to justify why they wanted to close down brothels on one hand, but on the other hand now all of the sudden they wanted to open new brothels. The media, non-critical as they are, ate up the story, and sold it to the public as a 'pimp free' workplace for prostitutes.
Of course this is nonsense. Most sex workers who work in window brothels right now don't have a pimp. They only want to imply that, to make the other brothel owners look bad, because they still intend to close them down. Otherwise it would be impossible to defend their policy of closing down windows, while at the same time opening new windows.
Because in reality, there's just as much chance of pimps being involved with the women working in these Project Own Window brothels, as when they would be working for a conventional brothel operator. Who runs the brothel is irrelevant to being a victim. The brothel owners aren't the pimps, and neither do they work together with them. So there's just as much chance of victims working in this new brothel, run by sex workers, as there's a chance of victims working in brothels run by the current brothel operators.
But today the city announced that there's enough support from the sex workers to continue with this project. An interesting conclusion, because in the investigation report, they claim they need at least 45 to 50 sex workers to be interested (page 9), in order for this project to succeed. So the question becomes, did they find 45 to 50 sex workers that are interested in participating in this project? Well, no!
In the report you can read that in March there was a meeting organized for sex workers to inform them about this project (page 6). 24 Sex workers showed up, including myself, from the approximately 600 sex workers working in the Red Light District. So immediately you could say that not many sex workers were interested in this project if only 4% shows up. Not a strange thing, since most sex workers are content with their current workplace, situation and brothel operator. In short, there's no desire to change things.
One of the other things that made sex workers not to be interested in this project, was the fact that they simply don't want that responsibility. It's the whole reason why sex workers are so content with their brothel operator. They do all the paper work, and we only have to work and once in a while pay taxes over our income. Most of us aren't interested in taking up more paperwork, rules and regulations in order to work.
Some sex workers however were interested in this project. How many? Well, as we can read in the report, 15 sex workers showed an interest during talks that happened back in April and May (page 6). Not exactly 45 to 50 sex workers, like how many would be required to make this project successful.
And so in June, the mayor expressed that he hadn't found enough sex workers to make this project work.
So, what has changed? Well, nothing. No more new sex workers were found that showed an interest. Meaning, it's still the same 15 sex workers that showed an interest. Not even close to the 45 to 50 sex workers that they required according to their own criteria. Yet the media state that there's enough support from the sex workers to continue with this project.
Perhaps this is also the reason why now all of the sudden there aren't 18, but 15 windows available for this project. After all, back in February they said 18 windows were available. But now all of the sudden there are 3 windows less. And funny enough, there are exactly as many windows, as there are sex workers who showed an interest in this. I wouldn't be surprised if those other 3 windows dropped out, due to the fact that they simply couldn't find any more sex workers willing to participate in this project. But, sure, keep selling it to the public as if there's a lot of support from the sex workers to participate in this project.
The report says that perhaps sex workers don't show an interest yet, because they are still waiting to see how things will turn out (page 7). For example, what the rental would be. But I think the deal is much simpler. Just not that many sex workers are interested in running their own brothel. We just want to work how we do right now. Have a brothel operator take care of all the paperwork, legal work etc., so all we have to worry about is paying our taxes in time. We don't want any more work, or having to spend more time on our jobs than we already do.
We never asked to run a brothel ourselves. This is, yet again, one of those projects politicians come up with, because 'they think' we want this. But they never listen to us. We didn't ask to run our own brothel. We just asked that you stop closing down windows, and give us back the windows that are still vacant. That's what we asked for when we went to demonstrate against Project 1012. We didn't ask if we could please start our own brothel so we could be pimp free! Most of us are pimp free, and we don't need this brothel to prove that!
Dutch version
Let's start off with some facts. Between 2011 and 2013 in total 1750 prostitutes have been a part of the program. This comes down to about 583 prostitutes each year. This is only a very small portion compared to all the prostitutes working in Holland (an estimated 20.000), so it doesn't really look like they're really interested in using these programs in the first place.
Why does only such a small portion of the prostitutes want to use this program? Well, perhaps they don't want to quit. Or maybe some do want to quit, but they don't need anyone's help to do so. Or maybe many don't believe these programs are very helpful.
The current exit programs have a success rate of about 57%, meaning 57% of the prostitutes actually quit their job using these programs if they enter it. This leaves 43% of the prostitutes leaving the programs before they ever exit the industry. This also means that only about 332 prostitutes each year actually quit using these programs.
One might begin to wonder why such a relatively large group of more than 40% chooses to keep working this industry and quits these programs, as opposed to actually continuing the project and getting another job.
What they also didn't count in were how many went back into the job after exiting. Because I know from girls I personally know, that re-entering this job after having quit happens more than most people might think. And the main reason is that other jobs simply don't pay that well like this job does. For example, I knew a girl that used one of these exit programs and ended up working in a restaurant. After about a year working in this restaurant she decided to go back into prostitution. Her reason? It simply paid much better than working in a restaurant.
Girls that start doing this job, most of the times do it for one very simple reason: money. There is no other job on this earth which requires so little skills, schooling and knowledge or experience, yet pays so much. Most girls simply figure they do this job for a couple of years, and after they quit, go back home, and maybe set up a company of their own with the money they made here, buy a house and a car, and live the good life. And that's the goal most girls have for themselves, and they will not quit this job until they reach that goal.
What happens in reality is, that things don't always go the way you want, and it takes up more time than you thought to get all the money together you need for your dreams. A lot of girls for example think they will make a lot of money always. But it doesn't work that way. You don't always make good money, there are good periods and bad periods. So you can't always save up how much you want to. Sometimes even you need to use the money you saved up before, to be able to pay for things when things aren't going well.
Another thing that happens in reality, is that you become addicted to shopping. Especially girls from countries like Romania, Bulgaria en Hungary, who never had the money to buy expensive bags, shoes and clothes. Having all this money, and not spending it on some nice expensive things, is quite a challenge. The idea is that if you're doing this job anyway, you might as well try to look nice now that you have the money for it, what else is the point?
And thus many girls spend thousands of euro's on shoes, clothes, sunglasses, bags and what not, simply because they can afford it now. This quickly turns into an addiction, meaning they stopped saving up money, and most of their money goes to expensive stuff they don't really need.
I know many girls that have the latest fashion from Louis Vuitton and Burberry and all the expensive brands you can imagine almost each day. They spend thousands of euro's a month to look good, but they've been working here for more than a decade already. I'm pretty sure their idea when they came here to do this job, was not to keep doing this job for more than 10 years, but at least being able to wear the most latest fashion. Yet that is what has happened to them. The money corrupts them, and postpones their goals, as it almost did with me.
And this is one of the main reasons why exit programs don't work. Because the exit program doesn't give them what they want, which is a lot of money. It is the reason many that do enter eventually quit before they finish the program. And it's the reason many that did exit the industry, come back into the industry again, simply because with this job they can make much more money, and pays for their expensive lifestyle. So unless an exit program can offer you a job with a salary close to that of a prostitute, it will never become a success.
The best way to have prostitutes exit their industry, is if you help them reach their goal. So, don't help them quit this job, but rather help them saving up the money they want. Giving them another job might help for some girls, but not for most. Since in the end, unless they reach their goal, they will always come back to this job.
Dutch version
Personally I don't know any girls that don't speak at least English. So for me, and all the girls I know, this isn't much of a big deal. I do know however there is a group of South-American women working around the Old Church, and those brothel operators speak perfectly good Spanish. I also know the brothel operator who started this court case against the city government, Jan Harmsen, spoke with most of the girls working there in German, since also many Eastern European women speak German in stead of English.
The media however presented it as if the brothel owner was completely unable to talk with the girls at all, which I highly doubt, since it would be impossible to do an intake interview, which is mandatory. But also how do you explain to girls how they can rent a room, how much they have to pay, what the rules are etc. if you can't communicate with them. So the only logical explanation is that he was able to talk with them, just not in English or Dutch but in German, meaning they left that part out to frame the brothel owner as 'the bad guy'. My guess is also that it's not the media themselves which wrote this article, but that it comes from the office of the mayor, who intentionally wants to frame brothel owners as bad people, in order to close down windows.
Basically this decision from the court comes down to restricting the languages only to Dutch or English, not allowing Spanish or German anymore, which before were still allowed. In short it comes down to down sizing brothel owners their market, making it more difficult for them to rent out windows, since now they are only allowed to rent them out to people who speak either Dutch or English, and not also German and Spanish like before.
Also I feel a bit like sex workers yet again are being made into an exception, since other industries with a high chance of trafficking are not obliged to speak only Dutch or English, but can allow anyone to work in their business.
In my own opinion I do think sex workers should be able to speak English at least. After all, many of our clients come from all over the world, so not being able to speak any English at all would make your work in the Red Light District nearby impossible. But It would also prevent a lot of fights between the customer and sex workers, due to a communication problem. I also think that perhaps the accusations of the girls not being able to talk any English are exaggerated, for sure they know some English, but I think they mainly communicated with their brothel owner in German.
But like I said, I also don't know any women that don't speak any English at all. But with some brothel owners it is already a rule that you need to speak English mandatory.
All in all, the articles in the media surrounding this court case seem to be very one sided, and incorrect. But I'm not surprised, since it was a court case against the city government, who are still trying to close down windows. And with the decision today of the mayor to run for a second term as mayor, I doubt he will keep true to his word to close down less windows. After all, he also promised us to write us a letter, which we still haven't received.
Dutch version
According to Maria Ruigrok this is to make the prostitute less depending on the brothel owners. But this is kinda where she goes wrong. She assumes, like so many other people, that the brothel owners would be the problem for us. Fact is that for most girls this is not the case. In fact, 84% of the prostitutes is very positive about the brothel owners, as a recent research showed in the Red Light District. The most heard complaint about brothel owners are the rules, but than again, the brothel owners don't make all those new rules, that's the city government. So it's really more of a complaint about the city government, most girls however simply don't know it was the city government and not the brothel owner that came up with these new rules.
But I also fail to see how it would make us less depending on the brothel owners. Maria Ruigrok seems to have the idea we can't switch from brothels for some kind of reason, but that's not true at all. In fact, many girls switch from brothel owner to brothel owner. That's not because they want to switch each time, but because the city government has closed down so many windows, there's no place in the night for all the girls, so the girls keep having to move from one brothel owner on one day, to the next brothel owner the next day.
So this 'prostitution pass' won't give us more freedom of choice in choosing which brothel we want to work in. That isn't a problem right now, so there's no problem to 'fix' there. The problem there is however, is the fact that many girls have to move, because there aren't enough places due to the closures. That's the problem we asked a solution for at the demonstration on the 9th of April. And to be able to choose between brothel owners, there first of all has to be choice, which is something the city government has been heavily reducing in recent years.
But what worries me most is who gets the information from these intake interviews. At this moment our brothel owners get this information, and we trust them with it. After all, we see our brothel owner each day, and like I said, most have a good relationship with them. We trust our information more with them, than with a government which is adamant on closing down our workplaces.
And this is where the problem may be. If the only benefit of having this prostitution pass, is that you don't have to do so many intake interviews, not many girls will do it. Why? Most girls simply don't care. They've already done so many intake interviews, they're used to it, and they're not scared of their privacy towards the brothel owners. What they are scared about however, is this information ending up with the city government, which we don't trust because they've been closing down our workplaces for years. And I think most girls will be scared this information will be used to close down brothels, which is something we don't want, so most won't do it.
Another notion Maria Ruigrok stated, was that it would show we would do this job voluntarily. It's a strange thing. No other business owner in the world has to prove he or she is doing the job voluntarily, so why should I? Just because a lot of people are lying about how many girls are being forced into this job? Most recent statistic I got from a reliable source, was that the total amount of victims of human trafficking from the Red Light District last year was 7 girls. In a place where there are about 600-700 women working! That's fucking 1%! So why do I constantly have to prove I'm not forced, if only 1% is possibly a victim?! Just because a bunch of religious fanatics and radical feminists claim these things in their disgust towards prostitution?! And besides, it is already proven I'm doing this voluntarily, since the same intake interview is already being done by the brothel owners, so I don't see what this pass would change about it.
The only benefit for us, is that we don't have to do a new intake with each separate brothel owner. But if that's the benefit, 80% of the girls won't do it, since they don't have a problem with their brothel owners doing these intakes. Which, according to the logic of Maria Ruigrok, would subsequently imply we would be forced, because we don't get this prostitution pass 'proving' we're doing this voluntarily. I don't know, but this is already being proven twice a year, when my brothel owner has to do an intake interview with me. I don't see how another person asking these questions would change me being voluntarily working or not?
But there are also some good things about this idea. It's not all bad, it's got both good and bad things. The good thing about this system, is that it would relieve the brothel owner of their responsibility of checking who's forced and who's not. At this moment they are the ones doing it, and the risk is great, because if they don't do it correctly, they loose their permit. Relieving this responsibility from them, would take away a reason for the city government to try and close them down based on intake interviews, which is good for them. After all, most brothel owners don't want this responsibility, as it risks their entire business on one intake interview, and they don't feel they're capable of recognizing human trafficking. After all, they're people renting out business places, they're not trained psychologists or detectives.
This is a good thing, since the city government in recent years has constantly tried to find reasons to close down brothels. The intake was their ultimate weapon. If the brothel owner would give a room to a girl who was forced, because she passed the intake interview, the brothel owner would be held accountable because he did the intake, and could loose his permit. By taking this away from the brothel owners, you're basically taking away an excuse to close them down, which is something I'm happy about.
What I don't understand however, is how this would make me more independent? After all, I can already choose where I can work, this pass doesn't change a thing about that, except that I don't have to do another intake interview. But since we've already all took those intake interviews so many times already, this isn't very much of an issue with the girls. Also the privacy towards brothel owners is a little bit of a dumb argument. After all, they already know who we are, since they have to check our papers each time. And we trust out brothel owners more than the city government. So how does it make me more independent? Where's the benefit for me? Girls certainly won't feel more comfortable doing this intake interview with a city government they don't trust at all, while they can do it with their brothel owners which they're very positive about.
But Maria Ruigrok wants to do a pilot with this. I think it could be interesting to see how it works, and see if we can create any benefits for ourselves, rather than brothel owners. But what I don't understand is that she wants to test this out with the 'city brothel'. The city brothel is another plan of the city government to let sex workers run their own brothel. In short, the sex workers become their own brothel operators. But if the sex workers are their own brothel operators, why would they need this prostitution pass? After all, they are the brothel owners, so the one that does the intake interview at the brothel is, well... themselves! So why would they do an intake interview somewhere else, with a city government they don't trust?
If I can give any advice to Maria Ruigrok, it would be not to pilot this in the city brothel, but in a regular brothel. After all, the city brothel itself is already a test case, so they've got enough stuff to figure out already. Adding another test case on top of this may be too much. And above all, what might work in that brothel, might not work for the other brothels which are run by brothel owners, and not sex workers. And wasn't the whole idea of this prostitution pass to relief the brothel owner of it's responsibilities, and giving the sex worker more privacy from the brothel owners?
If you want to pilot such a thing, don't pick one brothel, but just do a pilot and let's see how many girls do it, from whatever brothel they come. If few girls show up, perhaps this will say something about trust the girls have in governments in this country. And perhaps it will also say something about the lack of benefits this prostitution pass offers. One or more or less intake interview? Who cares! And besides, how can I have more freedom of choice where to work, when the city government has reduced the choice with 33%, and still is planning to close down more? What choice is there, if most of my choices are being taken away by the city government itself?
Maria Ruigrok believes this pass would also perhaps give us more chance of getting a business bank account, or a mortgage or a disability insurance. First of all I think it's ridiculous we would need a pass to achieve something like this, simply because the financial industry discriminates us. Why do we have to do something extra because they are discriminating us? But more importantly, the reason they refuse us is because we are sex workers. A pass that proves you are a sex worker doesn't exactly change that, in fact, it confirms it, so I don't see how this would help. Also I don't really think banks would change their minds about sex work, simply because we have a 'prostitution pass'. They don't want us, because we are from the sex industry, an industry most businesses want to stay far away from being associated with, especially banks who rely a lot on trust. After all, let's not forget that it was the National Bank who fired one of their employees because she was working as a part time sex worker.
This pass will not work unless more benefits are created for the sex workers. The argument that it makes sex workers less depending on brothels owners is not a good one. After all, we still can't work without brothel owners, so we still rely on them. Also the argument that we won't have to give away any privacy information isn't a very strong argument. After all, they already have this information from all of our previous intakes. And why should we give this private information to people from a government we don't trust, while right now it's in the hands of brothel owners we do trust and already have this information. So what's the benefit for us? And besides, why would I need to prove I'm a self employer business owner, this is already proven by the fact that I'm already registered at the KvK, which by the way also do some sort of intake interviews these days, as I've found out yesterday.
I've already given it a lot of attention with previous posts. And this eventually resulted in a public debate about these statistics. Laurens Buijs from the University of Amsterdam wrote an article about this whole discussion in the newspaper NRC. In a response to that article Warner ten Kate himself wrote an article one week later in the NRC, shoving his own words of 70% in the shoes of Jojanneke, claiming it were her 'statements'. Apparently Warner ten Kate didn't feel too confident about his own statistics, and decided to blame the whole thing on Jojanneke.
An interesting thing, since it were clearly the words of Warner ten Kate himself, and not those of Jojanneke. Jojanneke simply used his claim a lot in the media after she did the interview with him, because it supported her own conclusions. But Warner ten Kate already claimed a similar statistic in another interview for a research by the University of Groningen. The research was being done to find out if criminalizing clients of a forced prostitutes would work. Warner claimed in an interview included in this report that 70% of the prostitutes in Holland would be forced. He claimed this was based on the Sneep case and the Koolvis case (page 102).
Today in the radio interview however he dropped the Koolvis as source, and now claimed only the Sneep case was the source (25:25). Not so weird to drop the Koolvis case as a source. After all, the Koolvis case was a case about prostitutes being forced in other countries, not in Holland. Holland nearly functioned as a gateway to Europe for the traffickers, but the women never worked here. So it would also be kind of amazing if this case could tell us anything about how many women are forced in Holland, if this case wasn't even about that.
But this time during the interview on the Radio Warner ten Kate was specifically asked about the 70% and where it comes from, and if he would still repeat it today. He claimed the 70% comes from a research done by the Erasmus University during the Sneep case. Funny thing is however. The Erasmus University never did any such research. None whatsoever! In fact, the Sneep case report itself (now dubbed Schone Schijn) doesn't even mention the Erasmus University in any of it's 141 pages. Even more interesting, the Sneep case also doesn't say 70% is forced, but claims it's 50 to 85% (page 76), and 8 pages later all of the sudden changes that to 50 to 90% without any reason.
How someone that lies this clearly can still be in function as a public prosecutor, is a miracle to me. A public prosecutor should be without any blame, someone you can trust, not someone of whom you can factually proof he's lying on several occasions. How come this man can still be in his current function, if it is factually proven he's a liar? How the hell is this possible? How come this man's function is not a point of discussion.
But more interestingly perhaps is Warner his own claim to 'stop talking about numbers'. That's really kind of funny. This whole debate started because he as a public prosecutor and the police keep mentioning numbers which are pure bullshit. But when people point this out, all of the sudden they say the discussion shouldn't be about the numbers? Then why the fuck did you mention them? We didn't mention any numbers, we just try to show people you are lying about the numbers, and we try to do this with actual research which constantly proves them wrong. But than all of the sudden they chicken out and we can't talk about numbers anymore? Why? Because those numbers aren't in your favor? Because those numbers would prove you are a liar?
But most of all what I don't understand, is why Warner is making up his own statistics, while there are perfectly usable (yet unreliable) statistics out there to make the same claims? Why didn't he just pick the 50 to 90% from the Sneep report? Why does he think he can get away with making up his own numbers? And why make up your own numbers, which are easier to prove wrong, than to debate about existing number and prove those existing numbers aren't correct. Is it because he's scared he'll be proven wrong by people with knowledge? Does he think that if he makes up a number that doesn't exist, nobody will find out because nobody can find the source?
We never wanted a debate about numbers. It was people like Warner ten Kate, Gert-Jan Segers, Renate van der Zee, Jojanneke van den Berge and sorts that started this whole debate years ago. First with the 50 to 90%, until apparently it lost it's reliability because it got proven to be unreliable as hell. And now this magical 70% which is made up by Warner ten Kate, and shows up in no research at all. Did you really think we wouldn't find out Warner, if you just made up your own numbers? Did you really think we would be this dumb?
I don't want to have a debate about numbers. We're talking about people, and those people aren't numbers, and shouldn't be treated as such. It's really a shame the anti-prostitution lobby constantly has to resort to incorrect statistics as arguments for their lies. Victims of trafficking aren't helped by these nonsense discussions about statistics. But by constantly bringing them up, you force us to debunk those numbers, starting a whole discussion about numbers while it should about the victims.
Why oh why did you have to lie Warner? I simply don't get it! You just should have used existing numbers, not make them up and think we wouldn't find out. But what I really don't understand, is how this person can still be a public prosecutor, if his lies are so clear as daylight, and his position regarding sex work is so obviously opposing it. Your lies are busted mr. Ten Kate. My question is how long are you going to be able to keep that job now that your lies are exposed?
Dutch version
