"Sold"
Between 36 and 60 victims of human trafficking seek psychological help each year
Belkis Jimenez was the victim of human trafficking (white slave trade). While she was looking for a job she was recommended by a friend to work in a cafeteria located in Navarrete, in the north of the country. When she arrived, a network of white slave traffickers told her that she was "sold."
"We were forced the sleep with men without giving us one cent," she continued. "Those who opposed were hit with chairs, sticks, I have it all in my head, there was a lot of mistreatment, the women were aborted, they had a doctor for this. While that did that, we were locked up, but you could hear the cries, I was dying with fright."
On several occasions, she relates, she tried to commit suicide. Especially the first Christmas she spent without her mother. When can I go home? She asked all the time.
After being held for five months, she found out that her house had burned down. Once again threatening to commit suicide, the bordello owners let her out to visit it.
"I wanted to assure myself that my mother was okay, but the following day I went back to the whorehouse by myself, because they had warned me that if I did not come back they would look for me and kill me."
For three years Belkis remained under the control of the gang, until a man that worked in the bordello helped her to leave. Nonetheless, 23 years have not been enough to forget that series of dark events.
Cases still pending
One thing that is so worrisome is that these cases of women victims of sexual exploitation continue presenting themselves both in the national territory as well as in other nations. And it is that the Dominican Republic is considered to be an important supplier of women for this illicit business, the third most lucrative after drug and arms trafficking, since the yearly earnings in the world are calculated to be US$32 billion, according to the US State Department.
According to the Global Report on Human Trafficking presented by the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime in 2012, the most prominent flow of human trafficking in Central American and the Caribbean comes for the Dominican Republic.
According to this report, the Dominican victims that were found have been repatriated from 18 countries around the world, principally from Latin America and Europe, where between 2007 and 2010 they represented 1% of the women found in Western and Central Europe and 3% of those found in the Americas.
Recent data from the Special Prosecutor for the Illegal Trafficking of Migrants and Human Trafficking, stresses that during 2013 they had identified 52 cases of white slave trafficking in the country, of which 25 were sent to trial and 27 are under investigation.
According to this report from the Prosecutor, Haiti was the place where they found the greatest number of victims. To this and other nations such as Switzerland, Argentina, Trinidad and Tobago, many Dominican women travel to with job offers that guarantee them a better quality of life. Sometimes they travel because they were tricked and on occasions with the knowledge that they will work in prostitution. What they never imagine is the situation of mistreatment that they will face.
Victims overseas
Minerva and Maria (not their real names) for example, as soon as they arrived in Haitian territory, the traffickers, in this case a married couple, were not satisfied with taking their documents, and outside the front door of the bordello they posted four guards that kept them from returning to their homes.
"They paid you supposedly every two weeks, and we were always in debt, for anything you had to pay US$20 or US$30; which meant that they wanted you to be in debt so that you could never leave," said Maria.
According to the statement by Minerva and Maria, the offer that they received to go to work in Haiti, consisted in the payment of US$200 a week or ever two weeks, US$50 per date, US$10 per private dances, a percentage of the drinks that a client consumed, money in advance to send to their families and payment of their bus fares.
"We did not receive any of the bi-weekly payments, we had to pay US$400 a month for the room, they demanded US$200 for the bus fare we took, if we paid the debt off, we had to pay US$400 for failure to comply with the contract and US$10 for a medical insurance we never used," Minerva explained.
"The majority of the cases are like this, the woman leaves with a man and a part is for her and the other part is for the house. In the meantime they collect tickets for meals, for housing, which they discount from the bi-weekly or monthly payments, because the women have to pay for living in that place," confirmed Jonathan Baro, the director of the Special Prosecutor against Illicit Trafficking of Migrants and Human Trafficking.
During the time that they were in Haiti, Minerva and Maria never sent money to their families, they tell moreover that communication with their families was complicated.
"After three days there a girl saw me crying desperately and she gave me 100 in Haitian money, which is the money they have there, and with this I bought a card to call my son," stressed Minerva.
Regarding the contract that they talk about, they say that they were made to sign it without understanding the information that it contained since it was written in Creole, the Haitian language, and later on they found out it was not favorable to them.
In order to have an idea of the contents that the white slavers put in these contracts that the great majority of the victims mentioned in their stories, a source supplied Diario Libre with the copy of one of them. In this copy you can tell how even a copy of the personal identification card ("cédula") of the victim was included as if this was a legal agreement.
How white slavers get their victims
According to statements from Magistrate Jonathan Baro, some of the maneuvers that are used by the human traffickers to recruit women are offers of work placed in the classified sections of newspapers, e-mails and social media, where normally they ask for waitresses and models. They also use recruiters and kidnappings.
On other occasions they send marriage proposals through third parties, or job offers to work as housekeepers overseas
"Many times in the newspapers they ask for nice looking girls to work some place as a waitress, secretary or the offer overseas work and when they arrive, it is another kind of work," explains Magistrate Baro, who requested that the women be attentive to prevent themselves from falling in the traps.
Poverty, the main trait....
Women and minors with great needs for jobs and money are the principle characteristics that the white slavers look for in making up their lists of victims.
"One of the strategies that is most used by the networks of human traffickers is to put out the hook of a job; because of this 93% of the victims of internal human trafficking were offered a trip overseas; 98% said that they did not know the conditions that were later imposed on them in the workplace," explained Liyana Pavon, the representative of COIN, who based her statement on the information obtained in the base line study and on her experience with victims of human trafficking.
"Of the women interviewed in this study, 46 women were between 16 and 20 years of age, 31 were women between 21 and 25, 22 were between 26 and 30, 17 were between 11 and 15 years old and just 11 were between 31 and 35 years old," added Pavon.
According to the study, just 14% of the victims had reached the last year of high school, 48% had some technical studies and 78% had children.
Areas where the women were taken
The tourist areas of the country are those points most used by these criminal networks of human trafficking that sexually exploit their victims. According to the Base Line Study, Bavaro is the place that presents the greatest number of these cases.
This preliminary report indicates that of 221 cases of white slavery of Dominican women identified, 127 correspond to internal trafficking.
Government actions
At the present time, the Dominican Republic has a judicial framework formed by specific regulations such as the Constitution of the Republic, and Law 137-03, Law 285-04 and Law 01-12 of the National Development Strategy to 2030. Regarding these, they have created diverse instances among which they specifically include the order to prevent, combat and eradicate these scourges. Regarding the international ties, in 2006 the country ratified the United Nations Convention against Organized Transnational Crime; in 2007, the Protocol against the Illicit Trafficking of Migrants by Air, Sea or Land and in 2008, the Protocol for the Preventions, Repression and Punishment of Human Trafficking, especially women and children.
Nevertheless, the extent of the intervention levels does not correspond with the commitment established in the legislation or with the magnitude which is attributed to the problem, since according to the information collected by the investigator Cristina Sanchez and published in her 2012 report, the attention to these cases is uncertain, the prosecution is limited and the prevention is nearly non-existent.
"We were forced the sleep with men without giving us one cent," she continued. "Those who opposed were hit with chairs, sticks, I have it all in my head, there was a lot of mistreatment, the women were aborted, they had a doctor for this. While that did that, we were locked up, but you could hear the cries, I was dying with fright."
On several occasions, she relates, she tried to commit suicide. Especially the first Christmas she spent without her mother. When can I go home? She asked all the time.
After being held for five months, she found out that her house had burned down. Once again threatening to commit suicide, the bordello owners let her out to visit it.
"I wanted to assure myself that my mother was okay, but the following day I went back to the whorehouse by myself, because they had warned me that if I did not come back they would look for me and kill me."
For three years Belkis remained under the control of the gang, until a man that worked in the bordello helped her to leave. Nonetheless, 23 years have not been enough to forget that series of dark events.
Cases still pending
One thing that is so worrisome is that these cases of women victims of sexual exploitation continue presenting themselves both in the national territory as well as in other nations. And it is that the Dominican Republic is considered to be an important supplier of women for this illicit business, the third most lucrative after drug and arms trafficking, since the yearly earnings in the world are calculated to be US$32 billion, according to the US State Department.
According to the Global Report on Human Trafficking presented by the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime in 2012, the most prominent flow of human trafficking in Central American and the Caribbean comes for the Dominican Republic.
According to this report, the Dominican victims that were found have been repatriated from 18 countries around the world, principally from Latin America and Europe, where between 2007 and 2010 they represented 1% of the women found in Western and Central Europe and 3% of those found in the Americas.
Recent data from the Special Prosecutor for the Illegal Trafficking of Migrants and Human Trafficking, stresses that during 2013 they had identified 52 cases of white slave trafficking in the country, of which 25 were sent to trial and 27 are under investigation.
According to this report from the Prosecutor, Haiti was the place where they found the greatest number of victims. To this and other nations such as Switzerland, Argentina, Trinidad and Tobago, many Dominican women travel to with job offers that guarantee them a better quality of life. Sometimes they travel because they were tricked and on occasions with the knowledge that they will work in prostitution. What they never imagine is the situation of mistreatment that they will face.
Victims overseas
Minerva and Maria (not their real names) for example, as soon as they arrived in Haitian territory, the traffickers, in this case a married couple, were not satisfied with taking their documents, and outside the front door of the bordello they posted four guards that kept them from returning to their homes.
"They paid you supposedly every two weeks, and we were always in debt, for anything you had to pay US$20 or US$30; which meant that they wanted you to be in debt so that you could never leave," said Maria.
According to the statement by Minerva and Maria, the offer that they received to go to work in Haiti, consisted in the payment of US$200 a week or ever two weeks, US$50 per date, US$10 per private dances, a percentage of the drinks that a client consumed, money in advance to send to their families and payment of their bus fares.
"We did not receive any of the bi-weekly payments, we had to pay US$400 a month for the room, they demanded US$200 for the bus fare we took, if we paid the debt off, we had to pay US$400 for failure to comply with the contract and US$10 for a medical insurance we never used," Minerva explained.
"The majority of the cases are like this, the woman leaves with a man and a part is for her and the other part is for the house. In the meantime they collect tickets for meals, for housing, which they discount from the bi-weekly or monthly payments, because the women have to pay for living in that place," confirmed Jonathan Baro, the director of the Special Prosecutor against Illicit Trafficking of Migrants and Human Trafficking.
During the time that they were in Haiti, Minerva and Maria never sent money to their families, they tell moreover that communication with their families was complicated.
"After three days there a girl saw me crying desperately and she gave me 100 in Haitian money, which is the money they have there, and with this I bought a card to call my son," stressed Minerva.
Regarding the contract that they talk about, they say that they were made to sign it without understanding the information that it contained since it was written in Creole, the Haitian language, and later on they found out it was not favorable to them.
In order to have an idea of the contents that the white slavers put in these contracts that the great majority of the victims mentioned in their stories, a source supplied Diario Libre with the copy of one of them. In this copy you can tell how even a copy of the personal identification card ("cédula") of the victim was included as if this was a legal agreement.
How white slavers get their victims
According to statements from Magistrate Jonathan Baro, some of the maneuvers that are used by the human traffickers to recruit women are offers of work placed in the classified sections of newspapers, e-mails and social media, where normally they ask for waitresses and models. They also use recruiters and kidnappings.
On other occasions they send marriage proposals through third parties, or job offers to work as housekeepers overseas
"Many times in the newspapers they ask for nice looking girls to work some place as a waitress, secretary or the offer overseas work and when they arrive, it is another kind of work," explains Magistrate Baro, who requested that the women be attentive to prevent themselves from falling in the traps.
Poverty, the main trait....
Women and minors with great needs for jobs and money are the principle characteristics that the white slavers look for in making up their lists of victims.
"One of the strategies that is most used by the networks of human traffickers is to put out the hook of a job; because of this 93% of the victims of internal human trafficking were offered a trip overseas; 98% said that they did not know the conditions that were later imposed on them in the workplace," explained Liyana Pavon, the representative of COIN, who based her statement on the information obtained in the base line study and on her experience with victims of human trafficking.
"Of the women interviewed in this study, 46 women were between 16 and 20 years of age, 31 were women between 21 and 25, 22 were between 26 and 30, 17 were between 11 and 15 years old and just 11 were between 31 and 35 years old," added Pavon.
According to the study, just 14% of the victims had reached the last year of high school, 48% had some technical studies and 78% had children.
Areas where the women were taken
The tourist areas of the country are those points most used by these criminal networks of human trafficking that sexually exploit their victims. According to the Base Line Study, Bavaro is the place that presents the greatest number of these cases.
This preliminary report indicates that of 221 cases of white slavery of Dominican women identified, 127 correspond to internal trafficking.
Government actions
At the present time, the Dominican Republic has a judicial framework formed by specific regulations such as the Constitution of the Republic, and Law 137-03, Law 285-04 and Law 01-12 of the National Development Strategy to 2030. Regarding these, they have created diverse instances among which they specifically include the order to prevent, combat and eradicate these scourges. Regarding the international ties, in 2006 the country ratified the United Nations Convention against Organized Transnational Crime; in 2007, the Protocol against the Illicit Trafficking of Migrants by Air, Sea or Land and in 2008, the Protocol for the Preventions, Repression and Punishment of Human Trafficking, especially women and children.
Nevertheless, the extent of the intervention levels does not correspond with the commitment established in the legislation or with the magnitude which is attributed to the problem, since according to the information collected by the investigator Cristina Sanchez and published in her 2012 report, the attention to these cases is uncertain, the prosecution is limited and the prevention is nearly non-existent.
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