Prison sentence for exploiting Thai women
On Friday, December 17, four suspects were convicted of forced prostitution of Thai women. In 2007, the Prostitution and Human Trafficking Control Team of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond police arrested these suspects. One of the suspects was sentenced to five years in prison.
The investigation began on October 5, 2006. During an inspection by the 'property intervention team', a 28-year-old woman who spoke almost no Dutch was found in a home in South Rotterdam, which was equipped for giving Thai massages. She was stopped under the Aliens Act. After several conversations with the Prostitution and Human Trafficking Control Team, it turned out that she was a victim of human trafficking, and she also filed a report.
Exploitation
As a result of this development, the Prostitution and Human Trafficking Control Team started a criminal investigation. The investigation revealed that several suspects were engaged in exploiting Thai women. A number of Thai women who had fallen victim to these practices were taken out of illegal prostitution. At the request of the research team, research was also carried out in Germany. There, too, two women were found in prostitution. They also made statements for the Dutch case. The Public Prosecution Service has also conducted an investigation together with the investigation team Thailand.
Approach
The procedure was as follows. Women were recruited (under false pretenses) in Thailand. They were escorted to Europe, where they were put to work in sex establishments and massage parlours. The victims had entered into debt with the recruiter on the assumption that they would be able to pay off the debt with the money they earned from massages. Then they would be allowed to earn money for themselves. Once here it was very different. They were sold to human traffickers and put to work through various escort agencies and in massage parlors where they had to have sex with customers. They had to pay off their debt to the traders through this forced prostitution. The victims have had to pay large sums to the human traffickers.
Arrests
In February 2007, a 35-year-old man from Rotterdam and a 39-year-old man from Nijmegen were arrested. In March 2007, a 41-year-old man and a 46-year-old woman, both from Rotterdam, were arrested. They ran an escort agency where victims were put to work. A 22-year-old suspect has been arrested and extradited in Germany.
To punish
Because investigations abroad often take a long time, the court was only able to make a decision last Friday. The main male suspect has been sentenced to 5 years in prison. A second suspect was sentenced to 2 years in prison, 1 of which was suspended with a probationary period of 2 years.
The man and woman who ran the escort agency were each sentenced separately for 6 months in prison, of which 5 months were suspended with a probationary period of 2 years. They have also been given a community service order of 240 hours, which can be converted to 120 days of alternative detention if the community service order is not carried out properly.
The penalty isn't much!
Great, if this is a new approach from Justice, many more actions are to be expected. In the Netherlands alone, more than 400 Thai women work in about 150 different sex houses and not all of them voluntarily. Just read the disconcerting report of De Rode Draad, which was made in October 2008:
http://www.rodedraad.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/internet.pdf
The research among Thai sex workers was made possible in part by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Directorate of Emancipation and is now probably neatly stored there without anything essential being done with it. Fortunately, the report is available in its entirety on the Internet.
You really wonder how all those women get a visa for the Netherlands, we know how difficult and sometimes humiliating a bona fide application for that desired stamp from the Embassy can be. Why are they not checked more often in the Netherlands afterwards? If they have legally obtained a Schengen visa in the normal way, there must be someone who guarantees them. That person must be easy to trace and be held responsible in the event of abuse. If they arrived in the Netherlands through organized human trafficking, help from “within” must have been involved.
yes lazy nice country Netherlands. why such a short punishment here. they had to get 10 years and pay back all the money they took from those girls. Now they still spend that money. Shame, hand them over to Thailand and leave them there. And not here with luxury.
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