It was a sad story with a happier ending. “Nikki,” a 13-year-old Thai girl who was sold by her father into sex slavery, was freed after two weeks in an Australian brothel.

During those two weeks, Nikki was forced to sleep with 100 men.

However, Nikki was able to return home, and is now a wife and a mother. She also received compensation from the NSW Victims Compensation Tribunal.

Nikki was luckier than many victims of sex trafficking.

“She was only there for about two weeks, so in a sense she was lucky. A client felt sorry for her and tipped off immigration,” says Chris Payne, a former Federal Police Officer who was in charge of Operation PaperTiger, aimed at combatting trafficking in the 1990s.

The young girl was found in a Surry Hills Brothel during a police raid in 1995. She was detained, and then deported back to Thailand a few days later.

Needless to say, her story made headlines. Australians were shocked not only because of her age, but also to discover that trafficking is actually happening in their own backyard.

According to the US “Trafficking in Persons” 2006 report, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across borders. Of those, 80 percent are women and girls, and 50 percent are minors.

At the time of Nikki’s rescue, however, trafficking was still not considered a local problem in Australia.

“We came across what was obviously organised crime at quite a large scale, and at that stage it was being dealt with as simply an immigration issue,” says Payne.

Australia’s “immigration issue” made further headlines in 2004, when the "Trafficking in Persons" report identified Australia as a destination country for Chinese and South-East Asian women trafficked for prostitution.

Although Payne says that while he was in the police force 90 percent of the trafficked women came from Thailand, lawyer Jennifer Burns, who runs the Anti-Slavery Project in Sydney, says that Australia is currently a destination country for women from Southeast Asia, China, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.

Project Respect, an Australian non-government organisation that works with women in the sex industry, estimates that there are approximately 1,000 trafficked women in Australia at any given time. However, it is difficult to get an exact figure of the extent of trafficking because of the nature of the crime.

Some of the women may be aware that they are being brought into Australia to enter prostitution, and might have already been involved in the sex industry in their country. That, however, does not mean that there is no deception involved.

“What usually surprised them was that when they came in they lost their liberty,” explains Payne. “They weren’t allowed out of the brothels or out of control of the operators until they’ve worked off their contracts.”

According to a 2005 report by the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault, women are often beaten, raped and starved during their time at the brothels. In many cases, women are not allowed to refuse certain types of customers or sex without condoms.

Passports are always confiscated, and women are not allowed to keep any of their earnings until they had paid off their contract. These contracts, often called “debt bondages”, were around the $30,000 mark during Chris Payne’s time, but now often reache $50,000 or more.

The traffickers, according to Payne, often tell the women that the sum is the cost of arranging travel, accommodation, and forging papers if necessary. However, it is often exaggerated, and has a large profit margin.

The reason why Australia is a destination country is a subject of debate. Dr Jennifer Oriel, of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, blames it on the prostitution industry, saying that it is always desperate for new women.

“When you legalise prostitution, you legalise an industry that is built on supply and demand,” explains Dr Oriel. “The situation in Australia is that as the demand has grown, and because Australia is a wealthy country by international standards, there aren’t enough Australian women to meet the places of demand for prostitution.”

In Victoria brothel prostitution was legalised in the 1980s, and has subsequently been legalised in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, and Queensland.

According to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, a non-governmental feminist organisation, the legalisation of prostitution in Victoria has only increased the amount of illegal prostitution, with 100 unlicensed brothels operating in 1999.

This demand for women, says, Dr. Oriel makes traffickers resort to trafficked women.

According to Oriel, trafficking in Australia can only be curbed if Australia follows the Swedish Model. In 1999, Sweden introduced an approach that decriminalised the sale of sex, but made it a crime to buy sex.

The Australian government has taken many steps to combat trafficking. In 2003, the government introduced a $20 million anti- trafficking package, followed by the release of the Commonwealth Action Plan to Eradicate Trafficking in Persons. The action plan included the formation of an Australian Federal Police Transitional Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Team, visa arrangements for trafficked persons, and a victim support program. The Action Plan was designed to meet the obligations of the “UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children”, which Australia signed in September 2005.

In 2004, the Migration Regulations were amended, establishing two new witness protection visas for trafficking victims who make a significant contribution to the prosecution and investigation of trafficking offences. The problem, however, is that the visas tend to traumatise the victims of trafficking even further.

“There could be significant improvements in the legal framework, and also the framework for support for people who have been trafficked and enslaved,” says Burns.

In the first stage, the victims are given the Bridging Visa F, which is valid for a maximum of 30 days. In some cases, though, women are deported only a few days after they are given the visa because they are not seen as a “person of interest” in the investigation.

If the woman’s evidence is seen as beneficial, she is then granted the Criminal Justice Stay Visa (CJSV), which allows her to stay in the country in a time frame that is determined by law enforecement. When the CJSV expires, a person may be eligible for a Subclass 787 Witness Protection (Temporary) Traffficking Visa. However, to be granted the visa, they may need to meet several criteria, and the Minister has to be satisfied that they may be in danger if they return to their home country. After two years of holding this visa, a Permanent Witness Protection visa may be granted.

The problem, says Burns, is that the visa framework focuses more on the needs of law enforcement rather than those of victims of trafficking. The women are often only given the visa if they are seen as useful to the prosecution team.

The issue is exacerbated by the reluctance of many women to give evidence against their traffickers.

“For a woman who has been trafficked, there is often a significant threat made to her family in her host country that she mustn’t speak about it,” explains Dr Oriel. “A woman is unlikely to testify against traffickers when her life and that of her family depend on her not doing so.”

The other problem is that the temporary Witness Protection Visas are only granted at the end of the criminal justice process, which makes victims who are willing to give testimony feel insecure about the future.

While a modified visa framework that is more compassionate towards victims might be necessary, there is no guarantee that Australia will no longer be a destination country. Girls like “Nikki” are still being brought into Australia, many without a hope of the happy life that she has been lucky enough to finally find.

image by ArtWerk
Courtesy of Creative Commons