Australian brothels and sexual slavery

In its broadest sense, the concept of “sexual servitude” covers a myriad of practices and relationships, limited only by the brutishness of human imagination. It has existed since our species began to walk on two legs and will remain as long as we do.

Today it is used to cover such diverse phenomena as legal and illegal prostitution; mail-order brides; geishas and other contemporary forms of “comfort women”; numerous types of arranged marriage; polygamy; and culturally-sanctioned rape. Then there are those who follow Marx and the more radical feminists in saying ordinary bourgeois marriage itself is a form of prostitution.

The notion may even cover aspects of social security. The London Daily Telegraph reports (January 30, 2005) that Germany's welfare reforms provide that a woman under 55 out of work for more than a year who refuses to take any available job - including one in the sex industry - will lose her unemployment benefit. An endearingly Teutonic form of mutual obligation.

Clearly, we cannot get rid of all forms of sexual servitude. But what we can do is rein in those variants which are regarded as intrinsically abhorrent (at least in our kind of society) and over which governments have jurisdiction and some control.

I am referring specifically to the sexual trafficking of women, mainly from South-East Asia and China, to work as slaves in Australian brothels.

The term is not a metaphor. This is the real thing - the ownership and exploitation of women who are physically and psychologically vulnerable and who are usually acting out of the sheerest desperation. They are the effective property of other human beings (mostly, but not always men).

They may be potential migrants promised certain kinds of work but forced into prostitution when they arrive in the country. They may have paid a fee, or bribe, or have entered into a “debt contract”, which they have to pay off by having sex with as many men as their owners care to force on them, often without using condoms. Virtual prisoners in the brothels, these women put their bodies at others’ disposal for anything up to 15 or 16 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week. Their “wage” is a few dollars a week.

Admittedly, the more benign owner allows them to work for themselves on the occasional day off. But, generally speaking, they are the de facto - though certainly illegal - property of the traffickers and brothel owners. This, in plain language, is bondage.

Once the women have paid off their “debt” they are usually discarded. Indeed, the traffickers are more than happy for them to be caught and deported when they are no longer a saleable commodity. Often the traffickers themselves dob in the women to immigration officials.

Over the last few years there have been some changes in the way we confront and deal with both victims and perpetrators. Governments at all levels have begun to take the problem seriously - notably through the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission Inquiry into Trafficking in Women, as well as the National Action Plan to combat Trafficking in Women. There have even been a few prosecutions, though not, as yet, any convictions.

There has also been a welcome change in attitude towards the victims. Until 2003 foreign women caught in brothels who appeared to be victims of sex trafficking were usually taken directly to immigration detention centres where they would be processed and then unceremoniously deported to their country of origin.

Among other things, this proved awkward for prosecutors who were unable to obtain relevant testimonies against the traffickers. So the federal government came up with a compromise. If the women agreed to act as witnesses they might be granted a special visa to stay in Australia while they were helping police and prosecutors with their inquiries.

In 2004 the Commonwealth introduced three new visas for which victims could apply: the Bridging visa, the Criminal Justice Stay visa and the Witness Protection visa, all of which allow people to remain in the country but only for the period of criminal justice proceedings.

Put another way, the Australian Government is asking these women to testify against their exploiters and then forcing them to return to a country where their own lives and those of their families would be in serious danger. This is not protection we are offering them, except in the sense implied by the term “protection racket”.

How different is it - morally - from the attitude of the traffickers who discard their victims once they’re no longer pretty, or are too diseased to continue work?

For obvious reasons, many - let’s say the vast majority - of women are terrified of giving evidence against their traffickers. In any case, not a single witness protection visa was granted in 2003-04, according to the latest official figures from the Department of Immigration.

Surprisingly, in this area the Australian Government seems reluctant to follow the lead of the US Department of State. The first recommendation of the department’s 2003 “Pathbreaking Strategies in the Global Fight Against Sex Trafficking” conference is that governments should:

Pass comprehensive national anti-trafficking laws that prosecute traffickers and provide for the safety and privacy of the victim, proper representation in court, access to medical care, social assistance, compensation for damages, and the right to seek and receive residency. (Emphasis added.)

In the department’s 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report (foreword by Condoleezza Rice), Australia is commended for complying with “the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”. But the report also suggests: “The government should consider expanding its protection efforts to cover victims who co-operate with the police but who are not part of a viable investigation.”

In this regard, it is instructive to consider Italy’s approach to the question. Here, there is a policy not only of comprehensive victim protection, but also integration into the general community. In 2004 alone, the Italian Government oversaw 69 projects to assist 8,600 women victims. Some 1,940 victims, including 118 children, entered social protection programs. And others were provided with training in literacy and vocational training. This is unconditional protection, based on solid humanitarian principles.

But of equal, if not greater, interest is that this compassionate approach has gone hand in glove with an increased rate of arrests and convictions of the traffickers themselves - with several smuggling rings detected and broken.

Such a result is not surprising. People are obviously more likely to co-operate with the authorities if they do not fear or know they are about to be deported - and if they have a support network in the wider community.

In other words, what the Italian policy demonstrates is that, in this particular area, what is morally right coincides with what is politically and legally effective. A very unusual combination. But one from which Australia just might learn.

There is, of course, an obvious objection. Discussing Australia’s existing arrangements, where temporary visas are contingent on giving evidence, Federal Justice Minister Senator Chris Ellison has said, “That is something which we support but it can't be used as a back-door method of getting into Australia”.

Which would seem to imply that adopting the Italian system - falling in line with US policy - would make it more likely that people would play the system to get into Australia.

Quod (only a middle-aged male politician could possibly think) demonstrandum.

There are far easier ways than subjecting yourself to months or years of violation, disease and starvation to get into Australia by the back door. A pretty Chinese female unable to get an ordinary student visa could, for example, enrol as an external student at the Central Queensland University which - it has been alleged (see the Sydney Morning Herald, February 21, 2005) - is being used as a conduit into the Australian sex trade. The university’s Fiji campus, it seems, is none too fussy about the educational qualifications of those it enrols from overseas.

The proposal to follow Italy’s example would show ordinary decency for a small number of women who are at, or very near the bottom of, the sexual slime scale. We do not have official figures. As the Parliamentary Joint Committee pointed out, the numbers vary “from over 1,000 to a handful”. But, as Minister Ellison himself has also said, one is one too many.

In this respect, if no other, he should be prepared to go all the way with Condy.