Among the concepts people don’t often put together in a single thought are these: African sex slavery and Ireland.
When identifying hotbeds of human trafficking and sexual bondage, the Emerald Isle does not often come to mind, especially as a destination for African girls and women, often from Nigeria. But, according to news reports, it’s true.
A new film called Trafficked, released in Dublin May 21, deals with precisely this issue, and has garnered some extra attention as it debuts because of recent events in the country.
Actually produced several years ago, according to The Irish Times, the feature film surfaced right as the country heard the latest news in the breakup of one of the worst prostitution rings in its history: a system of 48 brothels run by a man from a farmhouse in Wales.
The man, T.J. Carroll, was convicted in February of a slew of crimes a full three years after an initial brothel raid uncovered two Nigerian women willing to work with police to break up the ring.
Statements from the women, quoted in The Irish Times, revealed harrowing tales of how girls were brought into Ireland and controlled by “witch doctors” who cut them and intimidated them with strange rituals.
“The witch doctor then cut my chest, my waist, my legs, my two thumbs and my head. I was very scared because . . . I believed them,” reads a portion of a statement from the story.
Some women in the sex ring were prostitutes from Eastern Europe and South America, but many were girls from Africa who were brought in through other European cities at high cost, then forced into prostitution to pay off that debt, the Times reports. The women were often forced to work 15-hour shifts.
In an interview published this week on Movies.ie, filmmaker Ciaran O’Connon said he shot the film for under 10,000 Euros, and was surprised all through the process about the size of the problem in Ireland and the brutality of some of the stories he heard during his research.
This week, however, the FAS (Foras Aiseanna Saothair in Gaelic) or Training and Employment Authority announced a new program to aid sex trafficking victims. The program is “designed to act as a bridging mechanism providing the women with educational modules and career guidance,” according to The Irish Times.
The program will offer courses in English, computing, literacy, writing and even yoga, according to the story.
(badjonni/Creative Commons photo via Flickr)
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