That for example in the media and police predicted there would be 40, sex slaves trafficked to Germany [for the World Cup]. And they found four. Also in , the police and the politicians again predicted there would be the same number, 40, sex slaves trafficked in South Africa. In the event, they found none. Now the predictions for the World Cup were even more dramatic. We were told by the media that there were tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of prostitutes who would be brought into the host cities of the World Cup for sexual slavery during the games.
And there was a new twist on the story. Large numbers were supposedly going to be children and adolescents. In the scientific sense of the word. In early , we started a mapping project of brothels in Rio de Janeiro, and went out visited the major brothels that were being frequented by both sex tourists and Brazilian men.
There are points where sex is sold in Rio de Janeiro. We visited around 80 or 90 of these in the lead up for the games, the ones we had found out during our prior research were the most frequented and most popular.
We got headcounts on how many tourists were there, how many local men, how many women were working, what the work conditions were. We did interviews with the women in these places and kind of documented what their normal working conditions were.
During World Cup, we spent more than 2, hours doing in-field anthropological ethnographic work in these same 80 or 90 brothels and commercial sex points, and charting the changes during World Cup. So two days out of the five working days of the week, men were not coming downtown. And that was where at least 90 of the β actually, more like , when you take in Vila Mimosa and that whole area β of the commercial sex points in Rio de Janeiro are, also the largest venues are in that So these places closed down , basically, during World Cup.
