The person, who forces someone into prostitution is not necessarily the same person, who managed the recruitment or transport. This includes, to bring the victim into prostitution or urge to continue with prostitution by exploiting the predicament, the helplessness caused by the stay in a foreign country, or the juvenile age of younger than 21 years. The Punishment is fixed from six months of imprisonment to ten years. The punishment is more severe, if 1. If the offender through the act seriously abuses the victim or places the victim in danger of death, or 3.
In the recruitment phase, the victims are betrayed, so that they are made false promises about the nature of work or the conditions of work. Even in those cases, where the victims knew they would have to work in prostitution, it occurs, that they are confronted with working conditions they did not agree to, or that they are forced to continue work under these circumstances.
Especially African victims are put under pressure by the traffickers with exorbitant, and fictional high money claims up to 50 Euro to bay back the costs for their journey to Europe. The women have to earn this enormous sum in prostitution. Further means of coercion are: taking away the documents, physical or psychological violence, deprivation of food, blackmailing, surveillance, threats to do harm to family members and to take away all the earnings of the victims.
The following graph shows, that the majority of the victims in Germany come from European countries Germany, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungaria. From the African continent, most victims originate from Nigeria. The recruitment phase is usually very complex and it requires certain social and psychological skills on behalf of the recruiters. These analyse the vulnerabilities of the targeted persons and offer them what they have identified to be lacking.
Especially in the cases of young girls, this involves the exploitation of their innocence, the lack of life experience and the lack of strong and healthy family ties. By means of fraudulent promises and exposure of inexistent feelings of love, men pull the victims into love stories and make them fall in love with them. After the girls fall into the carefully placed trap, the next phases follow: transportation and exploitation. Read more For women like Maria, breaking free from the chain of human trafficking is always difficult.
