Film informs Bulgarian prostitutes

Highly educated Bulgarian women without perspective work in our country as prostitutes. A pilot project in Groningen and Friesland attacks abuses.
The northern provinces are going to deal with Bulgarian human traffickers much harder. Groningen and Friesland were given two tons [of euros] from the national government to start a two year pilot. ‘Since the entry of Bulgaria into the EU many Bulgarian women have come to the Netherlands to work here as prostitutes’, says the public prosecutor Oebele Brouwer.

Since two years at least 150 Bulgarian women are active in the northern provinces. According to Brouwer they mainly are highly educated women. According to him they don’t come here under false pretences. ‘But still there is a very negative choice behind this. Despite having a diploma, they can’t find work in Bulgaria. To maintain their family nevertheless, they finally decide to work as a prostitute in the Netherlands, because large sums of money are held out for them’. This is especially deceptive because once the women are working, they have to hand over nearly all their money to the traffickers. ‘They then say: “we took you here, you must pay off the debt to us.” ’

With the pilot the provinces want to be one step ahead of these abuses. One of the aspects is training Bulgarian policemen. ‘They come to here for a month of three, four and learn to work with our system’, says Brouwer. The intention is that the policemen can already do preventive work in their own country. ‘Above all we then have a better view on what happens with the women after they have been interviewed here. Now they go back to Eastern Bulgaria and we loose them. If the intimidation continues in their home country, we have no view on that anymore’, says Brouwer.

Another idea is to make a documentary about Bulgarian prostitutes in the Netherlands as a way to give the Bulgarian women a better picture about how things go in the Dutch prostitution branch.

Most abuses come to light through inspections, says Brouwer. ‘So, lately there was a 16 year old girl behind the window. She had a false passport which said she was eighteen. She worked in prostitution since she was fourteen.’