Prostitutes flock to streets of gold
The majority of foreign sex workers are here because Irish clients will pay more for their services than in almost any other country, writes Jim Cusack
Sunday September 05 2010
MOST of the young foreign women working in the sex trade in Ireland are here because Irish men are prepared to pay more for their services than clients almost anywhere else. Gardai involved in vice investigations say that despite widely publicised reports of human trafficking, the vast majority of foreign sex workers are drawn here by the money Irish men are prepared to pay for sex.
As well as women working in the trade, the number of young male homosexual prostitutes coming here is also increasing. There were 75 men offering 'man on man' massages on two websites used mainly by female Chinese 'massage' women in Dublin last week. There were also a few 'female to female' massages on offer.
Gardai say they do not know the number or percentage of girls and women who
have been trafficked here because there have been very few investigations in the area, particularly in Dublin. However, circumstantial evidence from raids in rural divisions suggests that the majority of prostitutes are here voluntarily -- because they can charge more than in almost any other European country.
The charges quoted on a prostitution website of 100 to 150 for a half-hour session is a multiple of anything that prostitutes might make in eastern Europe and far more than they might make in Britain, which has also been swamped with foreign prostitutes since the accession of the eastern European states into the EU.
Ireland's prostitution rates were set -- and accepted -- at the height of the economic bubble and seem far higher than in other EU countries. Last month there was a political row in Germany over 'flat rate' brothels where customers were entitled to any services between 10am and 4am for a flat rate of 70 with an evening, again unlimited services rate, of 100. The prostitutes, mostly eastern European, were paid a flat rate of 70 a shift and whatever they can make on tips.
Blogsites used by men who engage in sex tourism in Europe show that rates charged by prostitutes in Holland and France are between 40 and 60, and even cheaper in Spain and Italy. This, gardai say, is why so many prostitutes are travelling here as they are simply making far more money than they would elsewhere. Word spread in Brazil after associates of the former madam and model Samantha Blandford Hutton brought the first women from that country in the late Nineties. A considerable number of prostitutes discovered by gardai working in rural towns are from Brazil.
An Italian student working here as a prostitute to pay for tuition fees recently told a reporter posing as a client that she was delighted with the amount of money she was earning in Ireland and that she intended to stay until she had made enough for her studies and keep at college back in Italy.
Gardai said that among the women found working in Dublin during the early days of Operation Quest -- a dedicated vice unit set up in 2001 -- were students from a Scottish university. The word had spread about the amount of money that could be earned in one weekend in Dublin working from a rented apartment. Cheap Ryanair flights added to the attraction, gardai said.
Gardai say that though sex trafficking does exist, the "vast majority" of young women working here were doing so voluntarily and most showed little interest in returning to their home countries in the short term because of the money they were earning. Even after paying pimps like TJ Carroll and father and son team Peter and Mark McCormack and other expenses, they were earning far more than they could elsewhere.
Some of the most attractive young women were making remarkable amounts of money. According to gardai, the women were being paid thousands of euros for a full night.
A group of young Brazilian women who exclusively worked city-centre hotels in Dublin and who claimed their passports had been stolen by their pimp were later discovered to have made enough money in six months to have bought businesses back home. Their complaint that their passports had been stolen was actually a ruse to break their contract and return with their money.
The remarkable amounts of money being made at some of the Chinese massage parlours that have proliferated around the country was illustrated by the case of the hard-working Junxiu Hua, the 35-year-old prostitute who sent more than 1m back to a bank account in China after spending three years in Dublin.
She only came to the attention of gardai after banks reported accounts she had
here in which 243,000 had been deposited (and which was later awarded to the CAB by the High Court). She had begun working on her own and as her business expanded, she had hired other young women to work in three apartments with her. There was no evidence of any violence or pressure being used to force the women into sex work.
A survey of websites used by Chinese prostitutes indicated that there are now about 160 'massage' parlours operating in Dublin, a significant increase since they began appearing about four years ago. As with the other European prostitution rackets, the Chinese massage parlours are run by crime gangs with centrally controlled mobile phone contact numbers.
There is clear evidence, however, that some women have been trafficked into Ireland and forced against their will to work as prostitutes but the extent of the trafficking and enslavement is unknown.
Only two gardai, a detective and a young garda seconded from uniformed duties, are involved in detecting sex trafficking in Ireland. They are all that remains of what was once a 16-strong squad under an experienced detective superintendent set up in 2005 when the issue of sex trafficking first arose here.
Prostitutes flock to streets of gold
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