09/29/2024 – 7:43
Transformed into a book, the activist’s story highlights the “exportation” of people into prostitution and pornography. Kamila was sold to the criminal network at 14 and exploited in more than 15 countries for three decades. Kamila Ferreira* defines herself as a phoenix, as she rose from her own ashes. His gaze reveals that he lived a thousand lives in one body, loaded with eternal scars, just like his soul.
She was born and lived until she was 14 in a favela in São Paulo. She prefers not to reveal the name of the place, for fear of reprisals against her family – even though she has severed ties –, as the criminal organization that robbed her of her childhood is still active there today.
Kamila was born into a dysfunctional environment; his father was an alcoholic and had children with several women, many of whom were neighbors and even friends of his mother. “She was so in love with him that she always forgave him for all his infidelities”, he recalls. She reports that her father never lived in the house because her grandfather didn’t want him to, because he was black.
His early childhood was surrounded by violence. Inside the house, the atmosphere was one of machismo and abuse. He was beaten to the point of missing school for long periods. Outside, drug gangs dominated the busy, narrow streets.
At a very young age, she began to be raped by her older brother. After the death of his younger brother, at the age of seven, from leukemia, his future seemed doomed to suffering and marginalization.
“I wet the bed until I was thirteen years old because I was afraid to go to the bathroom outside at night. The favela was a very dangerous place, at night it was possible to hear fights or distant gunshots. Because of this, almost every morning I was psychologically or physically attacked by my family, they called me dirty or filthy, pulled my hair and rubbed my face on the mattress full of my own urine”, she reports in her autobiographical book.
“After my brother’s death, rumors began to circulate in the favela [de que seu irmão havia morrido e que sua mãe não podia trabalhar porque havia adoecido]and some guys came to my door offering a job as a nanny for my family. Without thinking, my grandparents accepted and agreed on a monthly salary for my grandparents [que não trabalhavam]”, explains Kamila. His mother was the sole breadwinner in the house.
It turns out there was no babysitting job, as Kamila describes.
“I arrived at a brothel, one of those big and old ones from the Brazilian colonial era. It was a house of luxury prostitutes, all young. They gave me fake documents and when I was 14…. I remember that my first client was a doctor from Brazilian high society. This man was old enough to be my father. I started attending to one, then another, and so on,” Kamila told DW.
While still a teenager, she was sold from Brazil to Chile, from Chile to Mexico and from Mexico to Europe, as if she were a commodity, like a sack of potatoes. As the story progresses, Kamila reopens the wounds caused by human trafficking and smuggling networks.
It is almost impossible not to wonder how a minor crossed so many international borders, even intercontinental, with false documents, without being detected. Kamila tells how, many years ago, she managed to enter Adolfo Suárez Barajas airport, in Madrid, “like a normal person”, using false documentation. “They didn’t even look at my face,” he recalls. Brazilian citizens do not need a visa to enter Spain for short-term visits (tourism, business and transit).
Spain, main destination for trafficking in women
Unfortunately, Kamila’s case is not isolated. Spain remains a strategic location for human trafficking, both as a transit and destination country.
According to the Spanish Ministry of Equality, in 2023, 1,466 victims of trafficking and exploitation were identified, including 18 minors, and 409 investigations were carried out, resulting in the arrest of 923 people and the dismantling of 109 criminal organizations. The majority of victims of sexual exploitation are women, most of them South Americans.
Published in 2021, a report on how the Brazilian justice system acts to suppress international human trafficking showed that Spain was the country that received the most trafficked victims from Brazil (56.94%).
The document, prepared by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the National Justice Council (CNJ), was based on 144 criminal actions with second instance decisions from the Federal Court.
Of a total of 714 victims cited in the processes, 92% had Brazil as their country of origin. Almost all Brazilian victims (98%) were taken abroad or, at least, there was an attempt to send them into prostitution. The majority of destinations were in Europe – in addition to Spain, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland. Suriname, the United States, Israel and Guyana were also chosen destinations for trafficking, according to the report.
Victims are transported in a variety of ways. In the case of African women, the majority arrive in small boats to their European destination. In the case of Latinas, the majority travel by plane, but there are also cases of women traveling on cargo ships, according to Kamila. Women from Eastern Europe tend to arrive by car, train or bus.
“I didn’t know I was being a victim of trafficking”
Kamila’s captivity lasted 30 years and 8 months and spanned more than 20 cities in 15 countries.
For a long time, Kamila was unaware that she was a victim of human trafficking. She argues that the term used to describe situations like the one she was experiencing was “white slavery”, and that she, therefore, did not see herself as a problem.
“If you weren’t white, if you were mixed race like me, or if you were black or indigenous, you would never identify as a victim of trafficking because, as I said before, it was called ‘white slavery’.”
There is a lot of confusion with the terms inside and outside of prostitution, as sexually exploited women of color, until recently, were not identified as victims of human trafficking.
Kamila, like most prostituted women, was addicted to alcohol. She remembers falling in love for the first time at that time, with a client, with whom she became pregnant. When she found out she was expecting a baby, she stopped drinking.
“He wanted me to have an abortion and told me to choose between him and the baby. Obviously, I chose the baby, and he threw me out on the street. I found myself in a country, pregnant, without documents, expecting a baby. All I did was ask God to protect me and help me. Today, thank God, my daughter is 19 years old. I managed to move on”, he recalls.
Abandoned and without support, the street became his refuge. Everyone she knew turned their back on her, from her pimp to the father of her child. During the nine months of pregnancy, full of fear and uncertainty, she was sheltered in a social center in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. However, due to harassment from a man who lived in the same place, she decided to leave and take refuge in García Sanabria park. There, his life took place between benches, for days and nights.
A life in solitude
Street fights, scams, mistreatment, physical violence, betrayal, heartbreak are some of the experiences that accompany thousands of trafficked women around the world.
According to the IOM, 206,000 victims of human trafficking were identified across the planet between 2002 and 2022. In 2022, there were 15,300 registered victims – a number that maintained the downward trend observed since 2019 due to the closure of sites during the covid-19 pandemic.
The proportion of victims of human trafficking identified as women, however, remained high, at 75% of the total; 65% of the total victims, or 6,700, were trafficked for sexual exploitation.
IOM data also considers the fact that victims identified as being victims of sexual exploitation may be victims of forced labor at the same time, which can alter the proportion calculations.
According to the most recent report from the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and Public Security, released in July this year with data compiled between 2021 and 2023, sexual exploitation is the second main form of human trafficking in the country, behind labor exploitation .
In Spain, between 25,000 and 30,000 people are currently involved in prostitution in the country, according to Miguel Ángel del Olmo, national coordinator of the In Género association. The activity takes place in around 800 clubs, 2,500 apartments and more than 40 street prostitution spots. Between 15% and 20% of this total are victims of human trafficking, according to data published in the Spanish online newspaper Artículo 14, whose coverage focuses on women’s rights. It is very difficult to compile statistics on trafficked people, as it is a crime that seeks to keep them anonymous, without leaving a trace.
According to the same survey, Brazil is the sixth most frequent nationality in prostitution in Spain, with 6%. The main ones are Colombia (21.9%), Paraguay (15.5%), Dominican Republic (13.4%), Venezuela (7.8%) and Romania (7%).
Exit from prostitution
Kamila was part of these statistics until 2019, when everything changed in her life.
“I was on the street, it was two o’clock in the afternoon. I had only earned 20 euros, and at seven o’clock at night I had to give 300 euros to my pimp”, he recalls.
“I started crying because I was desperate. If I didn’t pay this debt, it would increase. A Spanish lady, who was a volunteer for an NGO, was passing by that street and saw me crying. She looked as if she were scared, but her curiosity was stronger and she asked me why I was crying”, he says.
Kamila spoke about her situation to the woman, who listened attentively. The lady invited her to have a coffee and continue the conversation, but Kamila refused, as she couldn’t leave her post without paying the pimp.
“She went and asked the pimp the price to take me for two hours. She paid, we went to a terrace, had a drink, and in two hours I summarized my life for her… She asked me what I knew how to do, and I said that, despite having been a prostitute all my life, I knew how to wash, ironing, cooking, cleaning, and she gave me a chance.”
Spain, the “European Thailand”
More than three decades immersed in the suffocating world of prostitution led Kamila to write her first book, called Spain, European Thailand. The work will be published by the end of the month.
The title comes from the similarity she found between the Asian country and the European one. For Kamila, the only difference is that, in Thailand, prostitution is seen openly on the streets, regardless of the women’s age, whereas, in Spain, it is more hidden.
“For me, all of Europe is like an elegant carpet, beautiful in the eyes of the world, but all the dirt is hidden underneath.” The Iberian country is world famous for its rich cuisine, stunning beaches and vibrant culture, but it also faces the dark side of growing sex tourism, a reality less known outside its borders.
“You don’t need to go to Brazil, or even Thailand or Italy, to look for a woman. Here in Spain you can find women of all nationalities, ages, cultures and ethnicities. It’s a sexual paradise, that’s why I call it European Thailand”, he concludes.
*Fictitious name
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