A new report by CNN has revealed how some women trafficked from Nigeria are forced into prostitution in a park in Paris, capital city of France.
The Bois de Vincennes, a sprawling park on the outskirts of eastern Paris, is home to horse riding schools and a zoo. It has also been part-commandeered by human traffickers.
The park’s central road is yet another point on the map of a massive cross-continental trafficking network that has channeled tens of thousands of Nigerian women and children throughout Europe and as far as Malaysia.
CNN reports that Nadège (not real name) who was one of these women before she managed to escape narrated how she was trafficked from Nigeria to France and forced into sexual slavery, at €20 ($23) per client, to pay off a colossal debt to a female Nigerian pimp known as a “madam.”
Nadège, who could not give her real name for safety reasons disclosed that she grew up in southern Nigeria. According to her, when she was six, she was raped by a group of neighbors, after which her parents sent her to live with an aunt.
At 15, Nadège disclosed that she was raped once again and had her first abortion.
Alone, she was easy prey for traffickers. A madam she met in Lagos promised her a better life in Europe, working as a waitress.
“I was told it was like a paradise. But getting here, it was like from frying pan to fire”, she said.
She further disclosed that before leaving, the madam made her swear an oath at a “juju” temple with a native doctor of Ayelala — a traditional belief system from southern Nigeria.
Nadège swore to repay her madam for sending her to Europe, and to never speak of her oath, or her debt, to anyone.
While describing her journey to France, Nadège disclosed that she flew on a commercial flight, with a fake passport her madam gave her. She was sent to work in the Bois a week after she arrived at the age of 20 years old.
Her debt, she was told, was €50,000 ($57,690). Others pay €60,000 ($69,226). Her madam gave her a €100 daily target and took away her passport and all her earnings, except money for food and rent.
“Sometimes you work from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the morning, maybe get home by 8 a.m.,” she told CNN.
Nadege said she cut ties with her madam when she got pregnant a year later and decided to keep her baby. She disclosed that she continued working as a prostitute but stopped making payments to her madam.
“I was waiting patiently for the death or the madness. I was like… ‘Should I go over to the street and start working? Should I abort my baby?'”
Nadege who stated that breaking away from the network was “the best decision of my life” is profoundly traumatized.
“I’m no longer beautiful. My glory’s been taken. I complained I was raped when I was 15. Imagine me coming to Europe to sleep with 10 men per night.
“No matter what I am tomorrow, I’m still going to be useless. Because I can’t proudly say my story. I can’t proudly tell the world who I am. Whatever I’m doing right now, I’m doing it for my son”, she said.
TheLagosTimes notes that the International Organization for Migration reports that the number of potential victims of sex trafficking arriving by boat in Italy has increased by almost 600% in the past three years, and 80% of them are Nigerians.