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Trafficking – a gateway into the sex trade…

By Andrea Downer, Freelance writer

Kingston, 13 March 2006 (Panos) - Receptionist and mother of three, Denise, left her job. She left her children with her sister and left Jamaica, hoping for a higher paying post in the Bahamas. Three weeks later she was back home – broke and jobless.

“The experience was terrible,” Denise said. “I would not go back and I would not tell even my worst enemy to go. I had sleepless nights. I cried night and day when I was there and prayed that I could get back my money so I could come back home.”

She was one of three Jamaican women who upon arrival in the Bahamas last year had their passports taken from them while they waited to be placed in jobs. The women also had to pay a fee for this placement.

They were held at a private home for two weeks. During the second week they became restless when still not given any jobs.

Near the end of the second week, when they began to demand that their money be returned, immigration officials visited the house and held the three women. Because they had not overstayed their time they were sent back to Jamaica.

“When I reached home, sufferation start teck me. In my whole life, is the first sufferation ever teck mi so,” says Monica, who has had a tough time readjusting since she came back.

“I am just trying to build back myself. I was very depressed when I came back,” she confessed. “(But) when I saw the things that some Jamaican women were forced to do, just to earn some money, I told myself that I wasn’t going to do it.”

“Some of the girls leave their husband in Jamaica, rent rooms and basically ran brothels. Bahamian men would be in and out of their rooms all hours of night and day,” she said.

Janet agrees. She spent a longer time in the Bahamas, job hunting after being abandoned by the person who was supposed to get her a job.

As her stay in the Bahamas lengthened, Janet said that she met other Jamaican women, some of whom had overstayed in the country by months or even years.

“Some of them worked at regular jobs for short periods. But they were mainly supported by their Bahamian boyfriends,” Janet said while explaining that some of the women who are tricked into going to The Bahamas, resort to working as exotic dancers in nightclubs while others engaged in ‘soft’ prostitution.

The US Department of State estimates that of the 600,000 – 800,000 people who are trafficked across borders every year, 70 percent are forced into the commercial sex industry.

“Me and one of my friends got a job in a old people’s home to cook their meals, but the owner, who was about 50 years-old, kept slapping us on our bottoms and trying to touch us intimately,” Vanessa confessed with her head bowed. “Whenever we resisted his advances, him threaten to call immigration on us, so we just put up with it.”

That job did not last longer than a week, she said. They left when their employer’s advances became bolder. However, the dependency on their lovers grew, and in time their lovers used the girls’ illegal status and threats of deportation to keep them in line.

Janet said the boyfriend of one of her girlfriends – Pam - became jealous when his girlfriend, who was an exotic dancer in a nightclub, began dating other men. He threatened to tell immigration about the illegal status of the group of Jamaican women. One night when Pam was out with her boyfriend, he did just that. When Janet returned to the house, she discovered that the room they shared was raided and her three friends taken to a detention centre and then sent back to Jamaica. Janet said she came back to Jamaica two days after her friends, as she did not want to stay there without them.

However, according to the interviewees, illegal immigrants are only sent back home after being detained, if they are caught before they spend six months in the country illegally. If they spend over six months, and do not have the money to pay their way back after serving their sentence, they are taken repeatedly before the courts, retried and sent back to prison. Because of this, they claim that some women have spent several years in detention centres and prisons, since their sentences were renewed repeatedly.

“Some of them stay in prison for years, because they have no money to buy their tickets to come back to Jamaica,” Janet insisted.

Repeated attempts to contact the police in Bahamas were unsuccessful. However, Jamaica’s Honorary Consul to The Bahamas, Patrick Hanlan, confirmed the women’s stories. He said he is very concerned that a large number of Jamaican women are held for very long periods in detention centres in The Bahamas, after being arrested for immigration violations.

“A lot of women come here from Jamaica and are promised jobs, which they do not get when they arrive. I really think they should do more thorough investigations before they pay over their money to these people,” Mr. Hanlan stated.

Excerpts from the US Department of State’s Human Rights Country Report published in 2004, states that detention and prison facilities in The Bahamas are usually overcrowded and prisoners are often mistreated and even beaten. According to the report, there are also inefficiencies such as a lack of effective record keeping, which can keep people in prison beyond their sentences.

It is not just Jamaicans who are victims of the Human Traffickers, according to the interviewed women, but that a number of Cubans and Haitians are tricked into making the costly trip to the islands in search of jobs as well. The US Department of State Report states that the Bahamas Department of Immigration reported that 3,034 persons were repatriated to their home countries in 2004. However, the report did not state the nationality of the persons who were deported. However, the US Department of State Report for 2002 states that in that year, “a total of 5,801 persons, including 4,897 Haitians, 374 Jamaicans, and 284 Cubans had been (deported from The Bahamas.)

Nancy Anderson, Legal Officer at the Independent Jamaican Council of Human Rights, said there is currently no specific legislation in Jamaican law that refers to human trafficking. However, she says persons can be and have been prosecuted for human trafficking crimes under certain sections of existing legislation.

“The Child Care and Protection Act is the only law in Jamaica that mentions the word trafficking, however, the offences against the Persons Act has several sections that deal with the protection of women and girls from crimes such as abduction, kidnapping, etc.,” Ms. Anderson said.

But according to Ann-Marie Bonner, Principal Director of the Policy Analysis and Review Unit of the Cabinet Office and Trafficking in Persons Taskforce, studies are being undertaken with support of the Inter-American Development Bank, (IDB) to develop effective legislation, which will address the problem of human trafficking in Jamaica. She says new trafficking legislation has been recommended which would assist in the prosecution of specific offences.