Once the initial trafficking ring was all corralled, the German Federal Police or the Bundespolizei took over the lengthy criminal prosecution proceedings. They were loaded into armored transport vehicles and were transferred to the local constabulatory for questioning and their eventual arraignments. Luckily for the trafficking victims, a lot of progress had been made in the last decade or so as to how they are handled.

They used to be sent back to their respective countries, whether they wanted to go back or not. Now, they are held in specialized counseling centers (NGOs), where they are provided a 30-day reflection period to decide whether or not to cooperate with the investigators.

Unfortunately, this offers little solace to the victims because most convicted traffickers in the past were not required to serveany real time in prison. It was common for judges to suspend sentences of two years or less for all crimes, including trafficking. The burden of proof is also placed on the victims. Many of the victims have been intimidated and blackmailed to keep them from testifying.

Because of these practices, the German government has come under criticism from not only organizations but other governments as well, including the U.S. government, which has made some steps that could be made to improve its trafficking responses. These steps include revising the law concerning the burden of proof. It also recommends that Germany improve its apparatus for handling sex trafficking victims, such as better housing.

HOME – shelters for those affected by sexual exploitation

The heartbeat and focus of our work are the shelters that we currently offer at two locations in Germany for those affected by sexual exploitation. They are places that are intended to give dropouts a fresh start in their lives. The HOMEs offer living space, advice and support on topics relating to external and internal exit. Together we will develop a new perspective on life for the time after the red light. 

The offer in the HOMEs

•  External exit: Regular advice and support on everyday issues and a new perspective on life
• Inner exit: Support in processing the situation and strengthening skills
• Inner freedom: pastoral care offering on a Christian basis
• Sheltered living: The HOMEs have an anonymous address
• Assisted living: Single room in a shared apartment with accompanying offers

Who is the offer intended for?

Our HOMEs are primarily for adult women who

• want to get out of prostitution/sexual exploitation
• want a fresh start into an independent life
• seek protection from perpetrators at an anonymous address

This applies to all women regardless of their origin, religion, willingness to give evidence to the police and their entitlement to benefits under the Social Security Code.

Our accommodations offer a protected environment to develop new perspectives on life. They have a bridging function and are not a long-term, supported housing option.

Admission to the MISSION FREEDOM HOME only takes place after consultation and request of those affected. Financial clarification in advance is not absolutely necessary, as our facilities are financed through donations.

scope of the offer

• You can live with us at an anonymous address for up to a year. (The period can be extended if necessary)
• If you have income or social benefits, you pay a monthly rent and contribute to the household costs. If you have no income, your stay will be covered by donations.
• During your time with us, you say no to drugs, alcohol or other addictive substances. The stay begins with a smartphone and internet-free period. 

New perspective on life: external exit

This is about building a life independent of the environment and being empowered to develop your own vision for the next steps.

• Financial security : being able to provide for oneself independently of prostitution
• Promoting coping skills : Becoming able to deal with the topics discussed here and/or to find and accept offers of help
• Promoting protection skills : Raising awareness of security issues and the ability to create and adapt your own security concept. 
• Building your own network : leaving the milieu often means breaking off almost all relationships. Our offer is intended to help build new networks. 
• Development of a follow-up perspective : Timely discussion of the topic, support in planning and achieving the next step after the stay in the HOME.

New Hope and Strength: Inner Exit.

An exit not only includes external life issues, but also requires a look into the inside of the person. Our offer for inner exit serves to find new emotional and social stability in everyday life and to develop inner freedom .

The goal is an independent and self-determined life in which you feel comfortable. This contains:

• Strengthening social skills : Learning to interact healthily with other people
• Strengthening emotional skills : dealing with feelings and stress/tension
• Support in emotional processing
• The development of a healthy self-image & self-worth
• Recognizing self-efficacy and self-responsibility : developing influence on one’s own life
• Resource development : discovering and trying out your own abilities. Design your own life with beautiful things
• The development of stabilization techniques
• Pastoral care offering according to Christian understanding

Living and everyday life

You live in a single room in our shared apartment and look after yourself. If necessary, we will support you in getting your everyday life under control.

As a member of the shared apartment, you support everyday household chores and take on regular tasks.

We regularly go on trips together with the household or organize our free time creatively.

Germany has come a long way in dealing with victims. In 2017, the German government increased victim protection efforts, as well as placing human trafficking specialists in immigration offices across the country.

Because this chapter, in particular, will be dealing with legal ramifications of trafficking, I think that it’s appropriate to discuss trafficking in a little more detail. In previous chapters, I have dealt with the ramifications of the sex trafficker’s actions, for example, the effects it had on Yua/Yancy.

Human trafficking may be considered as a form of organized crime. It certainly is the fastest growing type of crime worldwide.

“The term “trafficking in human beings” means “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons through the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, through kidnapping, fraud, deception, abuse of power or exploitation of special helplessness, or through Giving or receiving payments or benefits to obtain the consent of a person who has control over another person for the purpose of exploitation. “Exploitation includes at least the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or servitude, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of bodily organs.”

Human trafficking has many facets. On the one hand, criminals use the economic and social crisis in so-called emerging and developing countries to give people hope of a better life by luring them under false pretenses and then forcing a dependency by means of threats, violence or debt bandage. On the other hand, people grow up in exploitative systems and are conditioned to be exploited as slaves, knowing no other way. People are being treated like goods. They ste bought and sold like commodities. There is no other way to put humaman trafficking is Slavery!

Human trafficking can be broken into the following categories:

1. Labor exploitation

2. Bonded labor or debt bandage

3. Prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation

4. For organ trafficking

5. Unique to children: soldiers adoption, for begging, stealing or robbery(right out of Oliver Twist).

I would to spend a little more time discussing the various categories or reasons for women to end up in forced prostitution.

Economic hardship in the home countries:

A major factor in the extent of forced prostitution in Western European countries is the poverty in Eastern Europe and on other continents. The hardship and hopelessness drives many young women to take any job available to support their families.

Young women from Eastern Europe often become mothers themselves and urgently need work to care for their children. The children are then looked after by the grandmother while the mother works in prostitution in Germany. The need is so great that prostitution is not seen as one option among many, but as the only chance for the family’s survival.

Recruitment through false promises:

“Come to Germany and work as a model/dancer/in a bar/…” There are many agencies in Eastern Europe that advertise jobs in the West and place them there. Young women sign employment contracts e.g. B. for a restaurant in London. The agency then organizes the trip there and the young woman is taken to the new workplace by plane or bus. However, this is not in London, but in a brothel in a small German town, for example. Without identification documents, without knowledge of the place and the language, the young woman’s options for orientation and help are limited. Then there are forms of violence, threats and blackmail. Locked up and monitored, there is little chance of escape. The women are raped and carefully instructed in detail what they have to say where and how they should pursue prostitution.

Recruitment through love relationships:

More and more young German women end up in the red light district through romantic relationships. They are contacted on the Internet and then made dependent on the pimp through a fake love relationship. -> see also loverboy method

Some pimps are very open about the fact that they expect their girlfriends to prostitute themselves. And yet young women get involved because they are in love with the pimp.

If their own family environment is not stable or young girls grow up in homes or assisted living, the chances are high that they will develop friendships with men who have connections in the red light district. Friendships with men from rocker groups pave the way to a certain lifestyle of parties, drugs, expensive cars and even prostitution.

Sexual abuse in childhood

Girls who have experienced (more frequent) sexual abuse in childhood typically struggle with certain consequences of this, such as shame, feeling filthy and worthless, disruption of their own sexuality, and sexualization of relationships. Prostitution can be a long-term consequence of this. Several studies have found that many women in prostitution have a history of childhood abuse.

External factors that make it difficult to leave prostitution

Being locked up and threatened by pimps

Women who are forced into prostitution by human traffickers or pimps often find themselves locked in apartments and actually unable to escape. They are always accompanied so that they are never alone. When they are in a hotel with a suitor, helpers from the network make sure that they cannot escape alone afterwards. Some are allowed to go to some appointments, e.g. For example, you may be traveling alone to the nail salon, but in such situations the pimp regularly checks the location via telephone and exerts psychological pressure through regular calls.

Lack of finances for a new start

In order to get out of prostitution, you need, above all, a financial basis. The rent of an apartment and livelihood must be secured for some time without having to take on a new job.

Since most people in prostitution come from abroad, they are not immediately entitled to social benefits to secure their livelihood, and they also do not receive unemployment benefits because as prostitutes they are considered self-employed people in Germany.

In reality, the women struggle financially every day to survive: the debts to the pimps have to be paid off, the room rent has to be paid daily. These two costs alone eat up the majority of the income. The small remainder remains for personal expenses or to provide for the family. There is no money left to save. However, a financial buffer would be necessary, for example to pay a deposit for your own apartment.

No safe place to live

Many women do not have their own apartment, but live with the pimp or in a room in or near the brothels. The workplace is usually also the women’s place of residence, so a distinction is not possible. To get out, you not only need your own apartment, but also security from pimps. For safety, women need physical distance. Often the entire personal network of relationships is in the red light area, so there are few contacts with whom they could temporarily stay privately.

Legally uncertain situations

Many women in the red light do not know their own rights and are unsure whether they live legally in Germany. Some of them had their passports confiscated. They are afraid that they will be legally prosecuted for doing so. The legal situation plays a major role, especially for women from African countries of origin, as they are often unable to stay in Germany and their asylum application is rejected. They fear returning home and are therefore more likely to stay in the illegal underground.

Linguistic challenges

Most women in prostitution speak little German. In some cases they were only at school in their home countries for a few years. Some are even illiterate. Leaving the job is a big challenge for them, as they first have to attend language courses and school classes in order to find other work. They don’t make any money during this time. Only a few are legally entitled to financial support during these periods. If they manage to find a new job, many find it difficult to communicate or understand the job requirements.

Uncertainty about on-site assistance/disorientation

Some women are regularly taken to new locations by their traffickers or pimps. Some change cities every week. This creates a high level of helplessness and disorientation. Help structures in the city are unknown, and in some cases they don’t even know which city they are currently working in.

Missing contacts outside of the red light

For many women, the red light district is perceived as a world of its own. You yourself talk about the fact that there is the milieu and the other world outside. Anyone who has to work in a brothel every day loses contact with people outside. Either because pimps specifically encourage this, or because it means a difficult balancing act to combine both worlds of life. Therefore, the remaining relationships with other people remain within the same system. There is a lack of friends outside who can give you the courage to get out or who can actually support you in building a new life.

Internal factors that make it difficult to leave prostitution

Fear as a paralyzing factor

Addictions and dependencies

Drugs and alcohol are often daily companions in the environment. Some johns want to consume drugs with the women as part of their booked time. For some women, drugs or alcohol are the only way to cope with their emotional pain.

According to the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, 88% of prostitutes take substances such as painkillers, psychotropic drugs and drugs. Anyone who is addicted first needs withdrawal to get out. However, this can fail due to many things. Some people don’t want to break away from drugs because the inner emotional pain is considered unbearable and is heavier than the burden of prostitution.

Pimps use threats and violence as a means of intimidation. The violence is either directed against the women themselves or against people who are important to them. They remain in the place of exploitation out of fear of the possible consequences of fleeing. They decide to exploit themselves in order to protect others from violence or exploitation.

Destruction of one’s own ego identity

Anyone who is exposed to the toxic manipulation of a lover boy over a longer period of time begins to align all their thoughts and actions with the other person. Your own wishes or needs no longer have any space and gradually disappear. Thoughts about your own future fade. Those affected lose a sense of themselves and tend to live in a mode of functioning.

Traumatization and trauma-related disorders 

Everyday life in prostitution is full of violence: urinating/defecating on women, verbally humiliating or choking them, penetrating all orifices and much more – all of this happens every day in the red light district. The body regularly has to endure situations that do not correspond to its own wishes, but to those of the paying customer.

To endure this requires the ability to detach the body from personal feelings and to escape into the interior with the soul. This process is called dissociation and is a survival mechanism for traumatizing situations in which flight or fight is not possible.

Studies by Melissa Farley show that violence experienced causes severe brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Panic attacks, nightmares, insomnia, dissociation, depression, self-harm, high levels of stress – all of these are what most people who have been in prostitution face.

With this level of stress, those affected are in constant survival mode. In this mode, the brain has no capacity to think long-term about the future; all that matters is surviving that day.

Destroyed perception of one’s own worth and dignity

If women in prostitution were exposed to sexual violence in childhood (according to the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, this affects 43%), this shapes their perception of themselves.

Long-term consequences affect one’s sense of one’s own worth. Those who perceive themselves as worthless and polluted think less about other options for their own lives. Their own exploitation makes more sense to them because their identity was shaped and violated by the abuse. Some people have so low self-esteem because of their own abuse that they think they don’t deserve anything else.

Without outside help, it is hardly possible to get out

As an organization, we experience that exiting the prostitution exploitation system alone is hardly possible. Help structures are needed that address and address both external and internal factors.

This is where our MISSION FREEDOM HOMEs come in. With our offer we would like to support women in their exit and in their process towards independence. You can find out more about this in the “ What we do ” section

In 2002 prostitution was made legal in Germany. It is no longer considered immoral but is rather a recognized trafe. The prostitution act has been in force since 2017. It sets out rules around the topic of prostitution to prevent force and exploitation and to protect those working in prostitution. It primarily comprises the obligation to health advice, registration as a prostitute and a license requirement to run a prostitution network.

I am not sure if making prostitution legal is a good or a bad thing. At least, the girls can get routine check ups, and they aren’t getting arrested and hopefully are not getting beat up either. If they limit the prostitutes to brothels and take them off the streets, there is less of a chance for them to be kidnapped by serial killers or other crazy predators.

However, I think that it is easier to cover up sex trafficking. How do you tell if a girl is being forced to be a prostitute without talking to each one individually. The question is, when are you supposed to do this? Can you trust that they are telling the truth? They may be too scared to admit that they are there against their will.

The only thing I do know is that all the girls that were rounded up today were there against their will. Now, we had to figure out what to do with them and how to protect them so that it doesn’t happen again.

According to Strafprozessordnung [de] (StPO, i.e. Criminal Procedure Code) a suspect, arrested or not, has to be informed before any interrogation about their right to remain silent. Though the police and courts may not draw inference from the complete silence of the accused in any stage of criminal proceedings, inference may be drawn if the accused is selectively silent. Suspects cannot be heard under oath.

Before any interrogation begins a suspect, arrested or not, must be informed:

• Of the crime for which he is charged
• About his right to remain silent
• About his right to consult an attorney before the interview
• About his right to name any evidence in his favour

Foreign suspects have the following additional rights:

• Translation assistance, and

• Consular assistance

A person against which exist plausible causes of suspicion can be interrogated as an ordinary witness in criminal proceedings against another person.

However, in this case, according to StPO, the witness can refuse to answer questions that could incriminate themselves (or one of their relatives). The suspicious witness also must be cautioned about the right to remain silent. Suspicious witnesses can not be heard under oath.

However, the German constitutional court has decided that the much more strict UK laws, in which complete silence of the accused can be used against him depending on additional evidence, are compatible with the German constitution. Thus, Germany may extradite persons to the UK. It also implies that changing the German laws towards those of the UK would not violate the German constitution.

After doing some studying about the legal systems in some larger countries in Europe it became evident that Felix Popovic was a pretty shrewd person because of all the countries he could have chosen to have his newest acquisitions brought into, Germany seems to have the most lax laws.

The only thing going our way is that he turned out to be a bit of a weasel, and he caved almost immediately after he was captured by the European ATF.

I believe Burak Kaya just turned evidence because he was just looking for a way to get out of the business. I will devote all of Chapter Twenty-One to my interrogation of him. The rest of this chapter will be spent with Popovic.

While Popovic did not have everyone in his network memorized, he certainly had the major players documented in master files. When he was captured, he had his master list of all of his politicians who were on his payroll. This proved to be an unforeseen windfall. Even though we had their names, I don’t expect that the politicians will ever see the inside of a cell because they were just too wealthy and powerful. What I am hoping for is that they will, at least, lose their positions.

When Popovic was brought into the interrogation room and before a word was said to him, the interrogators Otto Klein and Heinrich Bauer set up two systems for audio and video. Only when they were both working did they read him his rights. They did not want this slippery eel to get out on any technicality. They also knew that he had friends in very high places, and he had virtually unlimited resources. With just one word he could pretty much have anyone killed.

The sheer power that he had was quite intimidating. Even though he had the best legal team imaginable, he refused to have a lawyer present. Even though he was quite a narcissist, he also was quite brilliant and was an accomplished lawyer in his own right, so his refusal for legal representation was not unexpected. Besides, he was having way too much fun. He also knew that everything he said when he was initially captured was inadmissible in court because he had not been read his rights yet.

Popovic thought he held all the cards, so he was toying with them. But what he didn’t understand or take into account is that they never thought that he would stand trial. They simply wanted to destroy his network. A network that had taken years to build. By discovering his master list on his person, even though it could not be used in court, it was enough to roll up all the politicians on his payroll. Without their protection, Popovic’s trafficking network was now vulnerable. They also had most of his loyal henchman in custody and all of his traffickers. One other thing he didn’t know was their ace in the hole, and that was Burak. If he knew this, he might not be quite so smug.

When Popovic was questioned about the list he had on him, he, of course, denied any knowledge of it. He said that when he was frisked by the ATF forces, they planted it on him. Of course, nobody in the interrogation room believed this. But it was virtually impossible to refute his story. When they offered to give it back to him, he said why would I want something that was never mine in the first place. So he didn’t even fall for that ploy.

After interrogating him for eight solid hours without even a bathroom break, they called it a day. Not once did he complain about the lack of breaks. He had not made one slip up and had not shown one sign of weakness. He was truly a master of his craft. It became quite apparent how he had risen to the position he held in the trafficking ring. When they were done for the day, he looked as fresh as he did when he stepped out of his Sikorsky S-92 Executive Luxury helicopter with his contingency of security personnel. He was totally unfazed by his arrest and the questioning. It was amazing how the tides had changed. When he started singing like a canary, they thought he was going to be easy to trip up. It became evident that this was not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination.

The questioning continued for two more days with only minor progress being made. The only thing he was willing to admit to was that he was the CEO of a large corporation and that his pilot had inadvertently landed on the wrong airfield. When questioned about the plane full of girls, he had no idea where that other plane came from. It was apparent that he was going to have to be let go very soon. His security staff had already been released. The only people still in custody were the actual traffickers that were on the plane with the girls and young women, and that was because there were minors on board the plane, and that they were evidently there against their will.