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News & Updates

Report on Trafficking in Australia

Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault (ACSSA) released a paper reviewing research and developments in trafficking in women for sexual exploitation since the early 1990s. The paper, written by Lara Fergus, states the following facts;

• At least 1,000 women are kept in debt-bonded prostitution in Australia, where they are raped, beaten and starved.
• The women, usually from Thailand and Burma, are brought into Australia by human traffickers who force them to work as prostitutes - often in legal brothels - for free until they pay off "debts" of up to $50,000.
• In 1998-99, 237 women illegally in Australia were deported after being found in brothels. At that time, immigration officials were not required to question the women to work out whether they had been trafficked. Sometimes the traffickers turn them in to DIMIA (the Department of Immigration) to be deported because they're no longer a fresh face.
• There are at least 1,000 adult women in Australia in any one year who have been brought here to work as prostitutes and most have their passports removed and are subjected to violence and rape.
• They are usually locked in the brothel or a house with other trafficked women. This is often the period where the women experience the most violence. The sexual violence teaches them that they are there simply to satisfy customers and cannot refuse types of customers or any sexual act, including sex without condoms.
• Some victims report being shown pornographic images or videos and told that this is what they will be required to do.
• Rape, physical violence, starvation, and threats of harm to the women's families are all used to instill fear and punish those who resist or try to escape.
• Legislation outlawing human trafficking passed federal parliament in June 2005, delivering a 12-year sentence for trading adults and 20 years for children.
• A joint parliamentary committee into the Australian Crime Commission's response to trafficking in women for sexual servitude handed down a report into its year-long investigation in June last year.
• The federal government committed $20 million over four years to combat trafficking for sexual exploitation in 2003.

The Briefing is available online.