Antwerp police close sex clubs after “serious indications of human trafficking”
In Deurne and the police in E have orders from Mayor De Wever (N-VA), two buildings due to serious problems of human trafficking. The city of Antwerp reports this in a press release.
In Deurne, it concerns a building in Bisschoppenhoflaan. On November 29, the police jointly conducted a check on complaints from neighbors about prostitution activities. The property consists of three apartments, two of which were rented through the sex advertising website Redlights. The entrance to the building was not locked and therefore free to enter. The police found several foreign women on the outside, control is confirmed.
This mainly concerns women who do not speak English and Dutch. They are collected and deposited and sometimes do not even know themselves in Antwerp. The sex workers pay per day and have to hand over their earnings to an unknown person who collects the receipt. The property must be closed for at least a month.
In the Molenaarsstraat in Ekeren, it concerns a building that will be closed for a second time. It’s about sex exploitation Playbunnies. On July 30, the mayor decided to close this building due to the disturbance of public order and banned any form of operation for three weeks. On November 27, the police again established that the sex workers work and sleep in the finishing rooms of the sex exploitation.
Human trafficking
As the women both live and work in the finishing rooms of the exploitation, the manageress clearly has control over them. Here, too, the sex workers are not proficient in the Dutch and English language. They have to pay half of their income on top of the rent. In addition, the website of the operator advertises oral sex without a condom. attracts the manageress from a certain segment of customers. By forcing these sex workers to offer oral sex condoms, the manageress endangers the health of the sex workers. The building has now been closed for two months.
The housing and care of vulnerable women and the taking of sexual exploitation make action by the mayor necessary. The facts as a whole show that there is a second underlying development, there are facts of human trafficking in the apartments on the first and the second floor of the building in Deurne and sex exploitation in Ekeren.