Opinion

Allison Morris: Drama brings home the reality of modern-day sex slaves

'Ana' played by Romanian actress Anca Dumitra, in the drama Doing Money, based on a true story.
'Ana' played by Romanian actress Anca Dumitra, in the drama Doing Money, based on a true story. 'Ana' played by Romanian actress Anca Dumitra, in the drama Doing Money, based on a true story.

THERE are distressing things most of us try not to think about, possibly because they are too upsetting or don’t particularly affect us. Until we realise that they do. They affect us all, whether just as citizens of this region, this island, the world in general.

This week I listened to an interview with – and later watched a drama based on the true story of – Ana, a young Romanian woman kidnapped and forced to work as a slave in the sex industry. The BBC drama Doing Money is named after a phrase used by one of Ana’s captors. ‘This one will do money,’ he says when he first sees her. The programme comes with a graphic warning and is not for the faint hearted. It is brutal, violent and heart-wrenching.

Ana eventually escaped her kidnappers in Belfast, having been moved around Ireland for almost a year. Credit must go to the PSNI unit which helped bring her kidnappers to justice. The drama shows an earlier arrest by gardaí who were less than sympathetic to the tragic-looking girls arrested in a Galway brothel.

The film shows a scene when Ana’s first ‘client’ arrives. The young woman fights him off. “She’s mad,” he shouts in outrage. “Fine way to treat an honest customer.”

That was the line that got me – “a customer”, when in reality that man, that ordinary looking Irish man in this fictional account, was a rapist. He didn’t see himself as that but that’s exactly what he was and is.

Ana was not a willing participant – she made that clear – but rather than question the scenario, he questioned her.

The brothels the women are forced to work in, stripped of their passports, phones and clothes, are in ordinary residential streets, places where you and I live.

The men who visit are normal-looking men of all ages and social classes. The girls were told they would be busiest on a Thursday night because that’s when the wives went shopping.

The drama is fictional. The story is not.

What kind of a savage pays money to have sex with a half-starved, terrified woman, covered in bruises and clearly distressed? Why don’t they ask questions? Why don’t they leave and report it to the relevant authorities?

The real Ana was forced to have sex with thousands of men. Thousands.

In 2014 she was one of a number of women who gave evidence to a Stormont committee that eventually led to Lord Morrow’s Human Trafficking and Exploitation Bill.

The act, passed in 2015, makes Northern Ireland the first and only place in the UK where the act of buying sex is a crime. The act of selling sex, by contrast, was decriminalised.

At the time one campaigner against the bill claimed clients often report women they think have been trafficked and would be put off if the purchase of sex was criminalised.

Ana said she was forced to have sex with 300 men in 13 days. Not one reported her plight to the authorities. Not one.

For those who have not been trafficked many are still vulnerable, suffering from addiction or being coercively controlled into selling sex by an overpowering partner or pimp.

Because a small number of women are empowered and working through choice does not mean that we turn a blind eye to hundreds of others being effectively raped multiple times daily.

Painting sex work like it’s some Pretty Woman-style profession does an injustice to the women and girls trapped in a cycle of violence and exploitation.

It’s hard to find any really accurate statistics but I was sent a study carried out by an Irish escort website in 2006 which asked men who used sex workers about their habits and views of the women.

Of almost 300 men surveyed 34 per cent said they would consider having sex with women forced into prostitution while 11 per cent said they definitely would.

Half said they would consider using a woman who is “exploited” while 16 per cent definitely would.

The last words should be left to the real Ana who said in a recent interview with the BBC World Service that she takes satisfaction from her role in bringing about the human trafficking bill.

“This law helps the victim and it criminalises the buyer and the trafficker,” she says. “So it destroys the ring.”

If you suspect someone is a victim of human trafficking, contact the PSNI on 101 or to stay anonymous, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. The Modern Slavery helpline, 0800 0121 700, is open 24 hours a day.