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"Mariana was hanged, Natasha was strangled, and Olga was raped", shocking confessions and parallel lives of sex workers

2023-01-22 10:09:33Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

"Mariana was hanged, Natasha was strangled, and Olga was raped",

Sex workers in the Republic of Moldova do not expect to get help from the police because their work is illegal in this country. They tell DW reporter Violeta Colesnic that they often fall victim to violence.

"Behind the polite facade of a well-dressed client, a sample can be hidden," says a Moldovan sex worker. She knows what she's talking about, because her place of work is a street in the north of the Republic of Moldova. There we met her and two of her colleagues. They tell us how dangerous their work is: "Mariana was hanged, Natasha was drowned. I don't know how Iulia died," she says. "Tanea was beaten to death, her lifeless body was found on the side of the road. The lifeless body of another sex worker was thrown into a canal. When they found her, she could only be identified by clothes."

The Republic of Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe, with a population of nearly three million, has 15,800 sex workers, two-thirds of whom live and work in the capital, Chisinau. For male sex workers, the figures are not known. How much these women are discriminated against is shown by a current survey conducted in this former Soviet republic: 88 percent of the respondents said that they would not want to stay close to a person who works in the sex sector. Prostitution is illegal in the Republic of Moldova, everything takes place behind the scenes, and women do not expect to receive any kind of help from the authorities. When they say how they make a living, they have to pay a fine that is from 88 to 118 euros.

The sex workers we spoke to tell of fear and humiliation: They are often followed at night by police with flashlights and have to hide in the bushes. Most of the women say they decided to become sex workers because of poverty and misery, seeing it as the only chance to survive and feed the family. 

Ukrainian sex workers have their own corner

The street "Calea Basarabiei" in the capital Chisinau runs through an industrial area. The five kilometer long road is known as the road on both sides of which sex workers wait for potential customers.

The different groups are spread across the area. Young women who are just starting out are pursued first, says a sex worker who has been in the profession for 20 years: "We are old women, 36 or even 46 years old, and the men who come here for sex prefer young women more, so we pursue them those." She says that with the start of the war in the neighboring country, more and more Ukrainian women are appearing on this street, but their work is organized by pimps. "And they only work at night, always in a fixed place."

Other Moldovan sex workers also say that in the Republic of Moldova this sector is no longer organized by pimps, women work independently and do the shopping themselves with clients.

Luxury escorts earn several hundred euros per night, while women who wait for customers on the street receive ten to 25 euros per customer. The smaller the town, the lower the price: In a small town with 30,000 inhabitants, prices go as low as five euros.

Parallel life

This work is especially difficult in small towns, not only because of the low price, says a sex worker in her forties: "Everyone thinks badly of women like me and treats us badly. I've even been arrested I had to pay a fine, the police know what I do". It is very difficult for her children: "At school or in the courtyard of the palace, when they play, they make fun of them because their mother is a prostitute."

She does this job because she has not seen any other way to earn money: "Many people think that prostitution is the easiest way to earn money. Whoever says that has no idea how difficult it is for a woman who sells the body, to find spiritual and physical balance again." What she needs is the chance to earn money in a different way. "Everyone treats us with disrespect, they see us as something dirty and disgusting. It happens that we are treated worse than criminals who have killed people."

In addition to women who wait for customers on the street, there are also so-called "apartment girls", who offer their services in their own apartment or in the apartment provided by customers. Often they are students or married women whose circle does not I know they work in this field.

This group includes Diana, who has an unemployed husband and two small children. She has a permanent job and works there even after hours, but the salary of 172 euros is not enough for a family of four. That's why she started working as a sex worker: "I would do everything so that my children do not suffer from hunger. I lead two parallel lives, no one knows about the second profession. However, I am very present in the lives of my children, I'm a good mom."

Olga was raped when she was 12 years old by the teacher's husband

The five "apartment girls" we spoke to are married and have children. They don't want their circle to find out about their "parallel life" as sex workers, and they are very afraid that one day it might become known. However, none of them wants to give up the stable income they earn as sex workers.

According to a study by the non-governmental organization, Act for Involvement, almost half of sex workers in Chisinau were victims of sexual violence in childhood or early youth. Olga, who has been working as a sex worker for 26 years, says that when she was 12 years old, she was raped by her teacher's husband. But she did not tell, because the doras threatened to kill her if she opened her mouth. "I didn't speak up because I was too scared. So one day I started sleeping with men to earn money."

Disease, poverty, despair 

2.7 percent of women are infected with HIV, says a UN report on developments in the Republic of Moldova. A woman who has participated in luxury escorts shows that her clients have been office holders, successful businessmen, mayors, politicians. She does not know from whom she contracted HIV. Due to the infection, she lost her clientele and her only source of income. Due to poverty and desperation, she began to trade sexual services for food. He later became an alcoholic and ended up in the hospital in an alcohol-induced coma. The thing she regrets the most is that she stopped studying medicine when she got the offer to work as a sex worker.

Most of the women working in this field in the Republic of Moldova have not completed high school, come from poor backgrounds and find it difficult to find another job.

Some women report that they have paid fines for prostitution, while others say that they have escaped the fines: for example Larisa, who has been working as a sex worker for 26 years. It comes from the separatist territories of Transylvania, which with the help of Russia were separated in 1992 from the Republic of Moldova. Since she does not have a Moldovan ID, she does not have to pay the fines. With the money she earned working as a sex worker in Chisinau, she managed to buy an apartment for her son when he turned 17. Now renovating her house in Transylvania, between meetings with clients she constantly talks to the workers who are installing the new heaters there. She is 47 years old and wants to "retire" after three years. 

While Larisa from Transylvania does not need to pay fines for prostitution, fines have become a problem for Iraida, who has had to pay fines 200 times. When she spoke to us, she was waiting on the street for a customer and was eight months pregnant. Two children are waiting for her at home, while her husband has been sent to prison for drug trafficking: "He will be sentenced to 7 to 15 years in prison, so I have to take care of the children myself."

Many sex workers from different cities of the Republic of Moldova, who spoke to us, express their shock at the increasing number of minors on the streets. And this happens even though sex with minors is punishable by imprisonment in the Republic of Moldova. "The young girls are 12 years old," says a sex worker from a town in the center of the country. "The police know, probably the social workers know, but nobody does anything to save them." thoughtful: "I think men should have some basic moral principles..." /DW


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