A brothel in Turkey gets raided by the police. Everybody inside gets arrested. One of them is the Moldovan Natasha. Although she is forced to work as a prostitute, she ends up as a criminal in a terrible Turkish prison. The conditions are harsh. Natasha receives no medical or physical help. She has to pay for her food and to make things worse, she is humiliated by the guards.

“Everything about this example is true,” says Lilia Gorceag. “Except the name.” Gorceag worked with Natasha as a psychologist at the International Organization of Migration. The organisation has a shelter for victims of human trafficking in one of the suburbs of Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.

Gorceag’s goal is to help victims of trafficking to feel at peace with themselves . “It is very important to show the victims that they are not guilty. All that Natasha wanted was to help her family and get a better life. She trusted someone she thought had good intentions, but that person betrayed her.”

The example of Natasha is not an individual case. Every year hundreds, maybe thousands of Moldovan girls get trafficked and end up in forced prostitution. Although there are no exact figures on how many people get trafficked, estimations are that one to two per cent of the migrants will find themselves at a certain moment in a situation which could be defined as trafficking.

Returning after being trafficked

In the last decade the International Organization of Migration (IOM) Moldova helped more then 2000 people to come back to Moldova. People like Natasha, who worked in the sex business, or people who have experienced other forms of labour exploitation.

With help from other IOM offices, anti-trafficking NGOs or local police the victims of traffickers are directed back home. At the border they are welcomed by someone from IOM Moldova, who offers them help. “Often they don’t want it,” says Gorceag. “They are afraid that they will be locked up again. But after we show the facilities and explain what we do, most of them agree to stay at our shelter for a while.”

Another source for victims is the Moldovan police, who in the last few years have received special training on human trafficking. They might notice that something is wrong at the border control, when someone comes back. The local police also plays an important role. They might get suspicious when they see somebody that comes back after a few years with no money and behaving strangely. What that behaviour is? Gorceag: “For example they don’t come out of the house, or they have serious problems and fights with their family.”

When the victims enter the doors of the IOM shelter the work for Gorceag and her five colleagues starts. “First thing we do is sit down and talk about the experiences. This way the victim gets the chance to reveal all the stress, the emotions, the pain, the fears.”

Not only girls

The word girl or woman are carefully avoided by organisations of human trafficking. Instead they use victim or beneficiary. “Human trafficking is always associated with girls that end up in prostitution,” says Viorelia Rusu. “But that is not always the case. Men are trafficked as well, ending up in forced labour. And so do kids and old women, they have to beg for money on the streets.”

Rusu works as an analyst at the anti-trafficking organisation La Strada. The international organization is based in eight Eastern European countries, trying to prevent trafficking and helping people who are being trafficked to escape their situation.

The reason why the statistics of La Strada show that 95 per cent of the cases are woman and three quarters involves sexual exploitation, is clear for Rusu. “The Moldavian way for men to react is: They just cheated on me, it’s my own fault. The men don’t see themselves as victims of traffickers. They are ashamed to receive any psychological or medical help. ”

This is also what IOM experience. From the 19 people currently in the shelter, only one is a man. According to Gorceag men are afraid to get assistance. “But labour exploitation is not better than sexual,” she says. “They live in similar bad situations. There is a lot of violence, they are locked up and make awful long working hours. The men suffer from health problems, and in some cases they are also sexually abused.”

Start a new life

After Natasha arrived at the shelter, she received help in all kinds of fields. She got assistance on legal issues, from getting her papers done to the possible prosecution of her trafficker. She received medical treatment, social assistance and psychological counseling. The ultimate goal is to help a victim to start a new life.

In most cases all the help is done without the family noticing. “The biggest fear is that their relatives find out,” says Gorceag. “In 90 per cent of the cases the fact that they were trafficked is kept secret.” The reason for this is that the victims are afraid their families will abandon them, or that the whole community will find out and see her as a prostitute.

But the chances that a victim is able to get a normal life again, are variable. Some get reintegrated very well, while others have a hard time. “The rehabilitation goes well when a person has some decent education and when there is a family around which is supportive,” according to Gorceag. “But sadly that is not always the reality. In most cases one, and sometimes both factors are missing. If the latter is the case, there is a bigger risk they will be trafficked again.”

Informing about migration, instead of preventing

Sadly enough there will always be a chance that people get exploited as long as they are searching for a better life, believes Rusu of La Strada. But the organisation is not advising people not to go abroad. “That simply wouldn’t work,” says Rusu. “There are too many positive examples of migration. People want to leave the country as long as others are coming back with money to pay for the education of their children, to buy a house or drive a fancy car.”

The tactics of La Strada, and IOM, is to inform people about the risks involved with migration. Big television campaigns, posters, leaflets and school visits are all part of that. But the most important is the 24/7 hot-line, which La Strada runs to inform people. Daily it receives between five to ten calls from people who have questions because they have been offered jobs abroad, or relatives who are worried about someone.

“People do get more aware of dangers,” Rusu says. “Specially after we run campaigns, then we see big peaks in the number of calls.” But she also likes to refers to a survey La Strada held two years ago. 52 per cent of the responders said they where aware of human trafficking, the rest had heard about it, but couldn’t say exactly what it was. “And we have come far,” states Rusu. “When we started with La Strada in 2001, nobody knew anything about trafficking.”

Although all the information provided and growing awareness, there still is a chance things will go wrong. That’s why La Strada is these days also providing foreign contact details of local anti-trafficking organizations which can help victims. Rusu: “Just in case they end up in a bad situation.”