Story of the Nigerian Women Forced into Prostitution in Italy

It’s just after 9pm when the first Nigerian women start to appear on the streets of Asti, a small city near Turin in northern Italy. Some stand in groups of two or three, flagging down passing cars or checking their phones. Many are alone - solitary figures backlit by the stream of headlights moving into the city. Princess Inyang Okokon slows down her car as she spots two girls standing on a corner. Even with heavy makeup they look no older than 15 or 16. “So many new faces,” she says, shaking her head as she pulls her car to the side of the road and gets out to speak to them.

 

Princess, a 42-year-old mother of four from Nigeria’s southern Akwa Ibom state, has spent the last 17 years working for Progetto Integrazione Accoglienza Migranti (PIAM), a migrant rights and anti-trafficking organisation in the city. According to her, most - if not all - of the Nigerian prostitutes working on Asti’s streets tonight are victims of trafficking. “This is just one street in a small city. It is happening all over Italy and Europe and the numbers are growing and growing.”

 

Princess knows first-hand about the horrors these women are living through. In 1999 she was trafficked herself from her home in Nigeria to the streets of Turin. “When I talk to them I tell them that I know their story because it is my story too,” she says.

 

For nearly three decades, a thriving sex-trafficking industry has been operating between Nigeria and Italy. Many experts believe the trade in women started in the 1980s when Nigerians travelling to Italy on work visas to pick tomatoes realised that selling sex was far easier and more profitable than harvesting fruits or vegetables.

 

Since then an estimated 30,000 Nigerian women have been trafficked from their home country into prostitution, finding themselves on street corners and brothels in Italy and other European states.

 

In 2015, 5,633 Nigerian women arrived by sea in Italy. The UN believes that 80% of these are victims of trafficking

 

More than 85% of these women have come from Nigeria’s Edo state in the south of the country, where traffickers have historically exploited chronic poverty, discrimination, a failing education system and lack of opportunities for young women to sell false promises of prosperity in Europe.

 

Princess was one of the first wave of women to be brought from Nigeria. Then a single mother of three young children, she was approached by a woman she knew from her workplace, who offered her a job in Italy.

 

“We saw people come back from Europe rich and they would tell us that we could also have this life,” she says. “In Nigeria there was nothing. I wanted more for my children. This woman said I could pay back the cost of my travel when I started earning. I believed her.”

 

She flew to London on a fake passport. When she arrived she called a telephone number she’d been given and a man came to pick her up and drive her to Italy. She was taken to a house in Turin full of other Nigerian women. When she told them she was going to work in a restaurant, the women laughed in her face.

 

“They said, ‘Here no Nigerian girl works in a restaurant. Whether you are a princess or a queen you are here in Europe and you must work as a prostitute’. I was distraught, I thought there must be a mistake.”

 

The next day Princess was told she had to pay back a €45,000 debt before she could leave. She was now under the control of a “madam”, a Nigerian woman who worked for the trafficking rings, controlling the women and their debt. She was given high heels and makeup and driven to a street corner with another Nigerian girl. “I said ‘I will not do this,’” she recalls. “I refused. I hid behind a big rubbish bin all night and cried. I said, ‘God, is this the life you have brought me to?’”

 

After that night the beatings began. Her madam attacked her so violently with the heel of a shoe that she was hospitalised. “I did not know anyone, they wouldn’t let me call home. They said they would kill me if I didn’t work,” she says. “I realised the only way was to start this work and try and find someone who would help me.”

 

Every day and night for more than eight months, Princess worked on the streets in Turin. “Italian men, they love Nigerian girls,” she says with a short laugh. “I had a queue every night.”

 

But no matter how hard she worked, her debts never got smaller.

 

“The work was so bad, it was so dangerous. The men were so violent. I was stabbed twice, I was threatened with a gun,” she says. “I was ashamed all the time. The only way I kept strong was promising myself I would leave this life.”

 

Eventually, she says, her prayers were answered. She was walking home one morning when a man called Alberto Mossino pulled over in his car and asked if he could take her to the beach. Mossino, who was living in nearby Asti but working as a DJ in nightclubs in Turin, offered to help Princess leave her madam. “At first I didn’t trust him but then he helped me pay off my debts to my madam and I managed to leave that life. Since then he has been my partner in everything.”

 

Eventually, she says, her prayers were answered. She was walking home one morning when a man called Alberto Mossino pulled over in his car and asked if he could take her to the beach. Mossino, who was living in nearby Asti but working as a DJ in nightclubs in Turin, offered to help Princess leave her madam. “At first I didn’t trust him but then he helped me pay off my debts to my madam and I managed to leave that life. Since then he has been my partner in everything.”

 

“Before I went I was made to swear to the gods [in a juju ceremony] and they said if I didn’t pay back the money I wouldn’t be able to have babies and my life would be useless,” she says.

 

“Before they took me to Libya they used two boys to break my virginity and then they took me to Libya to a house and sent many men to sleep with me. They didn’t pay me, they just used me.

 

After being sold to another madam, Loveth refused to work and was beaten and had boiling water thrown on her legs. Eventually she was put on a boat to Italy with 95 other people. “When I arrived in Italy I was very sick so they took me to the hospital and there I found out I was pregnant,” she says. “That is when I knew the juju was a lie. After that I never worked as a prostitute again and PIAM has helped me get my life back.”

 

Since PIAM was founded, Princess and Mossino have helped more than 200 women leave their traffickers in Asti and gain access to legal support, employment and counselling.

 

They have also created refuges and communities for those kept isolated by their traffickers and who are hundreds of miles from home. Princess arranges for the women to live and work together. “The trauma these women have gone through is very, very heavy,” she says. “They need a family and a mother as well as the other things we can give them.” At the weekends Princess helps organise parties and dances with the women.

 

“These traffickers take away everything from you, everything that makes you human,” says Princess. “I want to give that back to these women and say to them, let us not rest until we have brought them all to justice.”