Slavery in Europe has not ended. A macro-study presented by the Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, last Tuesday 17, revealed that 114,000 women are prostitutes in Spainand 80% of them are at risk of sexual exploitation. More specifically, more than 7,000 people are at high risk. Today, September 23, the International Day against Sexual Exploitation and Human Trafficking, organizations are raising their voices against one of the scourges of society.
Mabel Lozano, social film director, screenwriter and winner of two Goya Awards, the last one this year, for her short documentary Avais one of the activists who fights with the most passion for its eradication. “Sometimes, we hear too often ‘the problem of trafficking’. No, a problem is staining your shirt or spraining your ankle, trafficking is a crime“.
Avalike a dark mirror of reality, it tells the experiences of Colombian girl with mental disability who was adopted by María, a Madrilenian. At the age of seven, already in Spain, a pimp kidnapped Ava. The documentary tells in the first person, from María’s point of view, how she went to get the girl, how she took her to Spain, how she took care of her so that she ended up in Spain. he was finally kidnapped, exploited and beaten.
The story, based on true events, highlights a terrible reality. In which women are kidnapped for sexual exploitation in clubs and apartments due to a triple vulnerability: being a woman, disabled and a minorThese girls, because of their condition, are generally easier to deceive, they correspond to the profile of submission that pimps seek to exercise their share of power.
Lozano feels very close to these stories and remembers that less than a month ago it emerged that The Provincial Court of Murcia has sentenced thirteen people for their participation in a network of underage prostitutionThe trial lasted ten years and they reached an agreement with the prosecution reducing the sentence to just five months in prison.
“These were businessmen or lawyers who would order underage girls on demand to take them to the law firm, served like a plate.“, says the director. And adds: “They were girls the same age as his daughters and granddaughters. And they ended up with no prison time and fines that are just money. “This should put us in front of a mirror as a society.”
Porn in your pocket
For Lozano, one of the main problems is that children, at increasingly younger ages, are wearing “a porn cinema in your pocket“and pornography general public is standardized. It gives the example of the video of Gang rape in the forest, one of the most viewed videos on the Internet.
Since 2010, 200 cases of collective attacks have been prosecuted, the majority of which involve minors.Why does a 12 year old boy want to go out and rape? Where did you see it? Where did you learn it?“, Lozano asks. “And in true porn style, they are so stupid that the misdeed, which is a crime, only ends when they share it.”
Even though big tech companies and service providers need to exercise greater control over content onlinethe truth is that It is very easy to access inappropriate informationbecause in most cases this control is only a question of age.
The Civil Guard has launched a campaign in collaboration with the Mutua Madrileña Foundation to raise awareness among young people about the danger and consequences of digital sexual violence.
The initiative focuses on practices such as sexting —or sending photos and videos with sexual content—, the grooming —harassment of minors via the Internet by pretending to be another person— or Sextortion — blackmail by sending or sharing intimate photos or videos of the victim — which constitutes a crime.
To do this, the campaign recommends that parents and educators try to pay more attention to the content that children consume, through parental control and have a active role in digital educationso that they are aware of the impact it may have on those involved, including themselves.
For this reason, many, including Mabel Lozano, believe that a sex education topic in schools, just like mathematics or languages. “We don’t talk enough about sex education to our sons and daughters, because we are a very modest country.”
Legislation
Another example is the lack of solid legislation to end human trafficking, because, Lozano denounces, “There is no global law” to put an end to it. “And above all, not all the faces of pimping are classified in the law, such as consensual pimping.”
A few months ago, he said, an attempt was made to change the rule so that no one would profit from the prostitution of others, but it did not succeed. It is institutional violence.
Ana Redondo, Minister of Equality at the end of the Government control session.
In this sense, Ana Redondo, Minister of Equality, announced last Tuesday, September 17, that the Council of Ministers would approve in the second round the comprehensive law against trafficking before the end of the year. This time, you will havedeeper and more direct measures” to improve the situation.
Redondo said during the presentation: “What we don’t talk about doesn’t exist. It is therefore necessary to have an approximate figure of a hidden and difficult to access population, such as women and girls who are victims of trafficking, sexual exploitation and prostitution, in order to know the extent of the problem and, consequently, to address it through public policies.”
Against Trafficking
Many platforms and associations continue to fight against this invisible scourge. They ask not to look away, because there are cases of horror films like that of Gisèle Pelicot, the woman drugged by her husband and raped for more than a decade by 51 men in her own home. A fact in which everyone chose to look away and that, if it was not a “mistake” by the “monster of Avignon”, it would still remain an open secret among his rapists.
Furthermore, the Association for the Prevention, Reintegration and Care of Women Prostitutes (APRAMP) recalls that Social networks and similar digital spaces are where recruitment and coercion actions are most repeated. victims.
According to the association, these are places that, since the 2020 pandemic, have become the ideal terrain for sexual exploitation, especially of girls, adolescents and young people. In them there is a Almost total impunity for traffickers and exploiters.
This is why Mabel Lozano asks that everyone ask themselves what they can do in the face of this dark reality. In your case, the answer lies in using cinema as an information tool because, he assures, there is a lack of knowledge of this situation.
