CHILLING INVESTIGATION:
PARIS Park in France, haven for NIGERIAN Women forced into Prostitution...Nigerian underage Girl Nadege Chinasa narrates how she was RAPED, had an Abortion
*Trafficked from Nigeria to France at 6years old, Raped by Local Gangs that killed her aunt
*Forced into sex slavery at 15 years for €20 ($23) per client, to pay off a colossal debt to a female Nigerian pimp known as a “madam, Sleep with 10 men per Night
*Human Traffickers also use ‘Bois de Vincennes’, a sprawling park on the outskirts of eastern Paris, home to horse riding schools and zoo for sex activities
* Cries: ‘We are not allowed to wear more than our underwear in the night, others wear miniskirts standing outside underneath street lamps, facing out onto the empty road’
BY GEORGE ELIJAH OTUMU/AMERICAN FOREIGN BUREAU CHIEF
SHOCKING REVELATION due to painstaking investigation has confirmed how stranded Nigerian women who came visiting in France are being coerced into prostitution in Paris Park, a secret haven where human traffickers collect illicit money after luring the Nigerian women into sexual labor with strange men.
Corroborating this view is a 15 year old Nigerian girl-NADEGE CHINASA who was deceitfully trafficked into France under the guise of re-uniting her with her aunt who lived in Paris since her mother passed six months earlier. She revealed her painful ordeal and the operation of the human traffickers under the watch of a ‘Nigerian Madam.’
Lamenting, Chinasa said she was trafficked from Nigeria to France and forced into sexual slavery, sleeping with different men at €20 ($23) per client, to pay off a colossal debt to a female Nigerian pimp known as a “madam.”
Chinasa, who could not give her real name for safety reasons, grew up in southern Nigeria. She says that when she was just six, she was raped by a group of neighbors. Her parents sent her to live with an aunt. But Nadège says her aunt was murdered after refusing a local gangster’s marriage proposal for her niece. Nadège discovered her aunt’s dead body.
At 15, Chinasa says, she was raped once again and had her first abortion. Alone, she was easy prey for traffickers. A madam she had earlier met in Lagos promised her a better life in Europe, working as a waitress. “I was told it was like a paradise,”, she quipped.
Naija Standard investigation showed that a notorious hangout called ‘Bois de Vincennes’, a sprawling park on the outskirts of eastern Paris, is home to horse riding schools, zoo, commandeered by human traffickers for sex slavery.
The park’s central road is yet another point on the map of a massive cross-continental trafficking network that has channeled tens of thousands of Nigerian women and children throughout Europe and as far as Malaysia.
In this place, a row of dirty vans is parked on a broad, tree-lined avenue in the outskirts of Paris, whereby in the dark of night, fluttering candles light up the faces of the women in the front seats. None of them wear more than their underwear. Others, wearing miniskirts, stand outside underneath street lamps, facing out onto the empty road. Chinasa was one of these women before she managed to escape.
She cried: “Even now I don’t have hope for myself, My past already destroyed my future.” All the Nigerian women and girls had their international passports seized and money collected against their will.
No Passport, No Money:
Chinasa described her journey to France. She flew on a commercial flight, with a fake passport her madam gave her. She was sent to work in the Bois a week after she arrived. She was 20 old
Her debt, she was told, was €50,000 ($57,690). Others pay €60,000 ($69,226).
Her madam gave her a €100 daily target and took away her passport and all her earnings, except money for food and rent.
Her words: “Sometimes you work from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the morning, maybe get home by 8 a.m. Until 6 p.m., then you have to go to your normal place of work.”
Most of the Nigerian women working in the park are “slaves,” she says. “Some are free, but the prostitution has eaten deep into them.”
Chinasa once asked a man why he came to the street, she says, wiping away a tear. “He said, ‘I’m a divorced man, so I have to make myself happy.’“
She says she is sure that he and the rest of the clients understood the Nigerian women’s situation.
Victims’ become Madam:
According to a lawyer who represents a charity that works with sex trafficking victims, senior prostitutes are often entrusted with new arrivals and may be given a cut of their earnings. Some of these women may in time buy trafficked girls of their own to pimp out. They become madams to free themselves from prostitution and earn the European riches they were initially promised.
The madams form clubs — sometimes with Facebook pages — and throw big parties where they charge for entry, using the profits to buy more girls. Chinasa says her madam had young women throughout Europe — from Spain to Russia. Les Amis du Bus des Femmes (LABF), a charity that works with prostitutes in Paris, says the sex trafficking route from Nigeria to Paris has existed for 20 years. But since 2015 the charity has noticed increasing numbers of under-age Nigerians. It recently found girls as young as 12 working as prostitutes on the streets of Paris.
“There are brains and talent wasting in Vincennes. “So many can sing, so many can dance… But the prostitution, the oath, the fear, just overshadowed everything,”Chinasa says.
When she was younger, Chinasa wanted to act in Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry.
“Sometimes when you get home,” she says, “you have to sit in hot water for hours before you can get yourself back.”
Death or Madness:
After nearly a year of relentless work, the turning point came when Chinasa became pregnant. She and her boyfriend decided to keep the baby, which meant escaping the vise-like grip of the network.
Our reporters gathered that women often try to flee when they are pregnant, desperate to find a better life for their baby elsewhere. They have to choose: keep the child or cling to the hope of one day returning home to their family. Most choose the baby.
Chinasa continued working as a prostitute briefly while she was pregnant, but stopped making payments to her madam, “I was waiting patiently for the death or the madness,” she says. “I was like… ‘Should I go over to the street and start working? Should I abort my baby?'”
She has escaped harm, for now; the networks have less of a physical presence in France. And with the help of a lawyer, she has been able to gain asylum there. Women like her are eligible for asylum on grounds of persecution if they can prove they have been trafficked and have distanced themselves from the network.
But Chinasa’s family members in Nigeria are threatened every day, she says, and she can never return home: “This is the only place that is safe for me.” Breaking away from the network, she says, was “the best decision of my life.” But Chinasa is profoundly traumatized.
“I’m no longer beautiful,” she says, “my glory’s been taken. I complained I was raped when I was 15. Imagine me coming to Europe to sleep with 10 men per night.”
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