She was nervous but determined. “That’s when I decided to leave,” Susan said. After De Masi picked Susan up from the immigration lawyer’s office, she helped to get her into a shelter. (Foreign Correspondent: Louie Eroglu) Because of their complexity, in Italy human trafficking investigations are managed by local anti-mafia directorates – special prosecutors’ units created in the early 90s to coordinate investigations into organised crime in Italy. Sometimes she and her colleagues approach the detainees in the corridors; sometimes it’s the women who enter the library and strike up a conversation. But the women around her were not laughing. As one of the key witnesses in a trafficking trial, it is too dangerous for her to go back to Nigeria. By Ottavia Spaggiari, Last modified on Mon 14 Sep 2020 12.00 BST. Francesca De Masi has been visiting the Ponte Galeria women’s detention centre in south-west Rome every week since 2008. She would like to go back to school, but more than anything she wants to be able to work and help her family back home. When police officers stopped Marianne again and tried to put her in a shelter for the second time, she escaped again. Such trafficking is not new but the numbers since the so-called migrant crisis began in 2015 have doubled. he trial was set for five months later, on 13 December 2019. When she heard the sentence, De Masi cried. Susan had been on Italian soil for exactly three days when, on 23 July 2015, she was taken with dozens of other new arrivals to a noisy, overcrowded detention centre in Rome, and told she would shortly be deported back to Nigeria. In Palermo the women usually end up in the multicultural neighbourhood of Ballarò, where they are forced to work in what are called "connection houses" managed by "mamas", or they work on the streets. Sometimes she and her colleagues approach the detainees in the corridors; sometimes it’s the women who enter the library and strike up a conversation. On a hot September afternoon I drove up to see the shelter in a sleepy village - far away from the island's capital, Palermo, so the women can be hidden away from those they are escaping. Since 2015, about 21,000 Nigerian women and girls have arrived on Italian shores. Susan’s main concern was to stay in Italy and protect her patron at all costs. The madam she had been transferred to in northern Italy was never identified, nor were the male traffickers involved in her journey from Nigeria to Italy. The madam was frustrated by Marianne’s meagre earnings: “You didn’t come to Europe to play!” she shouted at her in a phone conversation that was intercepted by agents. A pre-trial hearing was set for July 2019, and Susan took the train to Florence. One of the challenges was finding people who could translate from Igbo into Italian. Susan’s case involved thousands of pages of phone records and transcribed conversations. When she protested, Ivie reminded her that she had paid for her journey, and of how much money she owed. The judge had ordered the trafficker to pay Susan €80,000 compensation, and €10,000 costs to Be Free. “Sometimes I kick her under the desk,” De Masi laughed – the kick is her sign to Quinto to slow down. Victims are generally afraid to come forward, and few traffickers have been identified. They made small talk and chain smoked. Hillary was the only one who had paid back her €30,000 debt entirely. In addition to witness testimony, the wiretaps also offered a window into the violence that the victims experienced on a daily basis. De Masi, who had been present, showed a video of the ceremony to the girls. She had to come up with a good excuse. When she heard the news, in July 2015, that 66 young women from Nigeria, who had just arrived by boat in southern Italy, had been flown to Rome and taken to Ponte Galeria, De Masi had grabbed her car keys and rushed out the door. By the time the four madams were arrested, it was three years since Susan had filed her criminal complaint. .css-orcmk8-HeadlineContainer{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}Uganda's Yoweri Museveni declared election winner.css-1dedj2h-Rank{-webkit-align-self:center;-ms-flex-item-align:center;align-self:center;color:#B80000;margin-left:3.125rem;}1, Final execution of Trump presidency is carried out2, Centrist elected leader of Merkel's CDU party3, Tennis stars' arrival angers stranded Australians4, India begins world's biggest Covid vaccine drive5, End to Gibraltar land border prompts joy and trepidation6, Signal messaging service goes down amid user surge7, 'Like a medieval battle': The riots frontline8, Nasa's 'megarocket' set to fire up engines9, Why California is struggling to contain Covid10. In some cases, suspected traffickers walk right into migration centres to pick up their targets. Susan, however, used the notebook to record her experience. “She was incredibly reliable. The survivors’ faces would not be on camera, only their backs. Joy Ezekiel was trafficked to Italy and forced to work as a prostitute. Research shows that about 10,000 Nigerian prostitutes in Italy are subjected to human trafficking. The Nigerian mafia has built Italy into a European hub, smuggling cocaine from South America, heroin from Asia, and trafficking women by the tens of thousands. One underage girl, Marianne, was raped at a gunpoint by a client – a man who had posed as a police officer – and then forced to get an abortion. She saw the criminal complaint as the only means to fight back and protect her family. But everything remains so difficult.”. Five months had passed, and Susan looked very different from the distant and defensive girl De Masi had met in Ponte Galeria. But Marianne, frightened and alone, ran away and went back to the madam, the only adult she knew in Italy. Italy has the largest population of Nigerians victimized to human trafficking; studies have found as many as 10,000 Nigerian prostitutes in Italy subjected to human trafficking. “Oh Jesus!” Susan screamed, overjoyed. She remembers the names of all the survivors of the cases she worked on, and those of their traffickers. A lawyer from a voluntary organisation helped Susan make an asylum application that would allow her to remain in the country, and after a few more weeks in detention she was transferred to a migrant reception centre in central Italy to wait for her case to be processed. That year, in an attempt to curb trafficking to Europe, Oba Ewuare II, the spiritual ruler of the kingdom of Benin, held a sacred ceremony to revoke all curses that sealed the debt bondage and set victims free. At first, it was often the police who would bring women off the streets to the shelter. After the Balkan wars and the rise of organised crime in post-communist eastern Europe, De Masi and her colleagues noticed increasing numbers of women who were being trafficked for sex. The notebook was a record of Susan’s debt bondage – a reminder that if she met more clients and made more money, she could supposedly earn her freedom more rapidly. A woman who had been trafficked from Nigeria to Italy, 2014. usan’s case ended up in the offices of the anti-mafia directorate in Florence, close to where she had been forced into prostitution for the first time. Ivie had created a hierarchy, making it hard for the girls to bond. Five months earlier, she had launched an investigation into sex trafficking in Tuscany, and ordered surveillance of the apartment in Prato where Ivie kept the girls. The traffickers prey on the women's spiritual beliefs so they become too afraid to speak up, fearing if they do so harm will come to them or loved ones back home", Hundreds of migrants still dying in Med five years since 2015, Four-year-old's viral dinosaur song made into book. Susan remained silent. “She was angry as hell,” said De Masi. “It was nice to stay with both of them, they are so funny,” Susan told me, laughing. Victims of trafficking are rarely identified during immigration controls. She had been trafficked to Italy in 2016 by the same woman who had brought Susan from Nigeria. Two years ago she and her colleagues were greatly helped in their efforts by the Oba of Benin City, an influential Nigerian traditional leader, when he placed a curse on the traffickers - turning the tables on them. Every transaction she wrote down was evidence of what she was forced to endure. The number of investigations into trafficking to Italy dropped steeply from 2014 onwards, just as there was a spike in arrivals of Nigerian women and girls without visas. The UN's International Organisation for Migration estimates 80 per cent of the Nigerian women and girls arriving by sea are likely to be victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation in Italy. She was especially afraid that there would be retaliation against her mother. If survivors do file a complaint, their families back home are at risk of retaliation. Italy has been the stage for a cruel cycle of exploitation in which survivors of trafficking, after years of forced prostitution, have become traffickers themselves, the so-called “madams”. Four other young Nigerian women were already living there. At first, her life was controlled by a new woman who kept close watch over her. She then threw away her sim card, praying that they would believe her, and leave her and her family alone. The defendants had chosen a fast-track trial – a tool in Italian law that speeds up the criminal process and, in case of conviction, allows a reduction of the sentence. Are your tinned tomatoes picked by slave labour? It supports female victims of trafficking in Sicily - the majority of whom come from Nigeria's Edo state, the capital of which is Benin City. Human traffickers tend to send their profits back to their home countries (wiretaps had revealed that Susan’s madam had boasted about owning several houses in Nigeria), and leave no assets in Italy. Susan was among them, exhausted but determined to avoid deportation. “It was as if justice had been served not only for Susan, but for all the other women we had worked with,” she told me. To make themselves heard above the panicked and bewildered voices, De Masi and other aid workers climbed on to a table and shouted. Reporting for this story was supported by the Global Migration Project at Columbia Journalism School. “I started telling the truth, and I became so relaxed,” she told me. The hardest thing to bear was that her sacrifice was not even helping her family in Nigeria. The investigation also revealed that Ivie had herself worked in the streets as a sex worker for a few years before becoming a madam. Centrist elected leader of Merkel's CDU party, Why California is struggling to contain Covid, The other virus that has scientists worried, .css-1snjdh1-IconContainer{display:none;height:0.875em;width:0.875em;vertical-align:-0.0625em;margin-right:0.25em;}Four-year-old's viral dinosaur song made into book. Female traffickers could be in detention together with their victims. VideoFour-year-old's viral dinosaur song made into book, Why a teacher was killed 'execution-style' in Ethiopia, End to Gibraltar land border prompts joy and trepidation. Reception centres for adult migrants have become connection hubs between traffickers and their victims. The Italian authorities have discovered an organization of Nigerian origins involved in the trafficking of minors for prostitution that made use of contacts in Libya and Italy to arrange the trips. Osas Egbon opened up a shelter for these victims of trafficking on the Italian island in January - the first of its kind created by and for Nigerian women. According to a US state department report, published in June this year, only 135 people in Italy were investigated for trafficking in 2019, compared to 314 in 2018, and 482 in 2017. The UN migration agency estimates that about 80 percent of Nigerian women who arrive in Italy are destined for sexual exploitation. Other significant destinations include the Netherlands and Spain, and, to a lesser degree, Germany, Belgium, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Susan underwent a traditional juju oath-taking ceremony, in front of a priest, in which she swore to pay the woman back and to be loyal to her. Thanks to the detailed information Susan had provided, in June 2016 Pietroiusti obtained authorisation for a wiretap. It is a typical Sicilian village house with a large kitchen, a terrace with views out on to the verdant hills. In March 2016, about a month after Susan fled to Rome, Ivie sent men to her mother’s house in Nigeria. “They don’t remember the name of the city they were transferred to, so they are not considered believable,” Carla Quinto, a lawyer working with the anti-trafficking organisation Be Free, told me. She was given the use of the property by an Italian friend. The murders shocked people in Sicily and put a spotlight on the harrowing experiences Nigerian women face in forced prostitution. In the mountains of Sicily a Nigerian woman is leading a battle to help rescue women like herself from a life of forced sex work. In the weeks that followed, she began to gather Susan’s testimony. She said it felt like a weight had been lifted from her. The morning of the hearing, Susan wore a bright T-shirt with the words: “I must be successful.” Nine survivors were due to speak as witnesses in the trial. Sex trafficking is big business. But things did not get easier for her. Many Italians want to help Nigerian women, she says, but the trouble is that in a time of increasing anti-migrant sentiments, some other Italians do not want them to do so. A pre-trial hearing was set for July 2019, and Susan took the train to Florence. The Trip to Italy Following her friend’s advice, she pays the required #250k and prepares for a … “The other girls said: ‘You’ll get used to it’. “In the end, many cases go to trial for minor crimes with evidence that is easier to get,” Quinto explained. What happens to your body in extreme heat? After two months, Ivie came in a car to collect her. Of the 70 survivors’ cases that Be Free handles every year, no more than three go to trial, and almost never for human trafficking or slavery. Several of Quinto’s clients’ families have been attacked. Seeing De Masi and Quinto waiting for her at the station was a relief. In January she made only €420. Human trafficking of Nigerian women to Italy began in the 1980s because of the demand for low skilled labour in agriculture and services. The report said the Italian authorities “did not meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”. The first few minutes of the exchange are crucial. Some names in this piece have been changed. “If I could choose, I would like to help old women.” She is now waiting for the Italian asylum commission to re-evaluate her case and to have her documents renewed. “There was no way I was going to miss this day,” De Masi told me. But neither of them will likely ever see the money. The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, a key tool in international law to prosecute traffickers and protect survivors, states that survivors of trafficking should be offered temporary or permanent residence. Osas Egbon opened up a shelter for these victims of trafficking on the Italian island in January - the first of its kind created by and for Nigerian women. Human trafficking of Nigerian women to Italy began to occur in the 1980s because of the demand for low-skilled labor in … The investigation revealed that he had pressured Hillary to work overtime, so that she could pay her debt and become a madam – something that she never did. “What became crucial was whether women had their documents in order. But since then, as more migrants have arrived, the political landscape has changed. And with that, Susan disappeared. If she had a fever, or had her period, she had to work. Furious about the lies she had been told, Susan decided to document her new life in Italy. Susan had made it to Rome, and found the lawyer’s office before nightfall. The lack of interpreters from west Africa who can translate intercepted phone calls was one obstacle. Not everybody involved in Susan’s trafficking was prosecuted. Several Nigerian trafficking networks have expanded … Be Free rented an apartment so that Quinto could help Susan prepare for the hearing. Sex trafficking is rife in Nigeria, in particular in southern Benin City, a recruiting ground for criminal gangs who smuggle women to Europe. Yet, at a global level, fewer than 12,000 prosecutions are brought against traffickers every year, resulting in fewer than 10,000 convictions. Thousands of young women leave home in Nigeria every year on the promise of a good job in Europe, only to be trapped by debt and forced into prostitution. .css-14iz86j-BoldText{font-weight:bold;}In our series of letters from African journalists, Ismail Einashe discovers how Nigerian women are standing up to traffickers in Italy. “Trafficking cases are as complex as mafia cases,” Pietroiusti told me when I met her in her office overlooking the city of Florence, with Brunelleschi’s dome and the Tuscan hills in the distance. “There was no way I was going to miss this day,” De Masi told me. The trial was set for five months later, on 13 December 2019. Some women shouted in anger, others started to cry. Together with other madams, she moved young women, some under 18, across several European countries. Under an agreement between Italy and Nigeria, Italian police forces may alert Nigerian authorities so that they can protect survivors’ relatives once a complaint has been filed, but this measure has proven ineffective. Share on Tweet. Hillary, another young woman from Edo state, had been given the role of collecting the money at the end of the night and checking on the girls. “She has nowhere to go.” An hour later, De Masi was at the lawyer’s office. The trial would last just one day. Once they got the wiretaps in place, together with police officers and translators, Pietroiusti spent hundreds of hours building the case. She was nervous but determined. “You deserve the princess room,” De Masi told her, giving her the biggest room in the apartment, with a queen-size bed and a television. The fact that victims are undocumented, and tend not to trust the police, means they become even more dependent on their traffickers. That woman was Susan. 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