AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS (Catholic Online) - Most of the sex workers in the Netherlands come from Eastern Europe. Typically they are lured with promises of easy money, and an opportunity to escape poverty and poor standards of living. These hopes combined with low self-esteem, which is often as a result of abuse or rape, are common motivators that bring women into the country of their own free will. The problem, is that once they have arrived of their own free will they lose their freedom.

Other women are virtually blackmailed into the practice. African women are commonly lured into the Netherlands, and threatened with voodoo curses if they do not work as prostitutes to repay the cost of smuggling them into the country. Those few women who manage to pay off their enslavers, can often be left with false papers, or none at all. Without legal documents, money, or resources, they are often stuck with prostitution as the only means of earning a living for themselves.

Slavers often trick women by offering them work as domestic servants, or as models, or actresses. On rare occasion, they resort to extortion and kidnapping to bring their victims into the country.
It's not just women either, sometimes men, even heterosexual males, are ensnared by the same cruel methodology and forced to work as sex slaves.

Sexual slavery is not only found in the Netherlands however. It is common throughout the entire world. It is in fact, one of the most common forms of slavery. Putting a stop to it is very difficult and complicating activist's efforts is the commonplace attitude that most people have "chosen" to work as prostitutes. The people who use prostitutes often console themselves with this false belief after their encounters.

Very, very few women choose to become prostitutes as a means of earning a living for themselves, even in those countries where prostitution is legal. Prostitution is a dangerous and deadly practice, disease, violence, and a whole host of other complications, not to mention the moral implications of the activity, make prostitution a terrible way to live. It ruins lives and rots nations from within.

It is important that all people come to understand the hidden dark side of the human sex trade, and that they unite in efforts to resist its spread, and to shut it down once and for all, for thousands of lives -- and souls hang in the balance.

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