Psychologist Iana Matei rescues girls forced into prostitution and gives them shelter, counselling and an education. Pitesti, Romania - A new girl has just arrived. The year-old is pale with long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She is a victim of forced prostitution. That's great because we'll need to get you back to class," Iana Matei tells her. The girl smiles shyly. For 18 years now, the Romanian psychologist has been running a shelter for victims of sexual exploitation in a village near the city of Pitesti, about an hour's drive from Bucharest. During this time, she has helped hundreds of women and young girls who were trafficked into prostitution.
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Please refresh the page and retry. But after putting down her suitcase, she was presented with a bill for every gift, restaurant dinner and holiday bought during their courtship and told to settle the debt through prostitution. A ccession to the EU in was supposed to bring Romanians passport-free travel, generous pay packets and stronger working rights. I nstead, many have ended up as sex slaves in the sordid brothels of London, Berlin and Rome, where those who try to escape risk death or torture. Over the years, trafficking gangs have launched increasingly brazen raids on the shelter to take back their captives, scaling the fences, ramming the electronic gates with black SUVs and using lasers to communicate with the survivors inside. I ana founded Reaching out Romania in on her return from exile, having fled the country at the height of the Romanian revolution. S he has horrified by the lack of support for victims back then, and claims that little has changed today as the country is swamped with corruption, both petty and severe. In response to the crisis, Romania has set up a national anti-trafficking agency, ANITP, which identifies victims and offers some support once they are repatriated. EU membership has also opened the door to deeper security co-operation via law enforcement agencies Europol and Eurojust, as well as the European Arrest Warrant.
Background
Up-to-date, genuine sexual and reproductive health SRH education programmes have been possible in Romania only since communism collapsed in Since , Romania has had no national strategy in this field. Under current global circumstances high labour mobility, internationally mixed marriages , issues previously considered solely national have become worldwide concerns. In —, respondents homogeneously distributed on background, gender, educational level and age group 18—74 were sampled. This article uses a item questionnaire about family and SRH, presenting results on nine items: first intercourse FI , virginity, knowing first sexual partner, safe sex, number of sexual partners and sexual education. The data were analysed using Pearson chi-square tests and latent class analysis. Some participants 7.
Prostitution in Romania is not itself criminalized, although associated activities, such as procuring , are criminal offenses, and solicitation is a contravention punishable by fines. In the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century there were legalized brothels , but these were closed by the communist regime in the late s, and prostitution itself became a criminal offense in There had been proposals in the past to legalize and regulate prostitution such as in [3] but these were rejected, especially as Romania is a party to the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others , which states that prostitution is "incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person and endanger[s] the welfare of the individual, the family and the community" and binds countries which ratify it to ban organized prostitution such as pandering or running a brothel. According to the official explanations of the Ministry of Justice, with regard to the new penal code "the fact that prostitution will be excluded from criminal penalties does not mean "legalizing "it, transforming the activity into one regulated or permitted by law, because the persons practicing prostitution will still be sanctioned with a contravention.
