here - Cooperazione Italiana allo Sviluppo

There are police that recognise the need to acquire the trust of the women andthe importance of clarifying the path to take after filing a report. Unfortunately,however, together with operators who have acquired a professional approach whichpermits them to understand the difficulty of the women, one encounters operatorswithout this characteristic.Without taking into consideration that, for those who arrive at having to sustaina complaint in a court, it can be perceived as a lack of trust in a justice which oftenis based, according to the interviewees, on the power of money of the madam andon the lack of guarantees: tomorrow your lawyer will not defend that very madamthat you are denouncing?“My lawyer...tomorrow may be the one who madam asks to defend her. She willpay him more and what you say becomes a lie. According to me there should belawyers prepared, even if you do not have money and they should not also defendthe madam, they should defend the girls, if they defend the girls (…) if theselawyers are prepared to defend the girls, (the girls) have more faith, are morestrong. If instead someone defends me and then defends the madam, you can’tunderstand anything any more” (Interview Victim No.3).Taken in charge and the start of a new lifeThe exit path often starts with the transfer to a “house of escape” or anyhow toa protected place, far away from the place of exploitation, and continues in a“house of reception” of a community type, in which the girls, in conditions ofsemi-autonomy, receive various types of assistance (psychological, economic,sanitary, legal, etc.) and follow training paths which generally are completed withthe start of work, which may permit the woman to start a condition of fullautonomy.The paths of being accompanied to autonomy have various durations. On theformal way and the bureaucratic steps necessary to obtain the permission to stay,the variables which are principally required are precision and the reliability of thereport, the facility to verify through investigations the circumstances denounced,the absence of formal obstacles (such as prior expulsions) and lastly the time forthe Police and the Prosecutor to give their opinion concerning what is requested(which is much quicker in small centres than in large cities).The time and the outcome depend on the active participation of the woman inthe programme. The interviews carried out with the operators have shown somecritical moments, mostly related to cultural elements: the community life, therespect of timing and regulations, the difficulties in some types of work, therelationship with money and the learning of its management.The operators often mention the difficulty of integration of the Nigerian girls inthe community life, which they encounter dividing the space with victims of othernationalities, or users from a different path of life. Faced with these difficulties,some associations have arrived at the decision to no longer propose co-habitationof Nigerian women with those of other nationalities. Others - and these are themajority - maintain however that the passage through a confrontation with persons