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pay, then from the first day that they told me that someone will come to make meswear that I will pay, they told me that he was ill, that he could not go out and said«No, she is too religious there is no need to do this» ” (Interview Victim No.3).More frequent are the cases of witnesses collected by the police that report on atotal subjection to wodoo, subjection that we could define as an “immaterial” formof reduction to slavery: “They are terrorised, really terrorised by these rites, sothey are careful…even faced with our intervention and the fact that the madamswere in handcuffs, arrested, an objective fact, indisputable…not even this hasconvinced them to say something (…). Its crazy, you have no idea what a wodoocan do” (Questura of Venice).The interesting aspect is that believing in the rite, in its “capacity to determinegood or evil” is shared even by the madams.In numerous interceptions of telephone calls it emerges that the madam presentin Italy asks the Nigerian madam advice on how to keep the Questura (local StatePolice office) away, or asks to have some things (objects, powder, animals) sent tocelebrate a propitious rite, to stop the girls escaping or against the intervention ofthe same Questura.“We had the telephonic interception of a pimp who had first acquired a sheepto make a rite against us, then a crocodile. It is like that, in their culture”(Questura of Turin).“To speak about ‘popular credibility’, faced with cases like this, will not permitcapturing the essence of this instrument. Here, in fact, we do not face a magicianwho, consciously, abusing the ‘popular credibility’, with artefacts and tricks,plagiarisms, pins in money to the unfortunate placing before him a future of miseryand misadventure, that only his potions, filters, etc. can avoid, inasmuch as heknows well that the black future foreseen will not occur, or if it should occur, itdepends on other things. In our case, conversely, there is the understanding fromthe slaughterer and the victims to find themselves faced with something thattranscends human nature and is certainly capable of determining, changing thecourse of the events. It is the same who believes in the magic rite, because sheherself resorts to this when she thinks that events are moving against her, and it isthe evaluation of this aspect that makes swearing that instrument of pressure andthreat, perhaps more ‘convincing’ and dangerous than a weapon, as commonlyunderstood, if, as in our case, victim and aggressor believe in “the rite” thinkingthat this must be honoured if one does not want to draw the wrath of the gods”(Preventive detention order, criminal proceeding - Naples, 1999).1.4 Debt and the contractEvery Nigerian woman, forced to prostitute herself on Italian territory, departswith a debt to those who have given her the possibility of reaching Italy, theamount of which today is around 50,000-60,000 Euros.