Control between psychological subjection and resort to violencetowards the victim and her familyThe control exercised on the women is, according to numerous interviews, anextremely intense and pervasive control, even if it is manifested in forms that arevery different to those of our culture and is usually considered as an instrument ofsubjection and coercion.As we have seen the Nigerian women often have a wide possibility ofmovement: working outside the city, sometimes hundreds of kilometres from theplace of residence, they move in trains or by bus for long journeys without anyapparent control. One could ask the reason why they don’t escape from thissituation, considering the fact that normally the women live in groups in the houseof the madam, as well as the motives for the lack of rebellion or collective escapes.The answer is not connected to a particular acceptance or indifference towardsthe discomfort and suffering of the Nigerian women, nor is it a better capacity toaccept the work of prostitution in comparison to women of other origins: thesestereotyped images are the result of a false representation of their culture. Theapparent absence of rebellion is instead tied to rather more complex factors.In the first case the woman is tied by a rite and a pact which she has undertakenin the community: even if she does not really believe, intimately, in the threat ofthe wodoo rite, she is tied to maintaining the tight pact with the community, theinterruption of which is a source of dishonour and disgrace. The conditioning is sostrong that one can say it is a part of her character.In the second case, as evidenced previously, controls exist, notwithstanding thefact they are seemingly absent: the women are sometimes accompanied to the placeof work or at least to the railway station from w<strong>here</strong> they take the train during theday. In some cases, the collaborators of the madam undertake reconnaissancechecks and sometimes, at the end of the “shift”, someone re-accompanies them tothe house; often once at the house they are not free to go out.Obviously t<strong>here</strong> is a certain variation: the situation that they can encountershow different grades of control, varying not only from one person to another, butalso in relation to the various phases of the exploitation. For example it is quitefrequent that in the first months the madam controls the contacts of the womanwith her family in Nigeria, controls which, as the months pass, becomeconsiderably less.One should however remember that the margin of self-determination left to thewoman, sometimes apparently wide, is at the total discretion of the exploiter andher collaborators: the possibility of moving, communicating can be taken away orwidened without being influenced by the wishes of the woman in any way. In thissense we can talk about, at least in certain phases of the exploitation cycle, of“reduction to slavery”, undertaken however without constant constrictions andphysical violence 42 .42It should be mentioned that the Supreme Court, Corte di Cassazione, (Cass. S.U. 20.11.96/16.1.97No.261, ced. No. 206512) recognised that the reduction to slavery is identified by a de facto situation, forwhich the conduct of the agent to effect the reduction of the person offended in a material condition of
In addition not even in the Nigerian case is violence completely absent in t<strong>here</strong>lationship between the victims and exploiters. The context in which the womenfind themselves living is a violent context or, to use the words of a judge in thecourt of Rome interviewed by us, of “environmental violence”. By such anexpression it is intended that the context is however dominated by violence andoppression, even if not imparted with a hard, physical and direct violence in asystematic manner.This is the crucial aspect so as to understand the specific means of exploitation.The women may not suffer physical violence directly, but the fear of retaliation andviolence on the family or the stories of what happened to victims who rebelled isoften sufficient. Obviously at investigation level - in absence of evident physicalviolence and the lack of certainty regarding what happens in Nigeria - it is notalways easy to demonstrate the existence and relevance of such environmentalviolence.On the other hand, according to several people interviewed, the level of directviolence is increasing and is always more frequently passing from a psychologicaland symbolic level, to a level of reality. T<strong>here</strong> is a curious change taking place: insome areas, while the Nigerians are moving to more violence because of theincreasing difficulties in managing the women (also because of the interventions ofthe street units and pressure by the police) the Albanian exploiters, instead, are“Letting up on the violence, also because they understand that with the mobileunits, and protection programmes, they risk that the women escape and denouncethem, so they are becoming slightly more soft seeking to involve them, starting to<strong>allo</strong>w them to participate in some form of earnings…” (Cooperativa Dedalus -Naples).The Albanian exploiter, who was always considered the most violent 43 , ist<strong>here</strong>fore passing to softer systems of managing the victims, based on the divisionof profits. These are systems that make the victim in part an accomplice, risking togreatly weakening the position and credibility with the police and the NGOs whomust be able to adapt their interventions even with this type of change. It should benoted however that sometimes the tight pact between the woman and her exploiteris broken or modified and this can become a stimulus for complaints “TheUkrainian, Moldavian, Romanian, Albanian girls now know what they are comingto do, they know that t<strong>here</strong> is the famous 50 and 50. The complaint starts whenthey arrive in Italy and on the street, w<strong>here</strong> they know they have to go, t<strong>here</strong> is nolonger the 50 and 50, t<strong>here</strong> is 10 and 90 and the hitting starts” (Questura ofVenice).In each case it appears evident how the different organisations of exploitationmodel their strategies in relation to the needs of an efficacious reaction to theinitiatives of contrast, such as that represented by the permission to stay for socialprotection reasons.Returning to the Nigerian victims, these are also sometimes beaten (it is nearlyalways direct corporal violence, but they never use firearms and hardly ever otherslavery. That is her exclusive subjection to the power of disposition of someone.43This is what emerges from the testimony of the women and the operators.
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TRAFFICKINGOF NIGERIAN GIRLSTO ITAL
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F O R E W O R D1. Objectives and st
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and who have identified the most si
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on the other hand, for those involv
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Case files analysed: Preventive det
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Table 2 - Socio-economic situation
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Table 3 - Nigerian citizens regular
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Table 5 - Social protection permiss
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Table 7 - Number of persons charged
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Table 8 - Detainee population sub-d
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and the United States enables this
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C H A P T E R IW a y s a n d p h a
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Figure No.2 - Edo State.It is not c
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Nigeria. From 1996 in Benin City an
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In this variegated framework, the d
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“Benin City is one of those State
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d) Investigative and judiciary co-o
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The reform foresees, under Art. 1,
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which the woman can definitively tu
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witnesses, social operators - agree
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and necessary, therefore, to think
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in many cases they are driven to th
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Melossi, D., (2002), “Le teorie s