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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 where 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 there 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