Paris. July 2003
11:00pm. I meet Anaëlle at an outdoor Middle Eastern café. A mix of Arabic and French intermingle amongst the street sounds and an espresso machine inside. We make our introductions. Sometimes we speak to each other in broken English or broken French, other times it is through a translator.
We discuss the film project on human trafficking that I am working on. Then we discuss journalism and human trafficking -she makes her disdain for journalists clear to me. She asks me where I would like to go tonight and what I would like to see. I tell her anything she is willing to show me.
For the next six hours I receive a tour of the street prostitution scene in Paris.
We visit the avenues in the Bois de Vincennes, lined with small utility vans, one or two black girls in each van, sitting in their underwear under the glow of camping lanterns.
We get a coffee in a cafe where pimps frequently congregate. We spend hours on the Boulevard des Maréchaux that encircles Paris. I watch the mix of Asians, Africans, Eastern Europeans, transsexuals, transvestites, and the occasional lone “traditional� Parisian prostitute pass by the car window.
Anaëlle points out the “goons�, as she calls them, who can be found by any group of girls, always on the lookout. Anaëlle tells me that often the elder girls in the group will keep the others “in line�, particularly the newest or youngest to the streets. “It is important to keep them from crying too much with clients�.
We pass a group of Africans fighting with 3 Eastern Europeans. Anaëlle informs me it is probably a fight for territory. The clash of the African accents countering the thick Eastern European makes it hard to understand what is being said, much less what language they are communicating in.
I watch a long black BMW, with its well tuned engine, hum quickly up to a bus stop. A woman has been exchanging words quite loudly with someone sitting in a small car, whom I assume to be a potential client. In less then a minute the small car drives off. The BMW then leaves as quickly as it arrived.
Anaëlle points out a security company van parked next to a particular group of prostitutes, noting that she has seen girls go in and out of it to change. She explains that she believes either a night watchman is being paid off or organized crime rings are forming legitimate companies as covers.
We discuss the current political environment surrounding trafficking and the counter-trafficking movement. We discuss how things are getting worse not better.
In the Bois de Vincennes we enter into a small van to talk with two African girls Anaëlle has developed a relationship with. They are shy but speak English. One scratches her arm constantly. I assume due to a skin problem. Both look tired.
The van muffles the sounds of the passing traffic outside. It is a stark setting with its thin mattress covered by a dingy sheet accompanied only by a box of tissues along its side.
We make some small chit chat. They tell me how things have gotten better in the last week now that friction between two gangs has weaned. They tell me how they start work at 6:00pm and finish at 6:00am. I ask if they have to come in from far away and they become incredibly silent and look away. We move on, talking about their children back home in Nigeria. Each tell me that they expect to not be prostitutes for long, that they will get good house cleaning jobs soon.
The air is a bit strained and Anaëlle and I decide it is time to leave. We open the van door to the sounds of the woods and the passing cars. Anaëlle promises she will bring the girls the pocket bibles they requested the last time and apologizes for not having gotten them sooner. –It is rumored that all the Nigerian girls have pocket bibles. We say goodbye.
As we continue on, Anaëlle recounts stories of murders, activism, and the day to day challenges. “As long as the pimps view me as some crazy old lady who hands out condoms, I don’t think they will bother me. I save the pimps money. But once they view me as someone who may be offering counseling to the girls, they will not tolerate me.�
In November of 2002 a new law was passed in France that allows the police to arrest someone for soliciting for prostitution, based on how the person is dressed.
Like many American movements to curb urban street prostitution, the new laws were put in place to address a growing anger by the French middle class towards the increasing presence of street prostitutes.
The increase in street prostitution has been associated with an influx of migrants from Eastern Europe.
The law was also sold as a tool police could use to assist victims of human trafficking, by allowing the police to detain street prostitutes and make sure they were not a victim of trafficking.
I ask Anaëlle if she has seen the implementation of the new law used to assit victims of trafficking. She tells me that since the laws inception she has heard that less than ten people have been entered into France’s victims of trafficking protection process, while over 100 have been sent back to their home countries.
France is rated as a Tier 1 country in the US State Department’s 2003 Trafficking in Persons Report.
Tier 1 is the highest rating a country can receive. To achieve this rating the country must meet four minimum standards. The fourth standard “Make serious and sustained efforts to eliminate trafficking� is given further clarification, which includes:
...the government (of country being rated)… provides victims with legal alternatives to their removal to countries where they would face retribution or hardship, and ensures that victims are not inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts as a direct result of being trafficked.
At 5:30am Anaëlle and I part. I am dropped off several blocks from where I am staying.
Two white girls wearing wigs stand in the nearby bus stop, smoking cigarettes, waiting for clients. I walk slowly. A man in his fifties with gray hair pulls up in a small Renault and points.
The one wearing a blonde wig walks towards him.
They talk. She gets in. They pull away.
Nearby the glow of a cigarette reveals a man sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked car. The car has the logo of a security company on it.
I walk on pretending not to be too interested.
