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Victims of human traffic, prostitution and VIV/STD in Poland - Short report
Beata Wolfram, Diakonia of Evangelical-Augsburg, Church in Poland

Not very much changed when we look at the situation of human traffic in Poland.
Most of the victims come from Eastern (more eastern than Poland) and South-Eastern Europe. Few years ago Poland was first of all the transit country for women sold for sex-business in Western Europe countries. Our country was also one of the destinations for women working later on in Polish sex-business. Now the victims of human traffic who look for help or just who are just found in Poland are becoming a group of a higher inner variety. People come to Poland to work as a cleaning person, a maid or caretaker of elder person; they work for building companies and agriculture, in the farms too.
There is more and more men among them. And these people are exposed to be victims of unfair practices - they are exploited by their employer, their documents are taken away, they are isolated or even imprisoned. Just a few of them decide to seek for help and are identified as victims of human traffic.

And to tell the truth - there are not many places you can go to or institutions to address if you are a victim of human traffic in Poland. As a country and as a society we haven’t developed any effective governmental system or organizations which would take care of people sold to slavery. Although Poland has (for about two years) special law for victims of human traffic, which gives them a right for social services, in practice people must still wander from one institution to another and face with overwhelming bureaucracy.
No matter Pland is a member of European Union - as a country and society we are still to poor - or not enough interested in other people life to construct an efficient system of supplying good support - especially in the case of illegal emigrants or human traffic victims.

When I gathered data for this report I could find practically only one source of information. It was the experience of an NGO we work together with called La Strada. We’ve been cooperating with them for over two years - it means right from the start of our activity. They are the oldest (established in 1996) and one of the best known NGOs in Poland focusing on women - prostitutes and victims of human traffic. It means they have to deal with Polish women and with illegal emigrants or women sold to the so called “social agencies” (in fact escorts) in Poland.

So I’d like to tell you about the health situation of women who work as prostitutes in Poland - no matter if they are Polish or strangers - including victims of human traffic.

First of all it’s important to say in our country we don’t have any current study, research on the topic. The study of the Central Committee against AIDS, “Sexual behavior of women working in the sex-business” was published in 2003. It was the last time when anybody asked women working in Poland as prostitutes if they are aware of sexually transmitted diseases, and if they prevent HIV, HCV or pregnancy. The conclusions of this old study are now not so up-to-date anymore, so we base our report more on the observation of Polish prostitutes’ current life.

If we want to say anything about the STD prevention, we must talk about condoms. Because female condoms are not popular (if already known and available) it means practically that one partner - the man - is responsible for health of them both.
So it depends on the man’s decision if the sexual act is safe or not from the woman’s perspective.

Of course - we can say - they both are adults, should be responsible and the woman can just say “No, I will not make love with you”, if the man doesn’t want to use condom.

Let’s ask this question - do Polish men - the clients of prostitutes - like to use a condom? Do they accept it? And can women in Poland force their partners to use condoms?

We can try to find an answer for this question in the study from 2003.
And we immediately find an interesting discrepancy. Almost 90% of prostitutes declared to decide for a sexual intercourse only with condom. But over 25% declared not to prevent pregnancy in any way. So what is true? Did they use condoms and didn’t know it’s a method of contraception? It’s not very much possible.

More possible is that they just declared using condoms (when asked if they do) but being asked about methods of contraception they forget about any. So we can assume women working as prostitutes - one forth of them - don’t ever make their partners to use condoms.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this study was made 5 years ago and its result can not be treated as a description of the present situation. We could say so more firmly if something important happened about the sexual education in Poland over the last few years.

But it didn’t. For the last five years we had no media campaign promoting the usage condoms. They promote monogamy, fidelity, family - but not the simplest way to prevent sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy.

On the contrary - Polish society is still exposed to catholic church campaign against “artificial” methods of contraception. On the syllabus of the subject “family-life education” there is no word about other methods of contraception except for the “fertlility awareness” (first of all those calendar-based). The fact that teenagers might have sexual life hasn’t even been stated. There is no word about prostitution or any other kind of having sex. Only having it with a husband or wife has been mentioned.

We can learn from the 2005 Durex report that condoms are used by about the half of sexually active people. Even if we believe this figure (it’s not very reliable because the report has been made by a condom producer via internet only) it means that only 40% of men (and about 60% of Polish women) use condoms. If we don’t believe we can assume condoms are even less popular.

We must take into consideration that most women working in the sex-business are not well-educated and come from small cities or villages - either in Poland or in the other East-European countries. Most of them - especially those who are the victims of human traffic - work this way because they have no other possibilities and perspectives.
Under these circumstances we can say firmly that if the client doesn’t want to use a condom, the woman has no power to force him to use it.

As I sad at the beginning - we don’t have statistics of STD among prostitutes or human traffic victims. When they come to La Strada, they are not forced to test themselves for HIV or HCV.

Still I can tell about something what can be observed more and more often.
The women coming to La Strada are more and more victimized. They suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder - have problems with their memory abilities, focusing their attention. They don’t feel to have any resources or possibilities - although some of them do. They have problems with decision making. They suffer from sleeplessness, anxiety, they get emotionally imbalanced. More and more of them need neurological treatment - because of neurotic symptoms.

Moreover most of the women coming to La Strada have general problems with health. They have ruined teeth. They suffer from many diseases as a result of PTSD - e.g. arrhythmia, gastric ulcers etc. Sometimes a surgeon’s intervetion is needed - women have wounds, broken bones etc.

So the main conclusion of my report must be again - just like in past few years: Poland has no efficient system of preventing slavery and helping victims of human traffic. The situation of all the people who came to Poland hoping for their promised land is tragic.
If you don’t speak Polish, have no money or no natural social support in Poland you are condemned to wandering from one institution to another and it’s very hard to stabilize your life if you intend to stay in Poland for a longer period of time.