There are estimated to be 25,000 Nigerian girls working as prostitutes in Italy and the numbers arriving rose 300 per cent in 2014, experts say.
Back in Nigeria a witchdoctor had performed a powerful voodoo spell to bring luck for the girl’s journey, she told Italian aid workers.
After leaving her village in the Edo State, with the promise of a job as a hairdresser in Italy, she was taken to a shrine in Benin City.
There, in a terrifying ritual she was made to undress – they cut her pubic hair and toenails and made her swear over the blood of a chicken that she would never betray her benefactor.
Like many others for whom the promised job as a hairdresser did not materialise. Favour believes nevertheless that she has to pay off the debt or face terrible repercussions.
Favour, one of thousands of Nigerian women trafficked to Europe to become sex slaves every year, has been told she owes her female pimp €80,000 for her journey. This will take around 4,000 clients each paying as little as €10 or €20 to pay off.
Although the chains tying her to her madam are only psychological, they are extremely powerful.
It makes them close up and become incommunicative. Whether they believe or not, there are so many reasons to be afraid. The risk that something terrible happens to their family many women are forced to streetwalk from 10pm to 5am before returning to their homes where they pay rent of €300 a month to live in terrible conditions.
She has seen many cases of girls beaten, tortured with cigarettes or hot irons. Other have told how they forced to drink the water in which the other girls have washed their vaginas as a form of humiliation.
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