The Lure of the Fast Life: Albanian Young Women Talk About Trafficking

Despite the tragedy of young girls who return to Albania beaten and burned from the sex trade in Italy, government officials, police and a good part of Albania society believe that the returnees are criminals, not victims of organized crime.

Central to that argument is the distinction between girls who have been forced into prostitution and those who have voluntarily sought a career with the traffickers.

NGOs and women's shelter operators are quick to point out that "voluntary" means little because traffickers use deceit as often as brute force to recruit young girls who are barely out of puberty. Offers of marriage, or a good babysitting job in sunny southern Italy suggest an easy way out of the gray days of Albania's current grim economic situation.

But whether young girls choose or are coerced into the trade, what kind of fantasies do young Albanian girls have that might make them targets of traffickers? The team of investigative journalists set out to make an informal survey with girls in Tirana and Durres.

Probably the most surprising result is that most young girls knew at least one friend who was involved in the sex trade.

Most parents expect a "good girl" to have an opinion similar to Aurora's. She is an 18-year-old high school student in Durrės. She knows a girl from her neighborhood who has spent five years in Italy as a "waitress."

"I see her walking around our neighborhood and I want to spit on her when I think she has had sex with 20 to 30 men a day," Aurora said.

Similarly, a group of girls, ages 13 to 18, from Asim Vokshi Foreign Languages High School in Tirana said they knew friends who had become prostitutes, and they even understood some of the reasons why, such as getting money for their family. But they insisted they had never contemplated the idea for themselves, even as a fantasy of the good life in Italy.

But Alba, a first-year student at the Foreign Languages Faculty in Tirana, said that women who deny they have thought about it are not being straightforward.

"Any woman thinks of what would it be like to be a prostitute," she said. " It gives you the chance to be independent, to have money but I wouldn't do it."

But when asked why, Alba finally admitted the strongest reason was the stigma that Albanian society put on a returning prostitute. She did not mention the violence and intimidation that police and shelter workers say transforms girls into old women in a matter of months.

"In the end, what's wrong with it?" Alba said trying to make her mind up on the question. " It is a way of living. Later, if I didn't like it I would stop."

Alba's idle fantasy does not come as easily to girls from the more heavily trafficked areas, who have seen as well as heard about the horror stories.

Marsida is a fourth-year student at the Sami Frasheri High School in Tirana. But she comes from Berat, the birthplace of human trafficking in Albania in early 1993.

Unlike many of her Tirana friends at school, Marsida said she personally knows traffickers in her town. They are not only guys with gold rings and chains around their necks, she said. They are more often the sweet guys with the quick words of love. When she got to Berat high school she quickly learned how dangerous those words could be.

"Women are only trafficking (sex) objects in that town."

Any of her friends in Berat could tell a horror story about some one they knew, Marsida said. A girl Marsida knew went to her graduation party where she was drugged. She woke up in Milan Italy. For a year, the family did not know anything about her fate until two months ago, when she gave them a phone call. She was alive and being forced to work as a sidewalk prostitute.

Likewise Ela, 22, a student at the History-Philology Faculty in Tirana, said only a disaster in her life could make her contemplate a life of prostitution. And coming back to Albania after that life would be like dying, she said.

But she sees no reason to shun the women who have been trapped into prostitution or even made another decision with what to do with their lives.

A friend at Ela's job is a call girl in Tirana. Ela said she cannot accept for herself the dishonor and lack of self-respect that would come with the job. But she sees no reason why she should not continue to associate with her. Why should she treat her any differently than the other women she knows that have three lovers at the same time?

Ela said she had formed her view after the death of Adi, a close friend. He had fallen in love with a woman rumored to be a prostitute in Tirana. He was hounded by family and friends for his association with her.

Caught between his deep love for a women and the castigation of his family, Adi chose a solution that some might also say characterizes what Albania is doing by rejecting the women returned from Italy.

Adi committed suicide.