More than 100 Dutch girls forced into prostitution abroad

More than 100 Dutch girls and young women are thought to have been forced to work as prostitutes in Belgium and Germany in recent years, according to research by the centre for human trafficking (CKM).

The study, the first of its kind on exploitation of Dutch victims abroad, estimates there were at least 125 people trafficked between 2021 and 2023, most of them to Belgium. Official registrations recorded just 9 victims in the same period, which the CKM said shows the group is almost entirely invisible to the authorities.

The centre surveyed more than 200 care workers, police officers and other professionals in the Netherlands and neighbouring countries. Dozens said they had picked up signals that Dutch victims were being made to work across the border.

German number plates
The research was launched after staff at an open youth institution in the Dutch border region noticed girls being collected by men in cars with German number plates. They suspected the girls’ “boyfriends” were taking them to houses in Germany where other men were waiting to pay for sex.

Online sex adverts and reports from young people using an anonymous chat service added to evidence. Most victims are girls and young women who still live at home or in an institution, and some are under 18. Many are already exploited in the Netherlands before being taken abroad.

Across the border, they are made to receive clients in hotels, homes, sex clubs and holiday parks, often in villages just over the frontier or in cities such as Antwerp and Duisburg. One care worker said victims are “ping-ponged” between locations in different countries, and some are suspected of also being forced to smuggle packages of drugs.

Little cooperation
Dutch organisations have almost no contact with their counterparts abroad, the report found, except in acute cases. The CKM is calling on ministers in the Netherlands and neighbouring countries to develop a joint approach, with closer cooperation between both police forces and care agencies.

“It should not matter whether a victim of exploitation has crossed a national border,” said CKM researcher Verena Elders. “Yet for care workers, that is still complicated.”
Justice minister David van Weel, who said in May he wants to raise the minimum age for sex work to 21, said he would study the research carefully, according to broadcaster NOS.

“Every victim of human trafficking is one too many,” he said. “That applies all the more when it concerns children and young adults.”