Free the Slaves Director of Programs, Karen Stauss was quoted in an AOL News article covering the all male and transgender sex trafficking ring busted in Spain earlier this week. AOL’s Dana Kennedy writes:
In Twist to Sex Trade, Spain Busts Male Prostitute Ring
Young men from Brazil were flown to Spain, kept in crowded, unsanitary conditions and plied with drugs as part of a male prostitution ring smashed this week by police.
The bust marked the first time adult male prostitutes were revealed as part of a structured network within Spain’s flourishing sex-trafficking business, police told the newspaper El Pais.
Clients could contact the men, of which police said there were between 60 and 80, via newspaper and website ads featuring their photos. Spanish police say the men were allegedly given Viagra, cocaine and amyl nitrate to enable them to perform for customers around the clock, and threatened with injury or death if they didn’t comply.
Fourteen people who help run the organization were arrested in Madrid and several other cities in Spain, national police said in a statement. The leader, whom police did not identify, was based on the posh Mediterranean island of Majorca. Reports indicated the majority of clients were men.
“Hearing about [male prostitutes] in global sex trafficking is rare but not unheard of,” Karen Stauss, an expert in human trafficking at the Washington D.C.-based Free the Slaves organization, told AOL News today.
