Irish escort site offers ‘war-inspired fantasies’ with Ukrainian women
Ireland’s largest escort website offered men the opportunity to live out their “war-inspired fantasises” with Ukrainian women, a webinar has heard on Thursday.
Escorts Ireland reported a 250 per cent increase in interest for Ukrainian women, Valiant Richey from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said.
Mr Richey, a former US prosecutor, told the webinar organised by the Beyond Exploitation that war could be exploited by human traffickers, and Europe had already seen a rise in online searches relating to buying sex from Ukrainian women.
“In some countries the spike [in online searches for buying sex from Ukrainian women] was as much as 600 per cent… there was an immediate interest in exploiting them,” he said.
A recent operation in Sweden proved this trend is translating into real life, Mr Richey said. Out of 38 buyers who were arrested, 30 of them were attempting to access Ukrainian women specifically.
Mr Richey, the OSCE’s co-ordinator for combatting trafficking in human beings, said the demand for sexual services motivates trafficking.
“Too often efforts are only focused on victim identification or the prosecution of traffickers… if we don’t address demand,
the problem will never, never stop.”
Olena Zaitseva, lawyer at the Centre for Democracy in Kyiv and sexual exploitation expert, said the Irish Government
and wider civil society need to understand Ukrainian culture when it comes to gender-based violence.
“Many Ukrainians have a low level of trust in law enforcement agencies, including the police and state
bodies… they do not perceive the police as helpers.”
