data/hungary.nlembassy.org/English/17#2ba6836a-1c66-4c28-8081-69647eae4831.txt

On 1st of July, a court in the Netherlands sentenced a 44-year-old Hungarian citizen to four years of imprisonment.
The man from the Hungarian city Szeged has been convicted of exploitation of
three prostitutes. The victims are three women from Hungary who worked as
prostitutes in the cities of Utrecht, Groningen, The Hague and Alkmaar. The
women have indicated that they are no victims of human trafficking. They stated
that they have borrowed the 44-year-old man money, that they voluntarily worked
as prostitutes and had no pimp. The prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor's Office
concluded during the trial of the criminal case that the three women certainly
are victims of human trafficking. The public prosecutor required an
unconditional imprisonment of five years.
Misunderstanding
It is a misconception that women who are in prostitution in the Netherlands
are not victims of trafficking when they know in advance that they come to the
Netherlands for this work. The point of human being trafficking is that the
victim is limited in her choice or her free will.
In this criminal case violence, deception and abuse of the vulnerable
position of women was involved. The threat to the women became obvious from the
telephone calls the police tapped during the investigation. During one of the
calls, the trafficker scolded one of his victims to whore child and shouted that
"I'll kill you if you do not have 300 euros for tonight; I will kill you.'' 'He
threatened and controlled the women, gave them instructions and took their
money, the prosecutor stated. He concluded that "this man deliberately chose to
submit women to exploitation and deliberately benefited from the money these
women earned as prostitutes."