Implementation Agencies: perspectives and beliefs

For a better understanding o f the activities carried out by Implementation Agencies in running projects of social protection, it is important to explore how these organizations conceptualize the phenomena of trafficking and prostitution with which they operate. As I observed even before starting my fieldwork (when conducting a desk based research on IAs over the national territory), at the heart of the differing strategies of support provided

7 Such expansion has undoubtedly resulted in a better ramified intervention that reaches more areas o f the national territory. Nevertheless, this may also be seen as problematic in that new groups with little/less knowledge o f the field are reducing the funds that might otherwise be available to more established and experienced organizations.

lie crucial distinctions in the way the presence o f ‘foreign prostitutes’ is explained, which in turn depends primarily on how sex trafficking is conceptualized vis-a-vis prostitution.

Sex trafficking as a prostitution problem

A widespread approach amongst IAs is that which views prostitution as an evil and a sexual degradation that violates the integrity of the persons who practise it. Within this perspective, prostitute women8 are invariably considered to be victims, be it of organized criminal networks, clients’ sexual lust and a patriarchal system that allows the sexual objectification of women, or, more generally, of socio-economic circumstances. The emphasis on the forces that cause and drive into this state o f abjection varies, but what brings many IAs together around this approach is the belief that there is no real distinction between prostitution and sex trafficking. The latter is seen as a particular manifestation - i.e. in a transnational dimension - of the sexual exploitation of prostitution.

For a more detailed explanation of this position and its constitutive aspects, I will now proceed to explore how it is supported in particular by some Catholic IAs. As already explained in chapter 3, the Catholic Church maintains that prostitution is an immoral, undignified and sinful offence against the wholeness and sacredness of the body.9 Two of my interviewees, a nun and a social worker operating in Catholic IAs, explained their support for this approach and said respectively:

We [our order] are completely against any form of prostitution, and we think that it is impossible to ascribe to it the dignity of a profession.

(Personal interview with Sister Michela, July 2004)

The body of the woman cannot be bought or sold: it is sacred; prostitution is an enormous evil, and as such it has to be fought and prohibited.

(Personal interview with Marco, March 2005)

8 In this case, in fact, the act o f prostitution is often conceptualized upon gendered and heteronormative assumptions that prostitutes are always women and clients are men.

9 According to the Catholic Catechism it also is sinful to engage in prostitution (i.e. it is sinful to be a

prostitute), although “the imputability o f the offence can be attenuated by destitution, blackmail, or social

This perspective has recently been further clarified in the Church's Strategy to Help Women o f the Streets, a document released in 2005 which addresses specifically the phenomenon o f sex trafficking. Resulting from an initiative of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers10 at the end of an International Meeting o f Pastoral Care fo r the Liberation o f Women o f the Street this instruction claims that:

Prostitution is a form of modern-day slavery. It is important to recognize that sexual exploitation, prostitution and trafficking of human beings are all acts of violence against women and as such constitute an offence to the dignity of women and are a grave violation of basic human rights.

(Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of the Migrants and Itinerant People 2005)

The document also rules out the possibility that someone may decide to sell sexual services, since this is always the result of external forces that constrain into doing so. The fact that a woman may (claim to) choose to prostitute herself is irrelevant. All prostitute women are ‘prostituted’, i.e. invariably coerced into this activity and need to be treated as victims - even more so when they are led to believe that engaging in the sex industry is something they have wilfully resolved upon. Along this line o f thought, don Benzi writes in one of his books, “the truth is that free prostitution does not exist. All forms of prostitution are imposed: 90% are enslaved women, 10% are women who are coerced into prostitution by the conditions of injustice in which they live” (Benzi 2001: 109). Similarly, Marco, the director of a Catholic Implementation Agency, in stressing the impossibility that ‘foreign prostitutes’ may freely want to engage in prostitution, told me emphatically: “No woman was bom a prostitute! There is always someone who made her become a prostitute” (personal interview with Marco, March 2005).

These quotes emphasize the notion of female victims as being in a perennial status of subjugation and powerlessness - ‘enslaved women’, ‘coerced’, ‘made her become’ - and imply that they are always and invariably acted upon. Such themes are constantly reproduced around representations of sex trafficking (see chapter 1), and were also discussed in chapter 4, in relation to Article 18 and the legal discourse surrounding it. As seen, one of the implications of these narratives of despair is the creation of a dichotomy between innocent victims and guilty criminals. In the case of the IAs

discussed here, this binary division is irrelevant because all (‘foreign’) prostitutes11 are considered to be victims, by virtue of their being engaged in prostitution. The Church's Strategy to Help Women ofthe Street provides a highly emotive description of the extent to which the experience of sex trafficking/prostitution affect ‘the victim’:

[she] is tom apart, she is dead psychologically and spiritually. Each person has a different story, mainly one of violence, abuse, mistrust, low self esteem, fear, lack of opportunities. [...]

(Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of the Migrants and Itinerant People 2005)

In light o f the ‘damage’ inflicted on victims of trafficking/prostitution, the role assumed by IAs that operate within these understandings is to rescue, save, liberate or rehabilitate them - all common terms adopted within their rhetoric - to a new, dignified life. As Marco explained,

on the basis of our beliefs, which are also Christian beliefs, if a woman was made in God’s image, I really don’t think that God wanted her to be a prostitute. So on the basis of our beliefs, we always fight to free all the prostituted women.

(Personal interview, March 2005)

The emphasis here is clearly on the righteousness o f the belief system o f the organization - ‘our beliefs’ - which justifies the intervention pursued to free from oppressive practices. Don Benzi in particular has been actively and publicly involved in disseminating his message of liberation of migrant prostitutes, whom he always refers to as le schiave, the slaves (with a feminine connotation), or ragazze schiavizzate ‘enslaved girls’ to highlight their lack of freedom. The image reproduced here (figure 2) is just one example of his ‘liberationist campaign’. Reproduced from his association’s website, it depicts a smiling don Benzi holding hands with two ‘enslaved girls’, with the footer stating: “Let’s free the slaves [feminine] of prostitution”.

11 Although this applies to all women in prostitution, the rhetoric o f these IAs focuses primarily on le

Figure 2: Liberiamo le schiave della prostituzione

Don Benzi’s motto is particularly interesting because in very few words - ‘Let’s save the slaves o f prostitution’ - it summarizes the belief system that informs the activities o f his and similar organizations. Firstly, the onus o f the liberation is on ‘us’: let us liberate them, liberiamo, which not only evokes a moral obligation to carry out the ‘liberation’, but it authorizes and empowers ‘us’ to do so, whilst belittling, if not even ignoring, the capacity and agency o f ‘the slaves’ to contribute to their own re-conquest of freedom (supposing that, whatever is meant by it, this was lost in the first place). Secondly, the use o f the term ‘slaves’ is quite common - and contested (O'Connell Davidson 2006) - in discourses around sex trafficking, and it serves to underscore a complete lack o f freedom.12 The last point is related to the focus on prostitution, rather

12 The term s slave and sla very in the co n te xt o f sex tr a ffic k in g are c o m m o n ly adopted in academ ic w o rk , p o litic a l and legal texts and discourses a ll o v e r the w o rld . T h e y are also in clud ed in the 2000 U n ite d N a tio n s Protocol to Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children that defines tr a ffic k in g as “ the re cru itm e n t, tra n sp o rta tio n , transfe r, h a rb o u rin g o r receipt o f persons, b y means o f the threa t o r use o f fo rc e o r o th er fo rm s o f coe rcio n, o f a b d u ctio n , o f fraud , o f de ception, o f the abuse o f p o w e r o r o f a p o s itio n o f v u ln e ra b ility o r o f the g iv in g or re c e iv in g o f paym ents o r b e n e fits to achieve the consent o f a person h a v in g c o n tro l o v e r another person, fo r the purpose o f e x p lo ita tio n . E x p lo ita tio n shall in clud e, at a m in im u m , the e x p lo ita tio n o f the p ro s titu tio n o f others o r o th e r fo rm s o f sexual e x p lo ita tio n , forced la b o u r o r services, slavery o r practices s im ila r to slavery, s e rvitu d e o r the re m o va l o f organs” . Sex

than on trafficking. The problem, as is clearly stated here, is that what forces the ‘slaves’ into a condition of subjugation is prostitution - and that is what they have to be liberated from.

Don Lodeserto’s Regina P ads Foundation holds matching views and makes use o f similar tropes and representations in its rhetoric. One o f its documents states that the aim o f the association’s intervention is to:

safeguard the freedom and dignity of girl victims of sexual abuse and exploitation of prostitution. More specifically, it [the Foundation] aims at offering assistance and protection, psycho-social integration and help, [...] to young girls we snatched out of the world of prostitution and sexual exploitation [...].

(Regina Pacis 2007, emphasis added)

When I first read this paragraph in its English version I assumed that the adoption o f the expression ‘snatched out’ derived from an incorrect translation which had made use o f a verb that in English is similar in meaning to abduction. In fact, ‘snatched out’ is indeed the best term to convey the meaning of the original term sottratte, which, as I checked, is used in the Italian text. As in the previous example, the choice o f this particular terminology underscores the role of the IA and its moral authority to exercise the right to save and rehabilitate ‘the victims’ in a way that may even imply some sort of physical removal of the latter from conditions of exploitation. The focus here is on what the organization, not the ‘girls’, thinks is better for them (Jordan 2002). In fact, they are very much silenced and presented as completely inert and passive individuals who need external aid to safeguard their freedom and dignity.

Nevertheless, the reality is much more complex than a homogenous and monolithic representation in which all migrant prostitutes appear as ‘powerless slaves’. In many instances they are “likely to be strong, risk-taking individuals who have made rational choices and exercised their own agency in deciding to migrate”, and unfortunately some of them became victims o f traffickers (Jordan 2002: 30). The

trafficking, in particular, is also commonly referred to as sexual slavery “to indicate the conditions o f debt bondage and illegal confinement to which trafficked women in prostitution are subjected.” (Andrijasevic 2004: 82). These aspects are important to contextualize the use o f the term slave/slavery that don Benzi, and others in Italy, so frequently adopt in their campaigns as part o f the ‘modem day slavery’ discourse. However, the significance and historical relevance o f the racialized practice o f ‘old’ slavery cannot be detached from the current use o f the term. And indeed in the image above the adoption o f the term ‘slave’ to refer to racialized minorities is reinforced, in this case with the portrayal o f two Black women - the slaves o f prostitution, as the footer reads - and o f their smiling white saviour.

discrepancy between the simplistic ideals of organizations such as don Benzi’s and don Lodeserto’s and the more complex reality has inevitable repercussions at the level o f practice, where the two inevitably clash. In the following chapter, for example, I present cases of staff of IAs ascribing to this perspective whose frustration for the non-victim­ like (intended as powerless, completely subjugated and innocent) behaviour o f ‘foreign prostitutes’ they provide support to, is displayed in hostile attitudes towards them, fuelled by sexism and racism.

Moreover, such limited perspectives are perceived by some people working in Catholic IAs as highly constraining. Despite the adamant definitions and statements produced by the Vatican on trafficking and prostitution, in the course of my fieldwork I observed a plurality o f ‘non conformist’ views on these matters. Being confronted every day with the complexity of migrant women’s lives, it is difficult for the staff o f some Catholic IAs to agree with such clear-cut views or pursue these goals. Equating prostitution and trafficking is perceived by some as an oversimplifying approach that neglects the plurality o f experiences they witness and have to deal with on a daily basis. Given this tension, in many instances the staff of the associations interviewed expressed the need to be clear about their (dissonant) perspective on prostitution and trafficking.

A Catholic nun, for example, was very keen to make sure that I understood the aim of the Article 18 project she was responsible for:

Even before I answer your first question, it important for me to make sure that you understand that we deal with coerced prostitution - i.e. not with prostitution lived as a choice by the woman. Here we are talking about women who have been abducted and exploited.

(Personal interview with Sister Maria, March 2005)

In this statement the interviewee admits the possibility that prostitution may be lived as a choice, despite the fact that, as mentioned, the official stand of the Catholic Church excludes it. Similarly, Elena, a project officer emphatically said:

Our association was not created with the intent o f dealing with prostitution, we were bom to intervene in the field of exploitation of prostitution and trafficking. Do you understand the difference? So our aim has never been to eliminate prostitution from the streets. Is this clear? We provide assistance to women who are forced into prostitution.

The anxiety displayed by Elena in relation to my understanding of the scope of her organization’s intervention was clarified after the interview. In the course of an informal and off-the-record conversation, she expressed frustration over the media attention received by a small number of Catholic priests (including don Benzi) who have, according to her, pushed people into thinking that all Catholic organizations working with prostitutes want to save them and eliminate prostitution, whereas this is not always the case.

Similar concerns were expressed in a conversation I had with Anna, the coordinator of one of the branches of an international Catholic NGO. When I interviewed her in 2002 the Church had not yet come out with the Strategy to Help Women o f the Streets, and the only official documents to refer to were those on prostitution. Given the lack o f clear guidelines on issues of trafficking, she explained, a few priests who have media appeal often appear on television programs expressing their views, but they are not, she stressed, the official ones o f the Catholic world, although this is what it might seem.

It is not fair to ask only people like don Benzi to talk about the trafficking issue. In his own little world, however, he has some few clear ideas and has a large group of people following him. You understand? The first is that the client has to be condemned, and then all the women have to be saved because they don’t want to do this job. But it’s not true! There are some people who do want to do this job. They want to do it because it is the most remunerative, and then they want to go back home and buy a house [...]. Even if you take away the coercion, they still want to keep doing the job! And this has to be said! [...] Benzi again, once said that it’s the wife of the client who is not good in bed with the husband, and that’s why they go to prostitutes. That’s what he came up with once, then fortunately he retracted the statement. The last thing we need is for him to attack women again, and then we’re done for! It’s always their fault! The thing that annoys me most is that don Benzi is seen as representing the Catholic Church, and the Church is not going to deny this, it’s not going to touch a man who is a ‘saviour’! There are some people who in the end really choose to do this job [prostitution]. If they want to do it