A open message of thanks to the Justices of the High Court of Australia
 
On the 28th of August, in a 6-1 decision, the High Court found that brothel owner Wei Tang was guilty of five counts of using and five counts of possessing a slave.
 
On the 14th of November 2008, Project Respect ran a seminar with nine Thai and Chinese women who had been trafficked to Australia for prostitution, where we outlined the key findings in the High Court judgement on the Queen v. Tang.
 
On the 15th and 16th of November, Project Respect had a weekend away for women in the sex industry, where the women who attended the seminar the previous day wrote the attached statement.
 
Please read the statement in full and learn about the experiences of trafficked women, as told by them. If you would like to respond to the women, we encourage you to do so by writing to info@projectrepsect.org.au. We will pass on your words to the women who wrote this.
 

An open message of thanks to the Justices of the High Court of Australia by women supported by Project Respect is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License. You may share this statement with other people but it may not be used for commercial purposes and any use must attribute Project Respect.
 
Please assist us to support and advance the rights of women in the sex industry by donating here.
 
An extract from the statement
 
What happened to us was a nightmare. We can never forget. It comes back to us in dreams. This will affect us til we die. It has changed us.
 
We were treated very badly. We worked from 11am to 3 or 4 am. We slept only three or four hours a night. Sometimes some of us worked for 24 hours. For four or five months, all we did was prostitution. Even when we had our period, we had to work. Sometimes we worked until we couldn’t walk. We had to work until we were very very sick and the customers refused to take us. Only then were we allowed to rest, for one day.
 
It felt like we survived and died at the same time. We had to keep doing what the traffickers said, for ourselves, and for the people we loved. The traffickers threatened us – we were scared they would hurt us and our families. Some of us thought we could be killed. We blamed ourselves for what happened, because we had wanted to come to Australia.
 
We feel now that people believe we are real and understand what we have been through. We feel that the High Court Justices respect and understand us. Because of what happened to us, we didn’t trust people. Now it seems there are good people in the world. People outside have believed what happened to us. We feel more valuable.
 
We don’t want other women to experience what we experienced. We want the government to find more ways to stop slavery.
 
To help women who have already been hurt by slavery, we want the government to give everyone a new chance. In the past, we felt that people wouldn’t give us a chance. Visas are the best thing. Secondly, we need education, so we know how to communicate, so we know how to live in Australia, so we can start a new life. We want help so we can find new jobs, otherwise we have to do the same thing, prostitution. No-one wants to stay with that many men. Of course, we can make a lot of money from prostitution, but it feels there is no respect, no love there.
 
The High Court decision is important. Before, all of us were scared to talk. Now, we have hope. We can trust again. We are real. The High Court judgement feels like a blessing, something very good.