If a woman is moved from place A to place B, through means such as abduction, coercion or deception, for the purpose of prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, then she has been trafficked. The bottom line of trafficking: women are exploited and held in slavery or slavery-like conditions. When they’re brought out to Australia women who are trafficked are victims of cruel deception. The broker has probably lured them with the hope of a better life, work in a restaurant or the tourism industry, or good pay in the sex industry. Many women who are trafficked agree to do prostitution, however are not told they will be severly exploited once they arrive in Australia. Some women may have done prostitution before, many have not. While they’re expecting employment in a karaoke bar, or a select clientele with the ability to choose their clients, the reality is a nightmare. What is the same, regardless of the woman’s expectations, is the intended and actual exploitation by their traffickers.

Often, the women are held in debt bondage, forced to provide profit for their traffickers to pay off a unilateral, legally unenforceable debt. Most women trafficked to Australia are from South East Asia and China however trafficking from Europe and Latin America is not unknown. Today, the largest known group of trafficked women are from Thailand and South Korea.

In 2008, the High Court found brothel owner Wei Tang guilty of five counts of using and five counts of possessing a slave in her Brunswick Street brothel in inner-city Melbourne. A summary of the judgements by Gleeson CJ and Haynes J and the High Court decision, media links and media releases regarding the Wei Tang case can be read here.  

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. Following this, Project Respect ran a weekend away for women in the sex industry, and the women who attended the seminar the previous day attended. These women, in a safe and supported environment recounted their experiences of trafficking. These accounts can be viewed here.