Lee la entrevista en español aquí

Serra-Schönthal Foundation (FSS) is a member of GAATW in Madrid, Spain. In July 2022, Emilia Cebrián from the GAATW secretariat conducted this interview with Beatriz García de la Torre, FSS Coordinator, to learn more about the work of the organisation, the contexts in which it operates, and the communities it supports. The original interview was conducted in Spanish. It was translated into English by Jennifer Janssen.

Emilia Cebrián: First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to do this interview. Could you tell me when and why was FSS founded?

Beatriz García de la Torre: The Serra-Schönthal Foundation was founded by the Oblate Sisters of the Most Holy Redeemer in 2013. This is a congregation that has projects to support women in situations of prostitution or trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation in 15 countries. The Foundation was created mainly to increase the connections between the projects in different parts of the world. The aim is to create networks, join forces, exchange knowledge and information, and face new challenges that arise around prostitution and trafficking, for example, now in the virtual world. We try to have a more global view and share it with the projects that we support from the Economic Fund for Aid to Women (FEAM). This is a fund of the Foundation to support entrepreneurship, training, awareness, and advocacy projects in different parts of Spain and the world with a view to economic autonomy and an improvement in the lives of the women with whom we work. We are currently supporting projects on visibility, awareness and training in Angola, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, the Philippines, Italy, Portugal, and in various Spanish communities.

Entrepreneurship project: An organic garden in Argentina

Emilia: What are the main issues you work on and the communities you support?

Beatriz: When you have an international vision, the realities are very diverse. There are many points in common, but each local reality has its peculiarities, and a woman in a situation of prostitution in Argentina or Colombia, is not the same as a in Spain. There are many points in common but there are also many differences such as poverty. For example in Spain, where the Foundation's office is located, the problem we face is the helplessness and social exclusion faced by women who have been victims of sexual exploitation or trafficking, or women who are in a situation of prostitution and have difficulties in accessing employment, social benefits of the State, etc. This is so because many of these women are migrants, and the majority are in an irregular situation, which makes the journey much more difficult.

From the projects, we hope to achieve economic independence for these women and initiate procedures for regularisation. Among other things, we financially support these initiatives, as well as provide training to access the labour market. When a woman decides to leave prostitution or when a victim of trafficking manages to get out of the situation of exploitation, she can take refuge in a temporary shelter and there she has a space of security and tranquillity where she can receive education, training, and/or entrepreneurship courses so that she can live independently with her children. By way of example, in Madrid we have a temporary accommodation for women with children where they normally stay for a year and have their basic needs covered. Then, they look for a job that they can combine with the care of their children, and thus avoid returning to the situation of prostitution.

Emilia: Our members who work with sex workers or women in prostitution and victims of trafficking who are migrants have noticed that many times women do not come forward to request support for fear of being deported or persecuted, particularly when they are in an irregular situation. Is this something you have noticed in your work?

Beatriz: Yes, of course. In the case of women who are in situations of trafficking, often the fear of their irregular situation in the country is combined with the fear that something will happen to them if they initiate legal proceedings against the traffickers, because they constantly receive threats and have debts to pay. The traffickers use different forms of threats so that the women stay in these situations and do not try to escape. Very few women dare to report because they do not feel protected. Some women have followed the procedure to the end, but many leave it halfway because they are afraid and receive threats and some have even been murdered. This issue has to be tackled in some way.

Reception in Madrid

Emilia: At GAATW we have documented the collateral damage of certain anti-trafficking measures, and we note that this problem continues over the years. In addition to what you have already mentioned, are there other challenges you see in the daily work of the Foundation?

Beatriz: Through our research, listening to women’s realities, and raising awareness, we see the criminalisation of these women in all countries. There are women traffickers who had been trafficked before. What do we do about this? It is a common challenge and we as a Foundation believe that there must be more networking.

Another challenge is linked to the security forces, which have their role in dismantling trafficking networks, but I believe that the entities that have a more social, real, and personal perspective of what happens to women should be given a greater responsibility in this. We need to raise awareness of this problem. The first thing that comes to mind is punitiveness and there is the language of immigration control to ‘prevent the mafias from entering’. Many women decide to join trafficking networks because it is the only or safest way to reach the country of destination, for example, when coming to Europe. The alternative is to throw yourself into the sea and not know if you are going to arrive alive.

In Spain, we have a serious problem with trafficking for both labour and sexual exploitation. The group that the Foundation supports are mainly women victims of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, but also in other areas in which migrant men and women are being exploited for work. There are women who work in the strawberry field harvest who are being exploited both sexually and for their labour, and women who live in very impoverished areas and sell sex in very unhealthy conditions. Or the deception they suffer in the countries of origin, as well as the lack of employment alternatives both in the countries of origin and destination. All of these are challenges that need to be addressed and I do believe that political advocacy is important.

Emilia: Several systemic problems converge here in the things you’re saying, which is why at GAATW we always emphasise addressing the structural causes of trafficking.

Beatriz: It is necessary to tackle these problems from the structure of the system. Punitiveness is not enough and doesn’t achieve anything. The Foundation maintains that the structural factors of trafficking are capitalism, migratory policies that dehumanise, and the feminisation of poverty. This is a global challenge that must be taken into account when initiating proposals on how to deal with this crime. One of the challenges we face is identifying which women in flats, brothels, or clubs are victims of sexual exploitation or trafficking. It is necessary to go to the root causes that lead women to engage in prostitution, because they have no other options.

Emilia: How do you incorporate the perspectives and learnings of trafficked women into your work?

Beatriz: It is through the professionals who are with them all day long, but I can tell you about what I see on my visits to projects. The important thing is to have contact with them and not only take their experiences, but also ask them what they think is being done wrong. For example, there is a case of a woman who reported being a victim of trafficking. The authorities managed to dismantle the network and the woman entered one of our reception facilities in Spain, but she lived in fear and felt that they were not protecting her because she had found the traffickers. Taking this experience, she can say 'I would like the State or the security agency to do this'.

In the projects, women who have previously used the services are often hired as a way of creating links and collaborating in their economic independence. We believe that you always have to keep in mind the group you work for and in this case, put women at the centre. On the other hand, we are carrying out a study on new forms of prostitution and trafficking in terms of the virtual field and one of the things we are doing is sending questionnaires to the different centres and projects so that the employees respond. But we are also interested in talking to women directly about how they are experiencing these changes in terms of virtual prostitution and then incorporating it into the Foundation's study. It is always very important to have a closeness and a connection with the group for which you work, which in this case are mostly migrant women.

Emilia: It is very important what you said about not only collecting their experiences, but also that their concerns and perspectives are reflected in the work of the organisation. It is a difficult task, but we always seek to make it our goal.

Beatriz: It is very difficult, especially when you know that there is a limitation. But in the projects, we always try to ask what is it that women want and provide them with a sense of freedom and security within a system that ultimately continues to oppress them. Because after leaving the situation of trafficking or prostitution they continue to face many limitations. Talking to them, asking them what they want, offering them training, allowing them to talk about their hopes or desires is important, above all because they are people who have come out of a situation in which they have mostly had a lack of freedom.

Spanish class in one of the projects in Spain

Emilia: Since you work mostly with migrant women, could you tell me what countries or regions they come from and how you deal with language and cultural barriers?

Beatriz: The profiles of the women change according to the situation in each country. In the case of Spain, due to its geographical location, many women come from Africa, especially from Nigeria and more recently from the Ivory Coast. There are also many women from Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Colombia, Uruguay, Central American countries, such as the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, as well as Eastern Europe, especially Romania. It is a very culturally diverse community and this has its positive side and its negative side. In terms of language, many women are Latin American and speak Spanish and others have learnt Spanish because they had been in Spain for more years, however, it is difficult when it comes to finding a job and accessing certain training courses.

Emilia: Could you tell me a little more about the study you are carrying out on virtual prostitution and trafficking?

Beatriz: When the Foundation started, we wanted to understand the reality of the issues and it was decided to start a study on new forms of prostitution and trafficking that were occurring as a result of globalisation and the rise of new technologies. We did not want to close ourselves off from the virtual aspect at first, but we have seen that as a result of the pandemic something that had already begun with globalisation and the rise of new technologies has increased exponentially.

We began with a first consultation with all the projects through a questionnaire with four questions to find out what information they had within the 15 countries: to tell us about the online reality they were experiencing, what the women were observing, how they communicated, and how the recruitment happened. As a result of this consultation, which we launched in 2020, we confirmed that since the pandemic, street work was migrating to clubs and especially to flats; we also saw that work was doubling. Many women continued to work on the street or in apartments and clubs, and then they would come home and connect to websites and applications such as Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Twitter. These types of applications became very important and there are recruitments going on in these spaces that anyone can access through false profiles in the case of trafficking, and there are also women who see this as another economic outlet.

One of the most important phenomena that has emerged has been OnlyFans, with a significant increase in registered users since the pandemic. This is something that we saw in common between all the projects, but each country has its own characteristics. In the case of Colombia, for example, there is much more work through webcams. Another conclusion that we made is that with virtual prostitution the risk of physical violence decreases, although there is always a previous technological contact even when there is a physical encounter afterwards, given that the encounters are usually agreed through WhatsApp, websites, etc. Although it is true that physical violence is reduced, we learnt of cases of extortion through photos, recorded images, because the person who is paying to see that content can extort women if they do not do what they are asked. We also see more networking and increased pimping due to the rapid virtual expansion.

Emilia: Do you have plans to publish this study?

Beatriz: At the moment, no. Now we are carrying out the second consultation, because one of the objectives of the study is to reach more women in this situation. There are already projects that have found a way to contact women who are using this modality through virtual tools, but we still need to continue collecting information from the projects we support.

Emilia: I have no further questions. Would you like to add anything else?

Beatriz: Our intention when we decided to join GAATW was precisely to take advantage of the opportunity to exchange information, create networks and contacts. Belonging to a platform like GAATW is very important so that we are not left alone in these complex situations.