Germany's Bild reports on Czech neighborhood where 10-year-old children are sold for sex, local Roma tried their best to combat prostitution there in 2017
The Předlice quarter of Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic is a place where many Romani people are discriminated against and live in poverty, a place where even 10-year-old girls are sold for sex, a place where German men are among those interested in the young prostitutes. The Bild daily, Germany's highest-circulation newspaper, has reported those findings.
Bild reports that this prostitution, which is nourished by poverty, is underway just 15 kilometers from the German border. “In the little quarter of Předlice, garbage is rotting in the backyards and a haze of fumes from a nearby chemical plant drifts through the streets. A sweet scent mixes with the unbearable stench, though. It comes from the cheap perfume worn by young prostitutes who sell themselves to German men here for 10 euro,” Bild reports.
“This is the fragrance of hopelessness. In Předlice, West Bohemia, a poor quarter in the city of Ústí nad Labem just five kilometers from the border with Saxony, it is omnipresent,” Bild reports.
Children, poverty, and prostitution: An image of desperation on the German border
The daily calls Předlice a place of ruin where many Romani people suffer systemic discrimination and exclusion. “Fertile ground for exploitation,” Bild emphasizes.
As an example, Bild mentions a 20-year-old woman named Jana who provides “quickies” for EUR 10 and a fuller offering of sexual services for EUR 20. “When Jana goes to work, all she needs are a few spritzes of a perfume, a fistful of condoms, and moist towelettes,” the daily reports.
According to the Bild reportage, Jana looks significantly older than 20; she sells herself in a parking lot for long-haul truck drivers. “My four children and I have no other option,” she explained to the paper.
At the parking lot, where many women were offering sex on the day the reporter visited, Jana said that sometimes children also show up as prostitutes. Bild recalled the recently revealed case of a 50-year-old man who abused at least 12 girls aged 10-17 in a local garage there.
“He solicited the children with cookies and for a couple of euro,” Bild reports. The paper also mentions that the girls reportedly did not feel like victims at all because they were financially profiting from selling their bodies.
The garage where the man abused the girls is also where a certain motorcycle club gathers. One of its members told the Bild reporter that the bikers knew the rapist and that child prostitution here is normal, according to them.
“Many Germans come here for young girls in particular,” the biker told the reporter. However, police are officially speaking of the recent case as an isolated example.
Allegations of child prostitution transpiring en masse, which the Bild reportage implies indirectly, are exaggerated, according to other local residents.
News server Romea.cz reported this problem in 2017, when local Romani residents took action against it on their own
News server Romea.cz warned of this problem in 2017, when local Romani residents set up the AMARE Předlice association and decided to take action against it. In September 2017 they undertook direct action as a community when a group of local residents visited the industrial zone space on the outskirts of the quarter where prostitution was regularly transpiring.
The locals carried a sign reading “We Don’t Want Prostitution in Předlice“ and their presence deterred customers. The action attracted the attention of the media and police.
During that action, the local residents ran into a group of girls who were obviously minors, and it later turned out that they had been sitting with the truck drivers. The girls fled the scene after the activists arrived there.
At the time, Romani activists from AMARE Předlice warned that prostitution was not a problem brought to the locality by locals, but that the clients were arriving from outside, frequently from neighboring Germany in particular. The association had also long been criticizing the conditions in which the inhabitants of Předlice were forced to live: the catastrophic state of the buildings, the lack of any infrastructure, the presence of toxic waste dumps, and the extensive drug scene.
In some cases, apartment buildings in Předlice have even collapsed on their residents in the past.
