A greater number of Dutch children and young people – the majority of whom are girls – are victims of sexual exploitation in Belgium and Germany than previously thought.
Every year, dozens are sexually exploited in Belgium, according to the Dutch Centre for Combating Child and Human Trafficking (CKM), which released a new report on Thursday.
The centre had received a complaint alleging that young women from a care home in the Netherlands were being sexually exploited in Germany. This led to a wider enquiry among various organisations, which later revealed that victims from the Netherlands were being exploited in both Germany and Belgium, VRT reports.
Subsequently, CKM surveyed 220 social workers, police officers, experts and other professionals from the three countries. It revealed that these professionals had come into contact with at least 125 victims over two years, including 99 in Belgium and 26 in Germany.
This figure is higher than the victims identified by the CKM on the basis of other data. In many cases, the victims are young girls still living with their parents or in care.
"As a result [of the original complaint], we investigated this cross-border exploitation for the first time," explains CKM researcher Verena Elders to VRT. "We know that many children are exploited within the Netherlands. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that their exploitation stops at the country’s borders."
The organisation is calling for closer cooperation between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany in order to better understand the problem and combat it.
Antwerp cases
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," the director of the Antwerp-based non-profit organisation Payoke, which has been working on the issue of human trafficking for years, told VRT.
During the period covered by the survey – 2021 to 2023 – of all support workers, only three Dutch victims were reported to Payoke. That is far fewer than the CKM’s estimate.
According to CKM, victims are exploited in all sorts of places in Belgium: hotels, sex clubs, perpetrators’ homes or holiday parks. "The study highlights locations in Flanders in particular, and Antwerp is mentioned with striking frequency," said Elders, specifying this was due to the link with irregularities within the prostitution centre.
In the study, 27 respondents named Antwerp as a place of exploitation, 7 named Brussels and 3 named Turnhout. Maasmechelen, Genk, Ostend, Kinrooi, Maaseik, Hooglede and Ghent were also mentioned on a few occasions.
The expert also explained that Dutch victims are exploited in Belgium because perpetrators realise that they can earn money across national borders, with lower chances of being caught by taking the victim abroad, particularly as they can be isolated with greater ease.
