In a report from BRÅ (The Stockholm Criminologyl Symposium) which was presented in 2011, a list has been made regarding the government’s plan of action against prostitution and human trade for sexual purposes. The report presents certain statistics regarding the matter.
– 2 out of 3 alleged perpetrators are men and 1 out of 3 are women. With worse crimes such as threats and violence, the perpetrator is almost always male and the victim is almost universally female.
– A single perpetrator and a single victim is most common. Bigger groups with more people involved are considerably more rare.
– Conditions and deprivation varies from victim to victim, as does the level of willingness. Some have lived through kidnapping, violence, threats, rape, isolation and almost slave-like conditions. Some do not even consider themselves victims of the sex trade industry.
– So far, 14 people have been sentenced where all sentences came with regards to crimes against minors, but only a few reports lead to prosecution. What’s causing this could be the victim’s unwillingness to cooperate with the police in the matter. Either because they are afraid or that they have developed an emotional bond with the perpetrator. Or perhaps for another reason.
– There are some very serious cases of human trading for sexual purposes in Sweden but the amount of known cases are few. The official number is around seven cases per year. Actual numbers are unknown.
– According to enquiries which The Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs have made about young people’s experience with sex selling online and their opinions of it, we learn that 1.5 percent of students in grade three of high school have had sex for compensation. (Boys: 1.7 percent; Girls: 1.2 percent)
– In June of 2010 the government evaluated the Sex Trade Law. The research concluded that the Sex Trade Law had had an effect on the scope of prostitution. Especially noticeable when it came to street prostitution.
The purpose of the government’s plan of action is to reduce prostitution and human trading by strengthening the work against sex trade. But there is a lack of information regarding the extent just before and right after the plan had been put in effect. This made the goal hard to reach. There is also a lack of larger representative population studies, for example to map how many Swedes have experience with sex selling. All we have today are estimations.
Awareness of the extent of human trading in Sweden is even less so than prostitution. The number of human trading reports per year is around 30. But the Swedish National Police
Agency estimated that during 2004 it was closer to 400. The trade is almost exclusively located in the big cities.
When it comes to human trading for sexual purposes, it’s possible to see that cooperation on national and international level (European primarily) has increased. A reason why the initiatives regarding prostitution from European countries have been so few could be because the view on prostitution varies from country to country.
Prostitution is legal in many countries and this creates a background for human trading. This is something RealStars wants to put an end to.