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Iana Matei is a Romanian activist and founder of Reaching Out Romania, an organization to seek out and rehabilitate victims of forced prostitution. [1]
Iana Matei was born in Orăștie, Romania. Her mother was a pentathlete, and her father was a football coach. When Matei was three years old, her family moved to Bucharest due to her father's work, then later moved to the industrial city of Pitești.
Matei speaks four languages, her native Romanian, Serbian, English, and French. During her studies of wall painting, Matei met her husband Dmitri while restoring the Ghica Tei palace . The two married and had Matei's first son, Ștefan. Matei later divorced Dmitri due to domestic violence, abuse, and alcohol abuse issues.
Matei lived during the period of the Soviet occupation of Romania. In 1989, at the start of the Romanian Revolution, Matei participated in riots and other protest activities against the Communist government. After an incident where Matei lost her handbag with her identity documents during a protest in University Square, she believed it was no longer safe to stay in the country and fled. She left her son with her mother and illegally travelled to Serbia, where she was captured and sentenced to twenty days of imprisonment. During her confinement, Matei went on a hunger strike, insisting that a representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) visit her and acknowledge her presence. After her sentence was completed, Matei was relocated to a Serbian refugee camp, where she was hired as a translator for UNHCP. Matei's son reunited with her from Romania, and the two moved to Australia and have become involved with humanitarian work.
On January 20, 2010, Matei was named "European of the Year" by Reader's Digest. [2] [3] [4] [5] Iana Matei's book was first published in 2010 by OH! Editions in France under the title "A vendre, Mariana, 15 ans".
Matei was studying psychology for a diploma. The topic she chose to study for her work was homeless children. Matei interviewed children she found in the streets of Australia. At first, out of pity, she gave them a few sandwiches, but on her subsequent visit, she brought pasta and fed about fifteen people. This continued for a few months and extended beyond field research. In 1994, Matei founded "Reaching Out", an organization that helps street kids in Australia.
When Matei visited her ill mother in Romania, she found the same problem as in Australia, with children living on the streets of cities. She spent some time in Europe and returned to Australia, still thinking about the homeless children of Romania. In 1998, Matei and her son returned to Pitești and began working on behalf of homeless children.
In 1999, Matei was confronted with human trafficking for the first time when local police officers contacted her, asking her to bring some clothes for prostitutes they had arrested. Matei brought food and clothes for the girls, only to realize they were all underage and forced to be prostitutes. Matei became enraged as the police officers refused to acknowledge that three girls were underage victims of human trafficking. [6]
Matei registered her new non-governmental organization, "Reaching Out", opened her shelter, "The House of Treasure," and has been fighting sex slavery since its creation. [7]
Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership right over one or more people with the intent of coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in sexual activities. This includes forced labor, reducing a person to a servile status and sex trafficking persons, such as the sexual trafficking of children.
Child prostitution is prostitution involving a child, and it is a form of commercial sexual exploitation of children. The term normally refers to prostitution of a minor, or person under the legal age of consent. In most jurisdictions, child prostitution is illegal as part of general prohibition on prostitution.
Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. It has been called a form of modern slavery because of the way victims are forced into sexual acts non-consensually, in a form of sexual slavery. Perpetrators of the crime are called sex traffickers or pimps—people who manipulate victims to engage in various forms of commercial sex with paying customers. Sex traffickers use force, fraud, and coercion as they recruit, transport, and provide their victims as prostitutes. Sometimes victims are brought into a situation of dependency on their trafficker(s), financially or emotionally. Every aspect of sex trafficking is considered a crime, from acquisition to transportation and exploitation of victims. This includes any sexual exploitation of adults or minors, including child sex tourism (CST) and domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST).
Forced prostitution, also known as involuntary prostitution or compulsory prostitution, is prostitution or sexual slavery that takes place as a result of coercion by a third party. The terms "forced prostitution" or "enforced prostitution" appear in international and humanitarian conventions, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but have been inconsistently applied. "Forced prostitution" refers to conditions of control over a person who is coerced by another to engage in sexual activity.
Human trafficking and the prostitution of children has been a significant issue in the Philippines, often controlled by organized crime syndicates. Human trafficking is a crime against humanity.
Prostitution in Romania is not itself criminalized, although associated activities, such as procuring, are criminal offenses, and solicitation is a contravention punishable by fines.
Human rights are codified in the Dutch constitution. Together with other European states, the Netherlands is often at or near the head in international civil liberties and political rights rankings. Per year there are about 6,000 victims of and 100 convictions for human trafficking. Despite this, the Netherlands is considered to have one of the best human rights records in the world.
Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation. Human trafficking is the trade in people, especially women and children, and does not necessarily involve the movement of the person from one place to another.
An Associated Press (AP) investigation revealed in 2017 that more than 100 United Nations (UN) peacekeepers ran a child sex ring in Haiti over a 10-year period and none were ever jailed. The report further found that over the previous 12 years, there had been almost 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other UN personnel around the world. AP found the abuse to be much greater than originally thought. After the AP report, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, urged all countries to hold UN peacekeepers accountable for any sexual abuse and exploitation. As early as 2004, Amnesty International reported that underage girls were being kidnapped, tortured and forced into prostitution in Kosovo with UN and NATO personnel being the customers driving the demand for the sex slaves. The UN's department of peacekeeping in New York acknowledged at that time that "peacekeepers have come to be seen as part of the problem in trafficking rather than the solution".
In the United States, human trafficking tends to occur around international travel hubs with large immigrant populations, notably in California, Texas, and Georgia. Those trafficked include young children, teenagers, men, and women; victims can be domestic citizens or foreign nationals.
Prostitution laws varies widely from country to country, and between jurisdictions within a country. At one extreme, prostitution or sex work is legal in some places and regarded as a profession, while at the other extreme, it is a crime punishable by death in some other places.
Prostitution in Kosovo is illegal, and can incur a prison sentence of up to sixty days. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria's HIV Program in Kosovo estimated there to be 5,037 prostitutes in the country. Many women turn to prostitution through poverty.
Sex trafficking is defined as the transportation of persons by means of coercion, deception and/or forced into exploitative and slavery-like conditions and is commonly associated with organized crime.
Nefarious: Merchant of Souls is a 2011 American documentary film about modern human trafficking, specifically sexual slavery. Presented from a Christian worldview, Nefarious covers human trafficking in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia, alternating interviews with re-enactments. Victims of trafficking talk about having been the objects of physical abuse and attempted murder. Several former prostitutes talk about their conversion to Christianity, escape from sexual oppression, and subsequent education or marriage. The film ends with the assertion that only Jesus can completely heal people from the horrors of sexual slavery.
Lauran Bethell is an American Baptist missionary and human rights advocate residing in Eastern Europe. She is one of the founders of Chiang Mai, Thailand's New Life Center, in which former prostitutes or sex trafficking victims are provided with a Christian-based education aimed at making them literate and employable. She holds the position of Global Consultant with the American Baptist International Ministries. She is currently based in the Netherlands.
Not My Life is a 2011 American independent documentary film about human trafficking and contemporary slavery. The film was written, produced, and directed by Robert Bilheimer, who had been asked to make the film by Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Bilheimer planned Not My Life as the second installment in a trilogy, the first being A Closer Walk and the third being the unproduced Take Me Home. The title Not My Life came from a June 2009 interview with Molly Melching, founder of Tostan, who said that many people deny the reality of contemporary slavery because it is an uncomfortable truth, saying, "No, this is not my life."
Reaching Out Romania is a non-governmental charitable organization in Romania that helps girls ages 13 to 22 exit the sex industry. ROR rescues these girls from the Moldovan and Romanian mafia, which have normally trafficked the girls out of Romania and into Western Europe. ROR runs a facility in Pitești that offers life skills-based education to these girls, teaching them to do things such as painting and sewing. This safe house hides the girls from their traffickers. A psychologist is on staff to meet with the girls. The organization was founded in 1999 by Iana Matei, who was named European of the Year in 2010 by Reader's Digest.
Human trafficking in Nevada is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, and forced labor as it occurs in the state of Nevada, and it is widely recognized as a modern-day form of slavery. It includes "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs."
Sex trafficking in the United States is a form of human trafficking which involves reproductive slavery or commercial sexual exploitation as it occurs in the United States. Sex trafficking includes the transportation of persons by means of coercion, deception and/or force into exploitative and slavery-like conditions. It is commonly associated with organized crime.
Prostitution in Barbados is legal but related activities such as brothel keeping and solicitation are prohibited. The country is a sex tourism destination, including female sex tourism.
