Dire Warnings Updated

The New York Times finally notices that the dire warnings about forced prostitution and the world cup were quite wrong. I posted about this more than a week ago, here.

To the list of pernicious things that have not happened at this World Cup, add one more: a spike in the sex trade. While clubs like Artemis have been busier than usual after games, the tournament has generated nowhere near the surge in demand for prostitution — or the influx of temporary prostitutes from Eastern Europe and Asia — that many experts predicted.

"Our business is O.K., but it's not great," said Egbert Krumeich, the public relations manager for Artemis. "We get 250 to 260 customers on a game day. We'd be happier getting 600 a day."

Soccer and sex, it appears, do not mix very well — even in Germany, where prostitution is legal and the World Cup organizers have pushed the slogan "A Time to Make Friends." There are plenty of friendly fans here, most of them male and many pie-eyed by alcohol. The bad news for the sex trade is that they would rather guzzle another beer than go looking for a prostitute.

I remember when I was first reading those dire warnings that they sounded over the top and very unrealistic. I am quite glad they were wrong, of course. The thing the warnings failed to take into account, of course, were that while there are, indeed, a huge amount of soccer fans flooding into the country, they tend to act like fans. That is, they have a big focus on their team. Go ask a football widow what their husband is thinking about during the season!

Human rights groups estimated that 40,000 women, most from Eastern Europe, would travel to Germany to work as prostitutes during the World Cup. The German government did not release its own estimate. Officials say privately they believe the number is a fraction of that, though they acknowledge that the shadowy nature of sex trafficking makes it hard to be precise.

The German Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation said it had "no knowledge or information" about any cases of forced prostitution during the tournament, a spokeswoman said.

Christian Sachs, a spokesman for the German Interior Ministry, which oversees security issues, said, "It looks as if the fears that were mentioned — that the World Cup would lead to a rise in cases of forced prostitution and sex trafficking — have fortunately not been the case."

In Hamburg and Cologne, which have well-known red-light districts, the authorities say there has been little evidence of increased prostitution. The only city in which the police reported a substantial increase in the number of women working in licensed sex clubs was Munich, increasing to 800 from 500.

Some workers in the sex trade said the communal nature of the World Cup discourages visits to prostitutes, which is by nature a furtive, solitary activity. Many foreign visitors have come to Germany with their families or friends, and travel in buses and campers that do not afford much privacy.

"For most people, it's just too complicated," Ms. Klee said. "It's difficult to say to your friends, 'I'm going to leave you now and go to a brothel for 20 minutes.' That's not normal behavior."

Oh well.

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  By Roland Hesz, Tuesday, 4 July , 2006 @ 7:13 am

  Well, the problem is, that the number of germans did not increase, and the other nations are not like germans - maybe with the exception of the dutch.

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