Idyllic coastal road plagued by forced sex trade from Africa

DISTURBING secrets of prostitution, human trafficking and voodoo curses have just been exposed in one of the world’s most idyllic locations.

VOODOO rituals, sexual exploitation and human trafficking have been exposed on a 9km stretch of road leading to paradise in one of the world’s most idyllic locations.

The “Road of Love” along the Adriatic coast of Italy has become a notorious prostitution destination for Nigerian women who have been trafficked through Libya, a confronting new documentary has revealed.

On the Road, shows how African girls as young as 14, are forced by their families to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean by boat from war-torn Libya to work the strip in their thousands.

More than 11,000 Nigerian women arrived in Italy last year — with 80 per cent going into prostitution, according to a non-governmental organisation by the same name, which is featured in the film.

Photograph: Piers Sanderson for the Guardian.

“There’s a certain part of Nigeria, when you give birth to a male, they are not happy,” the NGO’s cultural mediator, Jessica, told The Guardian.

“But when you give birth to a female, they look at that female child as an asset. That this one is going to make us rich.

“Because she will have access to go to Europe and make money. It is happening, it is real.”

The shocking film exposes how hundreds of Nigerian women now line Strada Bonifica which has become a 24-hour prostitution operation run by abusive madams who demand huge sums of money from their workers and enslave them with voodoo curses.

The road, lined with factories which are fast closing down and very ordinary looking houses, leads to a stunning beach — which is popular with tourists and locals.

One of the trafficked sex workers from Nigeria told the documentary her family paid $55,000 for her to make the journey over.

Each year, tens of thousands of people pour across Libya’s borders — usually refugees fleeing conflict or economic migrants in search of better opportunities in Europe.

Photograph: Piers Sanderson for the Guardian.

One of the young sex workers said women are beaten by their madams if they refuse to work.

“When I was in Nigeria, I asked my mum: ‘What is it I’m actually coming to do?” she said in the film. “She said she don’t know, because she had not done it before.’

“I said: ‘If it’s prostitution, I’m not going. I can’t come here to do prostitution. I don’t want to die.’”

On the Road’s Jessica said: “Out of the thousands of girls I have spoken with, it is the same story.

“If it had been just one, two or three, you say: ‘Oh they are just making up these stories.’

“But, by the time you speak to more than 500 people, 1000, 3000 girls they are telling you the same story. You begin to know what it means.”

The short film even shows how the madams in control of the prostitutes use voodoo rituals as a ‘sacred bond’ to keep them in their jobs.

Photograph: Piers Sanderson for the Guardian.

“So if they don’t pay their debt, they will die or they will go mad,” Jessica said. “It’s a chain they use to hold these girls.”

The footage shows how those living near the infamous strip are now embarrassed by where they live.

“For those of us who live here it is normal,” said one of the residents who is not named in the film. “But it’s not normal. It makes me angry.

“We don’t have any power. Those in power don’t have any power either.”

On the Road says Italian authorities investigated 2897 suspected traffickers yet the courts only successfully convicted 169.

And, migrant crisis shows no signs of stopping. More than 30 migrants died and 200 were rescued on Saturday after their boats foundered off Libya’s western coast, the Libyan navy said.

Italy’s coastguard, which coordinates the rescue effort in international waters, reported that a total of 1,500 people had been saved on Thursday and Friday, Agence France-Presse reports.

A shocking CNN video has also exposed the shocking way slaves are bought and sold in the North African nation.

The footage shows men auctioning farmhands who are sold for $400.