By Wendy Tuohy
Banks, businesses and financial institutions are being alerted to financial red flags that could indicate a person is being held against their will as a sexual slave.
A financial guide by AUSTRAC, the federal government’s financial intelligence agency, is being distributed to a wide range of businesses and says signs of possible slavery operations include regular payments to hotels or short-term accommodation providers of more than $2000 a month, frequent ATM deposits of between $200 and $800 and payments to online merchants or classified sites of up to $10,000 a month.
A new guide outlines transactions that may indicate a person or people are being kept in sexual servitude.Credit: Jessica Hromas
“Criminals involved in the forced sexual servitude trade are profiting from keeping people in terrible conditions that they cannot escape,” said AUSTRAC chief executive Nicole Rose.
“It’s essential that we work together to recognise and stop this criminal activity, give voice to and protect victims.”
Forced sexual servitude accounts for about 30 per cent of modern slavery cases in Australia, and in 2019-20 the Australian Federal Police identified 40 cases, up from 21 cases in 2018-19.
The guide is intended help identify suspicious activity related to sexual servitude, in which victims are forced to provide services against their will, often in appalling conditions, and are unable to refuse violent or unsafe practices.
Ms Rose said businesses must play a part in identifying and reporting potential cases of forced servitude. The guide draws on intelligence collected through AUSTRAC’s Fintel Alliance, which supports police investigations in the financial sector.
The average, regular domestic transfer amount for sexual services of those in servitude is $250, and regular payments for products such as lingerie, perfume and beauty products that are inconsistent with the customer profile may also be indicators the buyer is a sexual servitude “co-ordinator”.
The guide notes other warning signs include high volumes of regular payments to ride-share or taxi services and food delivery services and frequent pre-paid mobile phone top-ups (from daily to a few times a week).
Victims must hand over most or all of their money to perpetrators, who are often involved in organised crime. The guide is being released by Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews who said sexual servitude was abhorrent and disproportionately affected women and girls.
Jennifer Burn, director of Anti-Slavery Australia, said many people living in slavery in Australia were not identified.
“The Australian Institute of Criminology has said only one-in-five people [living in servitude] are identified, so there are four-out-of-five in some form of modern slavery in Australia who are suffering and experiencing the terrible violation of slavery and trafficking,” said Professor Burn, who teaches the law of slavery and human trafficking at the University of Technology, Sydney.
“It is a profound and very serious issue,” she said. Sexual servitude is the second most common form of slavery crime identified in Australia, after forced marriage.
The guide notes the successful prosecution of a syndicate of sex slavery perpetrators in 2013, who were keeping about 100 Korean women in forced servitude outside the legal brothel system in Melbourne.
The victims were forced to provide sexual services to pay off a debt to the leaders of the syndicate and the co-ordinator, who facilitated abuse through the use of 12 mobile phones in false names and whose financial information was used to disrupt its operations.
Businesses or institutions who notice a combination of these indicators or observe other suspicious activities should consider reporting to austrac.gov.au/smr.
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