IT was a scene to warm the hardest of hearts. A week after the invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of Germans flocked to Berlin’s biggest train station to greet refugees, offering to open their homes to complete strangers. “3 people, 2 weeks” read one cardboard sign. “Mutter + 1/2 kinder” said another.
As the UK dragged its feet, refusing to drop visa requirements for Ukrainian refugees, the scenes of compassion and generosity were quite overwhelming. Watching from across the Channel, people on these shores were humbled, awed and deeply moved by the scenes, but there was anger too. “What’s this country doing?” asked one tweet. “Makes me ashamed that the UK hasn’t offered the same sanctuary,” said another. “Priti Patel should watch this,” wrote a third.
Symbolically, the contrast could hardly have been greater. But not every heart was buoyed by the station scenes, or optimistic that behind every offer was a genuine chance of sanctuary. I messaged a friend to say I had teared up watching the scenes but also felt uneasy. Was this safe? Was I being too cynical?
“Germany has the biggest mega-brothel in the world,” she replied.
Oh. Maybe not too cynical then.
It’s possible the country can no longer make this particular claim to infamy. Pascha, a 10-storey operation in Cologne in which up to 100 women worked at a time, filed for bankruptcy in autumn 2020 due to the impact of Covid-19 restrictions. It reportedly closed its doors for good in January last year.
READ MORE: Ukraine: SNP become first UK party to suggest Russia is committing genocide
Prostitution was formally legalised in Germany in 2002, after a long period of unofficial tolerance, but outlawed again in March 2020 as an urgent public health measure. The decision by individual states to lift the ban seems to have been motivated at least in part by a desire to head off legal challenges.
As the restrictions eased, those working as prostitutes were told to follow the rules applicable to other “close-contact” services, including operating on an appointment-only basis and using contact tracing. Forgive me if I don’t imagine that men paying to abuse women – during a pandemic or at any other time – will be happily scanning a QR code on their way in.
The brothels may have closed – some temporarily, others permanently – but that does not mean demand ever reduced. Germany is not a safe place for vulnerable women and children.
Of course it would be offensive to suggest that those crowds at Hauptbahnhof comprised pimps and people traffickers rather than ordinary folk willing to help in a crisis. The BBC spoke to one woman in her seventies whose own elderly mother fled the Nazis, who said she felt obliged to help those now suffering as a result of Putin’s invasion. However, police in Berlin have posted signs in the station warning women and young people to report suspicious offers, and plain-clothes officers in one Romanian border town are turning away men offering free rides to women.
The problem for desperate, traumatised, exhausted Ukrainians – who many not even understand the language spoken by those offering them beds, food or transport – is that identifying a “suspicious offer” may prove virtually impossible.
The influx of arrivals into Poland, Romania, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia has been such that it has simply not been possible to coordinate, let alone vet, those offering support. The sight of women offering beds to other women and their children may be reassuring, but one only need bring to mind the name Ghislaine Maxwell to be reminded that traffickers do not clearly advertise themselves as such, and that a positive opportunity or even a rescue can quickly turn into a nightmare.
It’s no surprise that Scottish charity Positive Action in Housing has received reports of Ukrainian women being offered accommodation in exchange for sex as they desperately compete online to find sponsors in the UK, and is warning of “safeguarding breaches and unsafe situations on an industrial scale as a result of the Homes for Refugees scheme”.
It appears that when the Home Office was setting up the scheme it didn’t bother tapping into the knowledge of groups with years of experience of operating refugee hosting networks. Instead it has created a safety net with enormous holes in it – and to date has issued barely 5000 visas. Scots willing to sponsor Ukrainians they know personally are sitting and waiting for their vetting – what the UK Government calls “robust security and background checks”– to begin. While they wait, predators are monitoring the photographs that are being posted on social media by desperate women and teenagers.
The UK Government says those with evidence of law-breaking should go to the police, but those with common sense will not be spelling out what kind of strings are attached to their offers, will they? And if people become victims once they are in the UK, will they go to the police even if means losing the roof over their head? The Tories like to tell us they are tough on crime, but it’s their own neglect here that is criminal.
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