France clamps down on sex work for Olympics

“I really feel under pressure, I’m constantly scared. Every day, there are police checks,” the 55-year-old said, using a different name so as not to be recognized.

“So I go out less and less to work.”

Around 40,000 people — the overwhelming majority women — sell or are exploited for sex in France, according to government and charity estimates.

Under French law, selling sex is allowed, but it is illegal to exploit someone or pay for sex, placing the criminal responsibility on pimps and clients.

It is more complicated however if the sex worker is undocumented.

“I’m so scared that I’ll be arrested that I won’t work in the street during the Olympics,” added the divorcee, who came to France seven years ago hoping to earn a decent wage as a domestic cleaner, and has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

“If they arrest me, I’ll be sent back to China and they won’t give me medical care over there.”

Inside an office of the Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) charity in the northeastern Paris neighborhood of Belleville, she broke down in tears.

“I don’t understand, what have we ever done to anybody?” said the Chinese woman, who says she sometimes sells her services to nicer clients for just 20 euros ($21) because “they don’t have money, and neither do I”.

In another part of Paris, on a street famous for the sex trade near the city center, Mylene Juste was on the lookout for clients.

She said she was most bothered by new security rules limiting pedestrian and traffic movement around Paris.

“Our regulars won’t be able to make it with all the restrictions in place,” said Juste, 50, a sex worker for 22 years.

“And I don’t think the tourists walking by will be leaping on us. So we’re getting out of here,” she added.

Orders online

Ahead of the opening ceremony along the River Seine for the fortnight long sports fiesta that took place on Friday, sex workers like Hua and Juste all but disappeared from their usual Paris haunts.

But with most sex trade online these days, police battling sexual exploitation are also focusing their efforts there.

“Clients go onto a website, tick a category, price and time,” a policewoman specializing in the issue told AFP.

It’s like ordering food online, “except it’s girls” who are delivered, she said, asking to remain anonymous because of the nature of her job.

Medecins du Monde, which also tries to support sex workers virtually, says it recently saw more than 46,000 ads in a single evening on one popular website.

Through the charity’s Jasmine project, since 2019 sex workers have reported tens of thousands of “risky” or “dangerous” clients in a bid to warn others about them.

‘Increases physical attacks’

The build-up to the Games also coincided with a key ruling by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued on Thursday, which said France’s criminalizing clients of sex workers does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights.

The ruling disappointed some right groups who argue France’s policy only increases stigmatization of sex workers.

“Criminalization increases physical attacks, sexual violence, and police abuse of people who sell sex, while having no demonstrable effect on the eradication of human trafficking,” said Erin Kilbride, women’s and LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The French authorities are anticipating gangs promoting women from Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay will continue to advertise during the Games.

They speculate high-end prostitution could be on the rise with all the wealthy visitors expected.

But they also remain worried about an increase in minors being abused in recent years, including vulnerable young girls from the state care system.

Some 20,000 minors are sexually exploited in France, according to rights group Acting Against the Prostitution of Children.

A court in May jailed five men over paying for sexual acts with a 12-year-old girl, in a rare instance of such a case making in to trial.

She was pimped after she ran away from home.