Video: Police Mock Trafficked Women During Brothel Raid

Recently, an Israeli police team was filming routine inspections of old houses in the area. They didn't expect to find anything unusual, perhaps just a few squatters, until one woman reported that a nearby house was full of women ... living in the walls. The police entered the house, and what they saw unfolds in the video below. The house, as it turns out was a brothel full of trafficked women — nine at the time of the police raid. But what was even more alarming than what the traffickers did to these women is what the policemen who "rescued" them did. The video is long, but most of the interesting stuff is in the first 10 minutes or so.

The brothel itself, for a trafficker, is a genius design. Create a lot of cubby holes hidden behind walls and mirrors, and then when the police show up to inspect the place, force all the women inside to hide. I've seen some innovative ways to hide trafficking victims from the police in my seven years in this field, but I must admit this is a first. The whole scenario has a very Anne Frank feeling to it, or else the feeling that the women are being treated like cockroaches or rats.

But the most shocking parts of this video wasn't just seeing woman after woman pulled out of a concrete wall, wearing nothing but a shirt and underwear. It was how the police were treating them. They weren't just rough or careless, they were downright cruel. Mocking the women for their shoes? Even if you don't know that these women are trafficking victims, they've been sealed inside a concrete wall for cristsake. Do you really think they had any control over their shoes? And even if they had picked their shoes and had picked to be prostituting in between slabs of drywall, that is not excuse to make fun of them as you help them to safety. Even after the fact, the police didn't show any interest in making sure the brothel was closed down and the traffickers were prevented from using it again. All they were worried about was deporting the women they had been teasing.

This video is a few years old (2006), so I'm going to give Israeli police the benefit of the doubt and hope that they are getting better training and a major attitude adjustment before they go "rescuing" several more women. But this video is solid proof that sometimes, trafficked peoples' victimization doesn't end when they are free from their trafficker. This can be especially true of situations of sex trafficking, where police are used to viewing prostitution as a crime and the women involved as criminals, as opposed to victims. Of course, police shouldn't be mocking or leering at people who have committed a crime, but that's a whole other argument.

As the most frequent first responders to trafficking situations, it is crucial that law enforcement agents know how not to victimize the people they identify as possible human trafficking victims. This includes the basic, common-sense stuff like not making fun of them. Duh. But its also means having officers who are trained to interview victims, having female officers female victims of sexual trauma can talk to, and allowing them access to support resources.

Because the last thing we want is for a trafficked woman to have such a bad experience with the police, that she yearns for the days she was locked in a wall.