Loverboy scam
LOVER BOYS AND FORCED PROSTITUTION
Women are often lured to Western Europe by the promise of a job. Once they arrive, however, they are given a terrible choice. There is no job for you. You can’t speak the language anyway, and that means either you will have to live on the street, or you can work in prostitution. This threat of poverty drives many people to choose to prostitution. Where the stark choice is between having nothing or being a prostitute, there is no freedom in the choice they make. And then most of the women are not responsible only for their own upkeep – there are families back home who rely on the money they send.
Lover-boys go out and search systematically for girls they can groom and turn into ‘whores’. Their victims can be minors or young adults from any social class, often girls with low self-confidence. The lover-boy chats up his target, pretending that he has fallen in love with her. Lover-boys are experts at lavishing attention, compliments, apparent affection and often presents on their targets. At the same time, they make them emotionally dependent and reduce their contacts with family and friends. Later on they lead them into prostitution, often with promises that the money will be used for their future together. They reward, manipulate and sometimes threaten, with the goal of making their victim do what they want. Once this dependence is complete, it is very hard for the victim to see what is going on, to recognise the deception and admit to themselves that they have been fooled.
