Over 2000 Nigerian girls who were brought to Russia last year for the FIFA World Cup under the guise of being football fans have been forced into sex slavery, prostitution by the traffickers who brought them into the country.
Blessing Obuson, a teenager from Edo state, pictured below was one of them.
According
to a Reuters report, Blessing Obuson thought Russia’s soccer World Cup
would be an opportunity to find a job and flew into Moscow from Nigeria
last June on a fan ID. Instead, she found herself forced to work as a
prostitute.
She said her madam had confiscated her passport and
told her she’d only get it back once she’d worked off a fictional debt
of $50,000.Obuson told her story to a rare English-speaking client who
got anti-slavery activists involved.
Two Nigerians were later
arrested and charged with human trafficking after striking a deal to
sell Obuson for two million rubles (around $30,000) to a police officer
posing as a client, according to her lawyer, statements from
prosecutors, and evidence presented at court hearings in the case
attended by Reuters journalists. The case is still under investigation.
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